Bijou Drains
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Thomas More – “Two members on the forum now making fun of capitalism’s animal holocaust on a thread”
TM, I don’t know what Chelmsford’s approach is to being a carnivore, my position on this issue has been made on this forum very clearly on this forum and I was not making a joke with my posting.
I have made it very clear on this forum that I am a carnivore, I do however always attempt to ensure that I use meat that has been ethically raised and that I also attempt to make sure that meat use is based on used on making full use of all elements of animal we use.
To that extent I make my own bacon from slaughterhouses and farmers who raise their animals appropriately, I similarly make my own sausages, black puddings, white puddings, haggis, faggots, etc. I also use a lot of free range mutton, meat which is often discarded when wool producing sheep are eventually slaughtered which is often discarded because “no one wants it any more”. I also use old chickens, known as broiling foul, from laying hens which are also sent off to be made for fertiliser, pet food, etc. although with a little thought and time can be used as food very easily (and very tasty they are too).
Having worked in rural communities for many years I am very aware of the wasteful and environmentally threatening practices modern farming methods and food fashions that are often forced onto farming folk. I am also aware that many of the supposed “simple solutions” put forward by the vegetarian lobby are also as destructive as those they criticise.
A very quick example is the regular criticism of beef production, whilst at the same time ignoring dairy production. The proportion of beef cattle and dairy cattle in the overall herd is about 5 to 1 in beef to dairy, however the average life span of a beef beast is about 18 months, whilst the life span of a dairy cow is usually about 20 years and can be over 30 years. So in effect milk production (and many vegetarians eat higher amounts of dairy than non vegetarians) creates far more environmental destruction that beef consumption. Similarly much of the land that is used for sheep production is used for the production of wool, rather than the production of meat, so meat consumption is often not the issue. Add to this the fact of the impact of arable farming on wildlife and the environment is widely overlooked. Large scale mono cultural production of grain and vegetables in large scale farms has led to the grubbing up of large areas of woodland and especially hedge rows has had a massive impact on bird life and other wild animals.
Perhaps the aspect of modern day farming and approaches to farming that is most threatening to human existence comes not from meat production but from arable farming. Insecticides are used massively across most arable farms and the fall in insect numbers is enormous. No insects, no other animals. Cows, pigs, chickens, sheep, etc. raised in open settings, produce enormous amounts of the humble fly. Flies are the major food source of literally thousands of animal species, they are the plankton of the world, yet modern arable farming methods are eliminating the fly across many parts of the countryside.
Another example of the “simple solution” approach was explained to me by a friend of mine who worked as a civil engineer in the water industry. In Newcastle the treatment works used to collect the treated sludge (minus the sweetcorn, tomato pips, peas and seagull’s wellies) from the sewage works in the area and it was transported to the Tyne and was placed on what was poetically named, the shit boats. The shit boat sailed off on most evenings to various points of the north sea coast and dropped the contents of their boat at various points around 30 miles off the coast. Some elements of the environmental lobby raised a huge stink (sic) about this practice and eventually the practice was stopped. The sludge is now burnt. When the practice stopped there was a huge crash in the prawn and shrimp fisheries across the North East coast. The fall in shrimp numbers had a huge impact n the slowly recovering fisheries across the North East and also affected the numbers of many non commercial species also.
Perhaps, TM, you do not eat dairy, do not wear wool or leather, do not eat crops that have been supported by manure produced by cows, do not eat fish, do not eat grain and vegetable products produced by large scale farming processes, do not drink beer, wine, whisky, etc (finings used to clear these products use isinglass produced by the swim bladders of fish or use egg whites) and maybe you only shit in the garden, wiping your arse only using dock leaves. If so I congratulate you, if not perhaps your comments are a case of the kettle calling the pot dirty arse.
So maybe instead of attempting to “out” me as a callous animal enemy, it might be more productive for you to look more closely in a more informed way at your own practices.
Dear Chelmsford, given your comments and as another unrepentant carnivore I heartily recommend you start curing your own bacon. I was suprised how easy it is to do and it gives you bacon that actually tastes like bacon and isn’t covered in that white watery shite that supermarket bacon gives you.
