There are real and difficult issues at play here - the Right doesn't have a clue as to how to stop migrants coming to the UK, the Left doesn't have a clue what to do with them once they are here.
"Throwing them out" is, as might be expected, a simplistic answer to a complex problem. We have seen how determined and desperate some are to get here and a little bit of coarse language from Lee Anderson isn't going to butter many parsnips.
As a sad old lefty-liberal (to the likes of Mr Anderson and his elk or ilk). I bump up against my common humanity when it comes to how we treat people who aren't really criminals (I think). Some might argue there are plenty of British hotel rooms which aren't far off jail cells but the fact remains whether it's a barge, a hotel room, a tent or on a military base, we need to be able to treat these people as people.
Perhaps the best thing we could do is to speed up the application and decision process so purgatory (or at least transient limbo) is reduced as much as possible.
The answer is there are no easy answers - Britain is the place many some people want to come (in spite of Lee Anderson) and whether we are perceived as a "soft touch" or whether it's down to the English language as the lingua franca of global business or whether it's further away from where they came from I don't see that appeal ending anytime soon.
The other side of the dilemma is or are the clear labour shortages in many sectors - our economy needs cheap labour in order to fuel growth and in the absence of a cheap pool of workers, those already here can lead a nice round of wage inflation from which we all suffer in time. Yet there's a social, cultural and political price for freedom of movement - it can't just be about growth, can it?
Immigration to solve the labour crisis for low skilled jobs is ultimately a poor solution - low end jobs should be automated.
Fruit picking is for machines, and soon will be.
In a full employment economy, rising wages should lead to the replacement of labour with capital in the medium term.
Machines have been able to wash cars and make coffee for a while now. Leave hand washing of cars to professional detailers, and hand making of coffee to fancy hotel lobby lounges.
And hand carving wooden spoons is for weird hipsters. Use a machine the way God and Marc Brunel intended.
Some nice stuff there, actually, and tbf even that spoon course could be a good introduction to woodwork if one wanted to try it out.
I’m pretty sure your local technical college will offer a much better introduction to woodworking course, were you to be so inclined.
Sure, but if it is only one day you want to commit, and get a sense of what it is like carving and working with the stuff without having to do a mitred joint straight off (and school horror memories), it's something. Not woodwork as we know it, Jim, though as Malmesbury says: just a subdivision.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Sure, if people don't want to consume meat for religious reasons then that's their choice.
Taking such a Puritan/purist view will have consequences for their nutrition and they need to accept that.
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
But the literal example given by the site talks about red or processed meat and uses sausages and bacon as an example - again what I'd assume is a lot of pork consumption (and lots of chicken will be processed). And sure, those areas with lower meat consumption will likely lean on chicken or pork (and non processed chicken or pork) over red or processed meats.
Well then we're not producing enough red meat for everyone to get their 75 grams. Like Bart you can't have this both ways.
I think this is another culture war thing where both sides scream at each other and adopt extreme positions, neither of which are true.
We need to eat a smaller amount of higher quality meat.
We should not eat no meat. And we should not continue to consume current levels of meat.
Human beings do not need to eat meat.
And vegetarians on average live about 9 years longer than flesheaters.
I suggest you look up how homo sapiens evolved their bigger heavier brains in the first place, and the diet that contributed to that.
Biology isn't interested in your ideology.
Even if it is correct that diet contributed to heavier brains in an evolutionary sense, that doesn't really make the case that it's a healthy choice for the individual, as ontogeny does not recapitulate phylogeny.
That's a phrase I've always wanted to use in its proper context, and now I have (well, not exactly, but adequately).
I'm not a vegetarian/vegan myself, by the way. But that's because I enjoy eating meat rather than because I've rationalised it in any deeper sense.
There's a huge amount of vitamins and minerals in meat that we need to stay healthy. You can substitute in a much more complicated and less fun way if you want, with lots of risk you get it wrong and malnourish yourself.
The sensible thing to me seems to be to consume a reasonable amount of meat.
I have absolutely no ethical issues with it. All sorts of creatures consume all others and without being too morbid about it maggots and bacteria will consume us one day too, and then other creatures then them in turn.
