Bijou Drains
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Alan
With that kind of genetic material in you, woe betide any comrade that crosses you at conference!!!!
But I do applaud your dislike of cruelty, although I think you are naive about “humane” killing, and in Bijou’s case misinformed about farmed animals living longer lives, which is ridiculous.
If you read what I was saying, I was talking about potential not actual and stated I deplore the trend in modern life of eating only very young animals, becasue they are supposed to be better. For instance mutton and hogget is hardly eaten now, because of the so called superiority of lamb, similalry boiling foul are often wasted because of their age. The article you yourself quote states that older cattle if cooked properly can be very good. I would argue that in a socialist society meat production would be far more local, more humane, and that as more time would be available cooking skills, lost over the years, would redevelop.
I would certainly feel more comfortable eating mutton stew, with mutton fresh off the Cheviot Hills, than eating rice and lentils flown or shipped half way around the world, or green beans flown in from Peru.
Returning to Alan’s earlier question about biting the testicles off male lambs, I suppose if there is such a thing as an urban legend, then that must be a bit of a rural legend. In actual fact they fit a tight fitting elastic band over the lambs scrotum and eventually the nads wither away and fall off.
Agan this would be unnecessary in a Socialist society as it wouldn’t be necessary or desireable to continue the current practices. The castration is done because it is said that the testosterone makes the meat of male lambs taste slightly stronger, (although there is little evidence of this and it is not done on many countries).
The cull of male lambs would also not be necessary or desireable. It is currently done for mainly economic reasons, one ram is allowed to live and that ram then “services” several flocks. Obviously for the ram that is selected a pampered life and a couple of months every year of non stop sex awaits. I would argue that the impact of this (although saving the famer the cost of raising less productive rams as well as ewes) is a long term tendency toward inbreeding and susceptibility to disease.
This is just one example of how socialism could introduce more humane and environmentally friendly farming methods.
Alan Johnstone wrote
“So meat-eater will have a temporary respite as the present generation of slaughter-men carry out final culls of farm animals.
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Again i have to say that work which leads to occupational diseases that cannot be avoided will end in socialism and second-best alternatives will substitute.”
Bit of a contradiction there Alan.
Whose going to slaughter the remaining domestic livestock?
As I said earlier in this thread, the Peter Rabbit brigade imagine that living a non domestic lifestyle is wonderful, long and ends in a pleasant death. Sadly it doesn’t, it is usually short, stresssful and ends very violently.
But then there is the butchering of the carcass that is required. Can a person intellectually divorce themselves from the connection?
I have been on several short butchery courses, all of which were well attended by amateurs like myself. I often get a side of mutton or pork and break it down into the different cuts, make sausges, black puddings, white puddings and haggis. I am also quite happy to gut and clean fish, fillet and clean game birds, etc. I don’t think I have develped psychological problems through this process, I do however recognise that an animal has been killed in the process and do my best to ensure that every part of the animal that can be used as food is, including roasting bones to make stock and making broth from the carcasses.
As to Gregg’s, I am not a fan of their meat products, they were decent in the 60’s & 70s, but their sausage rolls aren’t very good, vegan or not. They are however the only place you can get proper stotty cake (they only sell them in the North East). Back in the day the Scottish bakers Crawford’s had a few branches on Tynesde, now their Scotch Mutton peppered pies were a thing of wonder! I am sure you remember them well Alan, washed down with gulps of Creamola Foam and a bit of Scottish Tablet for your puddin’
Bevan, when he was involved with setting up the NHS, said that he got the consultants on board by “stuffing their mouths with gold” a few of them have made it their job to keep their mouths stuffed full ever since.
In a similar way to Matt I have a bit of skepticism with regards to the necessity of inhumane and cruel practices in meat production (although I accept that killing in itself could be defined as cruelty). I worked as a Social Worker in West Northumberland for many years, often working with farming families and most were very compassionate about the way they raised their animals and the way they looked at wildlife. For example for the most part they detested the local hunt brigade, but as they were for the most part tennant farmers, they had to put up with them and their destructive ways. However if they wanted to get rid of a fox they would rub a bit of polyeurathane foam against a car window at night time. It makes a sound like a rabbit in trouble and when the fox popped up they shot it quickly and humanely, not chasing it until it was exhausted and then watching it have its guts ripped out.
The Peter Rabbit brigade would have us believe that wild animals live out a blissful existance and die peacefully in their beds, being comforted by their close family and friends. For the most part wild animals lead a pretty precarious existance, live a lot shorter lives than their domestic counterparts and die either a long slow death of starvation and hunger or by being ripped apart by their long feared enemies.
Given the choice I’d rather have a relatively longer life in a comfortable and humane Socialist farm and then a quick and relatively pain free death at the end of it. To that end I tend, when I can, to eat Mutton and Beef as this is the closest I can get to what I described above. I do however deplore the modern trend of eating relatively young animals because people don’t have the where with all to cook older animals properly.