Basically buy either a slab of pork loin (for back bacon) or a slab of belly pork (for streaky bacon) (leave the rind on if you can get it. You can buy curing salt on line for buttons (I get mine from weschenfelders). The cure ration is 35gms of salt to every kilo of pork ( I add a couple of spoonfuls of granulaed sugar to make a sweetcure). Rub the salt over the pork. wrap it in tea towels or in a big plastic bag. Leave it for 7 days, give it a quick wash and hey presto a couple of kilos of fantastic bacon. I’ve bought a bacon slicer, but a good sharp caring knife works ok. The bacon you get fries up crispy just like it used to years ago and is about 1/3 the price of the crap you but in the shops.
Hey TN – Russia is offering their troops new incentives, free sperm bank storage, allowing them to have children if they are killed or maimed during the “Special Military Operation (now described as a war by Mr V Putin esq).
We’re all aware of your blood curdling support for all things Putin knows no bounds (apart from actually joining in with the bloodletting by actually offering your military services to mother Russia).
Perhaps this offer might be the one that makes you finally shows us skeptics that you aren’t the hypocritical BS merchant we all judge you as, although I can understand the offer of sperm donation is not for you, perhaps your hands are a bit full at the moment?
Amazon states “ When Tom Johnston’s book, Our Scots Noble Families, first appeared in 1909 it caused a sensation.
The man who was later to become wartime Scottish Secretary of State and first chairman of the North of Scotland Hydro Board revealed how many Scots landed families inherited privileges through lands taken by force or fraud. “The title-deeds are rapine, murder, massacre, cheating or Court harlotry,” wrote Johnston.
“They (Scotland’s landowning elite) scorned any principle of morality; they gambled and murdered and robbed and foisted numerous illegitimate lusts on the granaries of the common people.”
Johnston claims that the Dukes of Hamilton, Scotland’s premier peerage, owe their wealth to mining royalties to which they had no entitlement.
The Gordons of Barra, who evicted islanders in the potato famine of 1851 when the kelp industry failed and tried to offer the island to the government as a penal settlement, excited Johnston’s wrath. “The first Barra Gordon appears to have been one of the most inhuman rascals that even Scottish Land history takes cognisance of. Beside him Nero was an innocent babe.” Their namesakes in the North East were a “nest of public robbers.”
And the Sutherlands, whose annual revenue from land in the north of Scotland and elsewhere even in 1874 was some £141,000, had a history of “cruel murders and blatant thievings”.
Despite being banned by some booksellers, Our Scots Noble Families sold 120,000 copies.”Our Comrade, Alwyn Edgar’s incredible book “Clans and Clearances – The Highland Clearances Volume 1” provides a forensic examination of the whole process of the expropriation of the highlands and their people’s pauperisation, in a similar way that Marx did in Chapter 27-29 of Capital Vol 1, regarding the same process in England and other parts of Western Europe.
It’s ironic that the Bolsheviks and their hangers on see the process of “de kulakisation” of the Soviet Union as a great achievement of Lenin, Trotsky and their murderous band.
The Bolsheviks expropriated (stole) the land for the state capitalists more ruthlessly and viciously than any of the private capitalists ever did.
Chelmsford – “Hardship today is spending a week in Spain rather than the usual ten days.”
If you do live in Chelmsford, you might not be best placed to comment about poverty. Chelmsford is ranked 256 out of 326 local authorities in England on overall deprivation (where 1 is the highest level of deprivation).
In my work life I have encountered many people living in abject poverty, no heat, light, food, etc. Although I have seen extremes of poverty in urban areas, the level of poverty in rural areas is often much worse.
Having worked in rural north and west Northumberland for many years, I found the level of rural poverty is often under reported and missed in official statistics.
Probably the worst housing conditions I have come across are those rural workers who are tenants of the big country land owners, who often work for the same land owners. Complaining about housing can lead to losing your home and your job, a real problem when both are scarce. Similar conditions often apply to many of the tenant hill farmers, scratching a living from rasing sheep and giving most of it back to the landowner in rent.
The usual explanation is that Anarchism’s small production and the way some of the Anarchists championed small independent cooperatives as a form of production appealed more to the peasant mind set, whereas the Marxist viewpoint was more appealing to the proletariat.