Sunak has bigger problems than Anderson, personnel wise. Shapps and Cleverly are both far more personable and charismatic.
When he is flailing in the polls and another 1000 Tory councillors have lost, who then will support him?
Who will support him? Shapps and Cleverly for a start.
You have a theory based on concern from the Tory membership/councillor base that Sunak hasn't got what it takes to turn this around.
I get that, but where you run into problems is that enough of the MPs have decided that the Sunak/Hunt approach of trying to avoid further market chaos whilst throwing out a bit of red meat on immigration, ULEZ etc is the only prospect of limiting losses. They've lashed themselves to the mast, the world king across the water is now an ex-MP, and anyone vaguely credible is resigned to sit it out, survive the election, and stand for leader of the opposition (a much better position than taking the poison chalice with weeks left in the term).
So I just don't see the realistic mechanism for you to get what you want this side of an election.
My feeling is the membership are usually 9 months ahead of the MPs on this.
MPs panic close to an election when polls are low. They'll push the button when they realise they're going to lose their seats otherwise.
Quite a few Tory MPs are standing down, quite a few won't in fact lose their seats (in the 1997 massacre only just over half did), and quite a few who are in serious danger will conclude that defenestration with weeks to go makes their prospects worse not better.
Quite apart from that, is who will take on the job in that situation. All the best candidates will sit on their hands until after the election, leaving a choice between maniacs and incredibly pompous, unappealing Sir Bufton Tufton types answering the nation's call at time of crisis.
I see your frustration, but I don't see how it realistically resolves in the way you describe.
Politics happens very slowly, then all at once.
Local donors will start drying up (this is how Tory MP's election campaign funds are secured), numbers of leaflet deliverers will dry up, councillors will be down.
Plus, come October, the 1 year moratorium on VONC within the PCP expires. It could be there are already a good number in; and every by election lost makes the threshold easier to reach.
Firstly, this assumes Sunak will push a General Election it beyond next May (and a further loss of councillors). I know that's a fairly widespread assumption, but I'm not sure. It's not a great round of elections for the Tories and, particularly if he does feel under any pressure, I think he'll chance it.
Secondly, I think enough Tory activists and donors either quite like Sunak or will stick with it come what may. As with the Lib Dems in 2015, on the ground and in local parties of threatened MPs, there is some rallying round. It may well not save seats - it didn't for the Lib Dems in 2015 - but actually in a backs-to-the-wall situation, quite a lot of people fight rather than take flight. Even being very cynical, if you're an ambitious Tory in the seat of an under-threat MP, you help them man the barricades and come out with a lot of credit as well as a vacancy.
Thirdly, there isn't a great deal of evidence of letters being planned or going in. Maybe there are behind the scenes, and maybe people are bring quiet, but there does need to be some noise to get momentum.
Finally, and crucially, a VONC needs to pass by a majority. I know Johnson went having survived a VONC, but that was through a further scandal and mass resignations. That's just not happening with Sunak - he's not likely to be embroiled in a scandal and his cabinet have either bought into his project or decided to wait until after the election as being disloyal isn't a winning formula.
Every Tory leader since Major who has survived a VONC hasn't survived the year....
The year counting from next may, runs in to ragnarok. This is like a dinosaur 65m and 1 years ago agonizing over whether its diet is the one most likely to ensure its longevity.
Secondly, it is beyond bonkers to think that HM might refuse a dissolution following the Lascelles principles. They and the SA and Canada cases referred to by Lascelles were immediately post GE crises, with a real issue as to what happens for the next 5 years, not at the fag end of a government. Apart from that, we have conventions about conventions in our wacky non codified constitution and the convention is not to put HMK in a spot where he has to make a political decision. If the tories start buggering him about (and it would have to be anti sunakite tories asking him to refuse) the punishment doled out by the electorate at GE 24 or 25 won't be KT, it will be end Permian. It would literally destroy the party. No decade in the wilderness and triumphant return under dishface.
Nope, the monarch wouldn't grant a dissolution because the PM was running scared of his party. Especially the first request for dissolution in the reign....