As to how cattle would survive in the wild, you only need to look at the precarious existnace of the Wild White Cattle of Chillingham to realise that their lives would be precarious and short lived.
Except that dentists have long been allowed to charge and make a profit out of actually providing health care, which NHS doctors are not.
There are very many NHS specialists and consultants who have their own private clinics, etc. usually in the afternoon off that they get from the NHS as part of their deal. They then have private beds in NHS hospitals, which they pay a fee to the hospital for, so that they can do their private operations etc. meaning you can effectively jump the queue if you are willing to pay.
Strange thing was that when I worked for Local Government we were always told that as salaried staff we were not able to work for any other organisation outside of our contracted hours, because unlike hourly paid staff, our labour was deemed to be the exclusive property of the employer. Funny how the same rules don’t seem to apply to senior doctors, MPs, Senior Civil Servants, etc.
Article in the Independent which is pretty depressing, in terms of human intelligence:
These same people who are worried that Bill Gates will be able to track where they are are probably the same people who regularly and without coercion update their facebook and twitter pages with details of where they are, what they are doing, who they are doing it with, what they are having to eat (complete with picture), who they are shagging, who they would like to shag, when they are having a dump (sometimes, unfortunately, complete with picture) along with details and pictures of all of the members of their family and their friends (and usually a whole lot of people who they are pretending to be friends with for the sake of facebook).
Quite why Bill Gates would go to all of this trouble to find out information which they are happy to give away freely, is beyond my comprehension.
It’s a bit like all of this worry about the coronavirus tracking app. If you are worried that someone is going to find out you are shagging your boss’s wife, leave your phone at home when you are shagging her (or get her to leave her’s at home if you’re doing it at your house). But don’t worry too much because one of you is bound to have put it on facebook or twitter anyway!
On the Marxist Animalist debate, judging by this survey, if we are the smartest, most advanced, cleverest animal on the planet, the rest of the animals must be absolutely as thick as pig shit. No wonder the aliens don’t come, I bet they are steering a wide course around this place.
Interesting article by George Monbiot, no great fan of his, but interesting numbers.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/19/uk-government-pandemic?CMP=share_btn_link
Macau
You cite Macau as an example of an absence of lockdown. Again this does not seem to support your hypothesis that Covid 19 has a very high transmission rate and that it is not influenced by measures such as lock down or social distancing.
Macau had a small number of cases and they reacted immediately by enacting stringent measures, to quote from the wikipedia article you cite “Stringent government measures have included the 15-day closure of all 81 casinos in the territory in February; in addition, effective 25 March, the territory disallowed connecting flights at it’s airport as well as entry by all non-residents (excepting residents of mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan), and from 6 April, the Hong Kong – Zhuhai – Macau Bridge was closed to public transport and most other traffic.”
In Macau they reacted very strongly very early on. If your hypothesis that this disease spreads much more quickly than the current estimates, the disease would have spread, dispite the measures taken, however there is no evidence of widespread spread. You can’t be correct about high spread in Sweden and low spread in Macau, I suspect you are wrong about both.
Again from the wikepedia article you cite:
“On 3 February, the government of Macau announced that starting at noon, all bus and taxi passengers were required to wear masks; otherwise the driver would have the right to refuse boarding. Starting at 13:00, all light rail passengers were required to wear a mask; otherwise the driver would have the right to refuse boarding.
On 4 February 2020, all casinos in Macau were ordered to shut down for 15 days. The following facilities were also required to close: cinemas, theatres, indoor amusement parks, arcades, internet cafes, pool halls, bowling alleys, steam baths, massage parlours, beauty salons, gyms, health clubs, bars, karaoke bars, nightclubs, discos, and dance clubs.
On 7 February, the government of Macau announced that government workers were to stay home from the 8th to the 16th, except for emergency services”
Hardly a laissez- attitude faire.
Similarly in Japan they reacted very quickly, however the government there have come under criticism for stoppiing these measures too early.
In either case the comparison with the progress of the disease cannot really be made with the UK situation. In both of these cases the government acted quickly to try and stop community transmission (in which it seems they were fairly effective). In the UK the government let the Cheltenham festival go ahead, let the Liverpool v Atletico Madrid match go ahead and only cancelled sporting events after pressure from the sports themselves. By the time this had all gone ahead and community transmission was well established, they held the white flag up and the head cases started talking about herd immunity, only to change tack again and lock the stable door when the horse was half way to Ascot. Hardly comparable situations.
Dave
You then go on to cite a case where staff at a Candian nursing home deserted their jobs and left the residents to die. I agree with you that this was a dreadful situation and that the over reaction of staff to the threat of coronavirus was a causative factor in the deaths of these poor people. However again it provides no evidence that the high level of deaths in “care homes” in the UK has any connection to this kind of behaviour. I have seen no reports of this kind of behaviour at any “carehome” in the UK and certainly no evidence the care provided in UK homes has been a massive factor in the great surge of deaths in care homes.