From the movie Airplane:
Ted Striker (Robert Hays) tells Dr Rumack (Leslie Nielsen), “Surely you can’t be serious,” and Rumack replies, “I am serious — and don’t call me Shirley.”
The Milgram experiment and it’s results have long been questioned.
Many of the participants have stated that the acting by the supposed “victims” was so comical that many of the students continued to deliver “shocks” because they thought it was worth watching the ham acting!
I just tried to explain to my beloved that me droppining her favourite vase and breaking it, couldn’t have happened any other way. I presume that her responding with a swift kick to my bollocks has a similar explanation
Welcome along ActualSocialist10 and welcome to the Party.
I was saying a similar thing to you regarding Lenin a few weeks back, when I was talking to a guy I know who’s involved with Socialist Appeal (effectively the Militant Tendency who stayed in the Labour Party). If it was Russia and it was Oct 1917 you might think his approach might work and it was worth a shot.
The problem is that despite the fact it was a miserable failure and resulted in oppression of workers since day 1, many workers seem to think that the Leninist approach is a way forward!
I also agree with you that social media is the currently the most powerful way of spreading our ideas. Sadly we haven’t done that as well as we could. This isn’t meant as criticism of the worry of comrades who do this work, I think that from a generational frame of reference we are not particularly “tech savvy”.
The good thing is that because we are a truly Democratic Party, the resources of the party are available to any member to use as a way of spreading our message.
The status of a member of our party is the same regardless of them being a member for one day or being a member for 60 years
Hi covvie99, nice to hear from you on the forum.
Just something to add to the discussion, you have stated that ” The idea that the far-left – Communism and far-right – Fascism are related is a new concept that right-whinge think tanks spread.”
If by far Left Communism you refer to the ideas of Lenin, the Bolsheviks and their various political descendents (Maoists, Castroists, etc.), comparing these anti socialist, anti democratic, elitist political movements as having similarities with the far right is not by anyway a new concept and did not originate in right wing think tanks. The Socialist Party of Great Britain has made these comparisons for many decades. The term red fascist has been a commonplace for many decades.
Back in the early 1980s, in a bar room discussion with members of the SWP, I explained to a student member of the SWP that I considered their “democratic centralist” processes as being red fascism. He responded by saying that if I said that again, he would put a pint glass in my face. He did not understand my laughter when I pointed out to him that he had just proved my point.
With regard to left and right, this concept has the idea of a spectrum of political beliefs which places various view points somewhere on that spectrum.
The Socialist Party has long dismissed the idea that for example the Labour Party or the Trotskyists or various other “socialist” movements who put forward the idea of campaigning to reform capitalism in various ways, have anything in common with those (i.e. us) who campaign for the immediate and complete democratic abolition of capitalism and its replacement with a society based on free access, common ownership and the concept of “from each according to their ability to each according to their needs” (i.e. genuine communism).
In that sense our party see the key political decision as being, as one of campaigning to continue with capitalism (with any of the variations of capitalism, including nationalisation of parts of the productive forces and various forms of state capitalism) or do you campaign to end capitalism.
This was the key question that arose in the formation of the Socialist Party of Great Britain when our party split with the Social Democratic Federation, in 1904. The founders of our party put forward declared principles which members of our party continue to put forward. We have continued to organise to promote those democratic principles for nearly 120 years.
You may not have come across our political party before this point, you may not agree with our viewpoint, but if you are interested in political thought and activity, I am pretty sure you will find our perspective interesting and unique.
There are lots and lots of articles from our monthly magazine (which has been in continuous production since 1904) on the website, contemporaneous articles that explain our position and activities, covering events such as WW1, the Bolshevik Revolution, WW2, etc. etc. that stretch back to 1904 as well as lots of current articles.
Going back to the original point, regarding humour and satire, I agree with you that humour and satire can be one of the most powerful tools we have, we do not use it as well as we should.
TM – “It’s like saying “You should have thought of that before you did it.” Not an issue, because I didn’t think of it, so could not.”
The important thing is not that you should have thought about it, but that you could have thought about it. In the same way history can’t be different doesn’t mean that it couldn’t have been different.