Sales of veggie burgers on the slide, I fear we are headed for a beyond Beyond Meat world.
Price. Could be downpricing to lentils or beans instead. Inflation in food prices innit.
Good point.
On a purely personal level, when I have a meat-free meal, I prefer a "genuine" vegetarian dish to ersatz meat. There are some really tasty vegetarian dishes in their own right - they don't have to be a slightly worse version of an equivalent meat dish.
Talking of Selfridges magnificent food hall, as I was, I just bought some wild venison steaks to eat tonight
Does meat get more ethical than that? Britain is overrun with deer. We surely have too many. They are wild. They have nice lives. I eat them after they are briskly shot dead
Can any vegetarian object to that? I don’t see how
Current trends would say that we should introduce wolves to keep the deer down, and you yourself should live on a slab of soy with a side portion of virtue.
As a vegan / veggie - I am perfectly happy with deer hunting in the UK (although would prefer wolves to be reintroduced), I just don't want to eat any of it.
Presumably you feel the deer prefers being pulled to pieces by a pack of wolves as opposed to being shot in the head.
No - I prefer the idea of increasing biodiversity and having our natural fauna / ecosystem restored over what will likely be upper middle class / upper class people going out for hunting trips more often. It doesn’t really matter either way how the deer dies, but the reintroduction of wolves would more likely solve the systemic issue of deer overpopulation due to lack of predation than encouraging more hunting.
Introducing apex predators into a natural environment, tends to end badly. We’d have eliminated the deer problem, only to have introduced a wolf problem. Deer don’t generally attack dogs and children.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Not really sure what the argument is here tbh. Some things eat meat? Yes. Dead animals get consumed by carrion-eaters and/or decompose? Also, yes.
Neither is an argument against humans eating a plant-based diet.
But is an argument against the more moralistic arguments against eating meat.
We can get by without it, but there's nothing wrong with doing it as a concept, so more efficient, ethical and eco friendly ways of doing it is a good idea, and an easier sell at present than just don't do it
The “in nature” fallacy is by no means an argument against a moralistic position against eating meat, just as it wouldn’t be moral to argue that I have a right to kill someone and steal their house because that’s what would likely have happened when homo sapiens were early in their evolution.
Non sentient creatures are not constrained by morality due to the fact they can’t conceive of it. Humanity can. No moral question can be answered by nature.
To do Pratchett again:
Take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. and yet... and yet you act as if there is some ideal order in the world, as if there is some... some rightness in the universe by which it may be judged.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Not really sure what the argument is here tbh. Some things eat meat? Yes. Dead animals get consumed by carrion-eaters and/or decompose? Also, yes.
Neither is an argument against humans eating a plant-based diet.
Meat is a plant-based diet.
Amazing. “Checkmate libtards!!1!” lol.
If you’re going down that road we ultimately live off a sunlight-based diet 😂
Telling migrants to f**k off to France is going to go down stratospherically badly with the sort of (ex) Conservative voter in LibDem target seats who f**ks off to France on holiday every year.
I realise that for Lee Anderthal “France” is an insult in itself, but some of us quite like the place.
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
But the literal example given by the site talks about red or processed meat and uses sausages and bacon as an example - again what I'd assume is a lot of pork consumption (and lots of chicken will be processed). And sure, those areas with lower meat consumption will likely lean on chicken or pork (and non processed chicken or pork) over red or processed meats.
Well then we're not producing enough red meat for everyone to get their 75 grams. Like Bart you can't have this both ways.
I think this is another culture war thing where both sides scream at each other and adopt extreme positions, neither of which are true.
We need to eat a smaller amount of higher quality meat.
We should not eat no meat. And we should not continue to consume current levels of meat.
Human beings do not need to eat meat.
And vegetarians on average live about 9 years longer than flesheaters.
Source?
"For example, several studies with large sample sizes conducted in Australia18 and the United Kingdom19,20 did not show that meat eating correlated negatively with life expectancy after controlling for health-related elements of lifestyles"
So meat eaters tend to be lazy fat slobs who die early, but if you weed out the lazy fat slobs...
From the same source down in the conclusions
"A study of more than 218,000 adults from over 50 countries around the world suggests that consuming unprocessed meat regularly can reduce the risk of early death and can increase human longevity.73 A recent dietary advice published by Lancet Public Health advocates an increase of dietary meat in order to benefit our heart health and longevity.74 This study also highlights that saturated fat in meat may be cardio protective, as well as, that meat contains many vitamins and the essential amino acids for human health and well-being.73,74"
Absolutely.
Good cuts of whole meat are great for you, much better than processed carbs.
Its a shame that meat is so expensive compared to processed carbs. We should hope to boost the amount of meat eaten worldwide going forwards. 👍
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Yes this is my position. I know that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy diet without meat as I haven't eaten meat in 35 years and am in great health. I've never tried to force this view on anyone else and as far as I can see on this forum the greatest proselytisers are from the eating dead animals camp. I do wish they would fuck off as I believe the government likes to put it.
I've never tried to make someone eat meat.
I've definitely had vegans and vegetarians try and make me eat their diet at events, either directly or through moral blackmail, or use their diet to exercise control in social situations. At a macro level there's a strong movement to tax or regulate me out of meat too.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Not really sure what the argument is here tbh. Some things eat meat? Yes. Dead animals get consumed by carrion-eaters and/or decompose? Also, yes.
Neither is an argument against humans eating a plant-based diet.
Meat is a plant-based diet.
Amazing. “Checkmate libtards!!1!” lol.
If you’re going down that road we ultimately live off a sunlight-based diet 😂
The difference however I have never seen someone that eats meat calling for a legal ban on vegetarianism or veganism. Visit any thread on climate change in the guardian and you will find vegetarians/vegans advocating a ban on meat eating.
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
But the literal example given by the site talks about red or processed meat and uses sausages and bacon as an example - again what I'd assume is a lot of pork consumption (and lots of chicken will be processed). And sure, those areas with lower meat consumption will likely lean on chicken or pork (and non processed chicken or pork) over red or processed meats.
Well then we're not producing enough red meat for everyone to get their 75 grams. Like Bart you can't have this both ways.
I think this is another culture war thing where both sides scream at each other and adopt extreme positions, neither of which are true.
We need to eat a smaller amount of higher quality meat.
We should not eat no meat. And we should not continue to consume current levels of meat.
Human beings do not need to eat meat.
And vegetarians on average live about 9 years longer than flesheaters.
I suggest you look up how homo sapiens evolved their bigger heavier brains in the first place, and the diet that contributed to that.
Biology isn't interested in your ideology.
Even if it is correct that diet contributed to heavier brains in an evolutionary sense, that doesn't really make the case that it's a healthy choice for the individual, as ontogeny does not recapitulate phylogeny.
That's a phrase I've always wanted to use in its proper context, and now I have (well, not exactly, but adequately).
I'm not a vegetarian/vegan myself, by the way. But that's because I enjoy eating meat rather than because I've rationalised it in any deeper sense.
There's a huge amount of vitamins and minerals in meat that we need to stay healthy. You can substitute in a much more complicated and less fun way if you want, with lots of risk you get it wrong and malnourish yourself.
The sensible thing to me seems to be to consume a reasonable amount of meat.
I have absolutely no ethical issues with it. All sorts of creatures consume all others and without being too morbid about it maggots and bacteria will consume us one day too, and then other creatures then them in turn.
Circle of life.
[swaggering] Man, I've been a veggie since 1991 and it hasn't done me any harm!
Talking of Selfridges magnificent food hall, as I was, I just bought some wild venison steaks to eat tonight
Does meat get more ethical than that? Britain is overrun with deer. We surely have too many. They are wild. They have nice lives. I eat them after they are briskly shot dead
Can any vegetarian object to that? I don’t see how
Current trends would say that we should introduce wolves to keep the deer down, and you yourself should live on a slab of soy with a side portion of virtue.
As a vegan / veggie - I am perfectly happy with deer hunting in the UK (although would prefer wolves to be reintroduced), I just don't want to eat any of it.
Presumably you feel the deer prefers being pulled to pieces by a pack of wolves as opposed to being shot in the head.
No - I prefer the idea of increasing biodiversity and having our natural fauna / ecosystem restored over what will likely be upper middle class / upper class people going out for hunting trips more often. It doesn’t really matter either way how the deer dies, but the reintroduction of wolves would more likely solve the systemic issue of deer overpopulation due to lack of predation than encouraging more hunting.
Introducing apex predators into a natural environment, tends to end badly. We’d have eliminated the deer problem, only to have introduced a wolf problem. Deer don’t generally attack dogs and children.
Sunak has bigger problems than Anderson, personnel wise. Shapps and Cleverly are both far more personable and charismatic.
When he is flailing in the polls and another 1000 Tory councillors have lost, who then will support him?
Who will support him? Shapps and Cleverly for a start.
You have a theory based on concern from the Tory membership/councillor base that Sunak hasn't got what it takes to turn this around.
I get that, but where you run into problems is that enough of the MPs have decided that the Sunak/Hunt approach of trying to avoid further market chaos whilst throwing out a bit of red meat on immigration, ULEZ etc is the only prospect of limiting losses. They've lashed themselves to the mast, the world king across the water is now an ex-MP, and anyone vaguely credible is resigned to sit it out, survive the election, and stand for leader of the opposition (a much better position than taking the poison chalice with weeks left in the term).
So I just don't see the realistic mechanism for you to get what you want this side of an election.
My feeling is the membership are usually 9 months ahead of the MPs on this.
MPs panic close to an election when polls are low. They'll push the button when they realise they're going to lose their seats otherwise.
Quite a few Tory MPs are standing down, quite a few won't in fact lose their seats (in the 1997 massacre only just over half did), and quite a few who are in serious danger will conclude that defenestration with weeks to go makes their prospects worse not better.
Quite apart from that, is who will take on the job in that situation. All the best candidates will sit on their hands until after the election, leaving a choice between maniacs and incredibly pompous, unappealing Sir Bufton Tufton types answering the nation's call at time of crisis.
I see your frustration, but I don't see how it realistically resolves in the way you describe.
Politics happens very slowly, then all at once.
Local donors will start drying up (this is how Tory MP's election campaign funds are secured), numbers of leaflet deliverers will dry up, councillors will be down.
Plus, come October, the 1 year moratorium on VONC within the PCP expires. It could be there are already a good number in; and every by election lost makes the threshold easier to reach.
Firstly, this assumes Sunak will push a General Election it beyond next May (and a further loss of councillors). I know that's a fairly widespread assumption, but I'm not sure. It's not a great round of elections for the Tories and, particularly if he does feel under any pressure, I think he'll chance it.
Secondly, I think enough Tory activists and donors either quite like Sunak or will stick with it come what may. As with the Lib Dems in 2015, on the ground and in local parties of threatened MPs, there is some rallying round. It may well not save seats - it didn't for the Lib Dems in 2015 - but actually in a backs-to-the-wall situation, quite a lot of people fight rather than take flight. Even being very cynical, if you're an ambitious Tory in the seat of an under-threat MP, you help them man the barricades and come out with a lot of credit as well as a vacancy.
Thirdly, there isn't a great deal of evidence of letters being planned or going in. Maybe there are behind the scenes, and maybe people are bring quiet, but there does need to be some noise to get momentum.
Finally, and crucially, a VONC needs to pass by a majority. I know Johnson went having survived a VONC, but that was through a further scandal and mass resignations. That's just not happening with Sunak - he's not likely to be embroiled in a scandal and his cabinet have either bought into his project or decided to wait until after the election as being disloyal isn't a winning formula.
Every Tory leader since Major who has survived a VONC hasn't survived the year....
The year counting from next may, runs in to ragnarok. This is like a dinosaur 65m and 1 years ago agonizing over whether its diet is the one most likely to ensure its longevity.
Secondly, it is beyond bonkers to think that HM might refuse a dissolution following the Lascelles principles. They and the SA and Canada cases referred to by Lascelles were immediately post GE crises, with a real issue as to what happens for the next 5 years, not at the fag end of a government. Apart from that, we have conventions about conventions in our wacky non codified constitution and the convention is not to put HMK in a spot where he has to make a political decision. If the tories start buggering him about (and it would have to be anti sunakite tories asking him to refuse) the punishment doled out by the electorate at GE 24 or 25 won't be KT, it will be end Permian. It would literally destroy the party. No decade in the wilderness and triumphant return under dishface.
Nope, the monarch wouldn't grant a dissolution because the PM was running scared of his party. Especially the first request for dissolution in the reign....
If the PCP had any sense (I know) they'd all get behind Penny, and let the membership decide via a confirmatory vote whether to stick or twist (full leadership contest). Charles probably likes Penny for the sword-bearing.
Test selection is set to get interesting, whether Ben Stokes likes it or not https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/aug/09/the-spin-ben-stokes-england-test-selection-india-tour-cricket ..Let’s assume Stokes can bowl, by hook or by crook. For the first Test at Hyderabad, the XI could look like this: 1) Zak Crawley, 2) Ben Duckett, 3) Stokes, 4) Root, 5) Harry Brook, 6) Bairstow, 7) Foakes, 8) Woakes or Curran or Ahmed or Will Jacks, 9) Wood or Olly Stone, 10) Leach, 11) Anderson or Tongue. Ollie Robinson, the closest thing to Broad, should be in there too. But he may have to spend the autumn working on his batting, so he can join the queue for No 8.
It’s a team of two halves. The batting is settled, balanced and high-powered, albeit unproven in India apart from Root (Crawley and Duckett average 12 there between them). The bowling is a collection of bits and bobs and ifs and buts. It will only resemble a proper attack if Wood and Stone are fit, Anderson returns to form and Stokes continues to coax wickets out of part-time spinners.
Can Bazball possibly work in India? It can if your name is Rishabh Pant, but then he doesn’t have to do it against Messrs Ashwin and Jadeja. England have never scored three runs an over through a series on Indian soil, let alone the five that is Stokes’s preferred tempo. Last winter, he tore up the conventions of Test cricket in Pakistan: now he has to do it in India too...
Sunak has bigger problems than Anderson, personnel wise. Shapps and Cleverly are both far more personable and charismatic.
When he is flailing in the polls and another 1000 Tory councillors have lost, who then will support him?
Who will support him? Shapps and Cleverly for a start.
You have a theory based on concern from the Tory membership/councillor base that Sunak hasn't got what it takes to turn this around.
I get that, but where you run into problems is that enough of the MPs have decided that the Sunak/Hunt approach of trying to avoid further market chaos whilst throwing out a bit of red meat on immigration, ULEZ etc is the only prospect of limiting losses. They've lashed themselves to the mast, the world king across the water is now an ex-MP, and anyone vaguely credible is resigned to sit it out, survive the election, and stand for leader of the opposition (a much better position than taking the poison chalice with weeks left in the term).
So I just don't see the realistic mechanism for you to get what you want this side of an election.
My feeling is the membership are usually 9 months ahead of the MPs on this.
MPs panic close to an election when polls are low. They'll push the button when they realise they're going to lose their seats otherwise.
Quite a few Tory MPs are standing down, quite a few won't in fact lose their seats (in the 1997 massacre only just over half did), and quite a few who are in serious danger will conclude that defenestration with weeks to go makes their prospects worse not better.
Quite apart from that, is who will take on the job in that situation. All the best candidates will sit on their hands until after the election, leaving a choice between maniacs and incredibly pompous, unappealing Sir Bufton Tufton types answering the nation's call at time of crisis.
I see your frustration, but I don't see how it realistically resolves in the way you describe.
Politics happens very slowly, then all at once.
Local donors will start drying up (this is how Tory MP's election campaign funds are secured), numbers of leaflet deliverers will dry up, councillors will be down.
Plus, come October, the 1 year moratorium on VONC within the PCP expires. It could be there are already a good number in; and every by election lost makes the threshold easier to reach.
Firstly, this assumes Sunak will push a General Election it beyond next May (and a further loss of councillors). I know that's a fairly widespread assumption, but I'm not sure. It's not a great round of elections for the Tories and, particularly if he does feel under any pressure, I think he'll chance it.
Secondly, I think enough Tory activists and donors either quite like Sunak or will stick with it come what may. As with the Lib Dems in 2015, on the ground and in local parties of threatened MPs, there is some rallying round. It may well not save seats - it didn't for the Lib Dems in 2015 - but actually in a backs-to-the-wall situation, quite a lot of people fight rather than take flight. Even being very cynical, if you're an ambitious Tory in the seat of an under-threat MP, you help them man the barricades and come out with a lot of credit as well as a vacancy.
Thirdly, there isn't a great deal of evidence of letters being planned or going in. Maybe there are behind the scenes, and maybe people are bring quiet, but there does need to be some noise to get momentum.
Finally, and crucially, a VONC needs to pass by a majority. I know Johnson went having survived a VONC, but that was through a further scandal and mass resignations. That's just not happening with Sunak - he's not likely to be embroiled in a scandal and his cabinet have either bought into his project or decided to wait until after the election as being disloyal isn't a winning formula.
Every Tory leader since Major who has survived a VONC hasn't survived the year....
The year counting from next may, runs in to ragnarok. This is like a dinosaur 65m and 1 years ago agonizing over whether its diet is the one most likely to ensure its longevity.
Secondly, it is beyond bonkers to think that HM might refuse a dissolution following the Lascelles principles. They and the SA and Canada cases referred to by Lascelles were immediately post GE crises, with a real issue as to what happens for the next 5 years, not at the fag end of a government. Apart from that, we have conventions about conventions in our wacky non codified constitution and the convention is not to put HMK in a spot where he has to make a political decision. If the tories start buggering him about (and it would have to be anti sunakite tories asking him to refuse) the punishment doled out by the electorate at GE 24 or 25 won't be KT, it will be end Permian. It would literally destroy the party. No decade in the wilderness and triumphant return under dishface.
Nope, the monarch wouldn't grant a dissolution because the PM was running scared of his party. Especially the first request for dissolution in the reign....
I may have picked up the wrong end of the stick, but…
If Sunak is PM, and there is not an active leadership election ongoing, then the King will grant a dissolution request. No ifs, buts, or maybes.
Talking of Selfridges magnificent food hall, as I was, I just bought some wild venison steaks to eat tonight
Does meat get more ethical than that? Britain is overrun with deer. We surely have too many. They are wild. They have nice lives. I eat them after they are briskly shot dead
Can any vegetarian object to that? I don’t see how
Venison? With inflation the way it is, sounds a bit deer.
Sales of veggie burgers on the slide, I fear we are headed for a beyond Beyond Meat world.
Price. Could be downpricing to lentils or beans instead. Inflation in food prices innit.
Good point.
On a purely personal level, when I have a meat-free meal, I prefer a "genuine" vegetarian dish to ersatz meat. There are some really tasty vegetarian dishes in their own right - they don't have to be a slightly worse version of an equivalent meat dish.
Indeed. As I noted earlier, our vegetarian dishes tend to be beans or lentil based, though I should have added tofu - no more processed than cheese, inherently. We do use Quorn sometimes but usually as straight as possible, as mince, esp if I can't get the local hoggett ot mutton mince.
There are real and difficult issues at play here - the Right doesn't have a clue as to how to stop migrants coming to the UK, the Left doesn't have a clue what to do with them once they are here.
"Throwing them out" is, as might be expected, a simplistic answer to a complex problem. We have seen how determined and desperate some are to get here and a little bit of coarse language from Lee Anderson isn't going to butter many parsnips.
As a sad old lefty-liberal (to the likes of Mr Anderson and his elk or ilk). I bump up against my common humanity when it comes to how we treat people who aren't really criminals (I think). Some might argue there are plenty of British hotel rooms which aren't far off jail cells but the fact remains whether it's a barge, a hotel room, a tent or on a military base, we need to be able to treat these people as people.
Perhaps the best thing we could do is to speed up the application and decision process so purgatory (or at least transient limbo) is reduced as much as possible.
The answer is there are no easy answers - Britain is the place many some people want to come (in spite of Lee Anderson) and whether we are perceived as a "soft touch" or whether it's down to the English language as the lingua franca of global business or whether it's further away from where they came from I don't see that appeal ending anytime soon.
The other side of the dilemma is or are the clear labour shortages in many sectors - our economy needs cheap labour in order to fuel growth and in the absence of a cheap pool of workers, those already here can lead a nice round of wage inflation from which we all suffer in time. Yet there's a social, cultural and political price for freedom of movement - it can't just be about growth, can it?
Few big political problems have easy answers. If there were easy answers, they'd have been instituted already... although given this Conservative government, even if there was an easy answer, they'd cock it up somehow...
There are some good answers. Processes should be faster: this is both fairer to applicants and saves us money. The government is spending a lot of money housing and feeding asylum seekers, who it forbids from working, because it is "saving" money by not resourcing the Home Office well enough. Processing speeds have collapsed. Deportations have collapsed.
I think the vast majority of voters do recognise many seeking asylum as being deserving. We should want those people to get a positive decision as quickly as possible, so that they can then get on with re-building their lives and give back to society by working, which also helps integrate them into their new country. This all seems compatible with Conservative values to me.
I think the vast majority of voters recognise many seeking asylum are not deserving. Instead of paying for these people, we should want them to get a negative decision as quickly as possible and then get them deported.
Now, there's a lot of people seeking asylum where opinion may differ as to whether they are deserving, and there's different views over what "as quickly as possible" means with respect to fair processes, but there are some obvious wins here from investing in processing claims.
The movement of people over international borders is addressed better through international cooperation. When we were in the EU, the Dublin regulation allowed for the deportation of people to the EU country where they first claimed asylum. There was a mechanism to address something many voters see as unfair, people travelling through multiple safe countries before getting to the UK. There was also agreement on joint action to reduce, through various ways, the flows into the EU, and joint action on homing those who were in need. We left the EU. The Conservative government didn't within the Brexit agreement or subsequently negotiate anything comparable. This is another obvious approach. Indeed, the one thing this government has successfully done was the negotiation with Albania that greatly reduced the number of Albanians coming over in small boats. More of that is a good idea.
So, there are relatively easy measures that would help. A future non-Tory government has options. This isn't some overwhelmingly difficult challenge.
Bah! Here am I, solving political challenge of the decade, and you all want to talk about veggie burgers...
Sales of veggie burgers on the slide, I fear we are headed for a beyond Beyond Meat world.
Price. Could be downpricing to lentils or beans instead. Inflation in food prices innit.
Good point.
On a purely personal level, when I have a meat-free meal, I prefer a "genuine" vegetarian dish to ersatz meat. There are some really tasty vegetarian dishes in their own right - they don't have to be a slightly worse version of an equivalent meat dish.
Same - Beyond Meat is expensive and I like making stuff from scratch on the whole. I wish tempeh was a bit cheaper cos it’s delicious (and more toothsome than tofu, if less versatile). But beans and lentils are both delish and cheap.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Yes this is my position. I know that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy diet without meat as I haven't eaten meat in 35 years and am in great health. I've never tried to force this view on anyone else and as far as I can see on this forum the greatest proselytisers are from the eating dead animals camp. I do wish they would fuck off as I believe the government likes to put it.
I've never tried to make someone eat meat.
I've definitely had vegans and vegetarians try and make me eat their diet at events, either directly or through moral blackmail, or use their diet to exercise control in social situations. At a macro level there's a strong movement to tax or regulate me out of meat too.
So I wish they would fuck off, actually.
I like the idea that veggies and vegans have tried to make you eat “their food” at events. Like, vegetables? Would you just like a plate of meat and nothing else?
The reason for the macro level policy moves are to combat many of the things we’ve been discussing in the thread - dietary issues and the long term impact of farming practices on the environment. I also think it is the realm of politics to, in part, provide policy that enforces the moral norms (not that this is always good). I think if humanity survives the climate catastrophe we will see most people eating less meat than most people do now - partly out of necessity and partly out of shifting moral norms.
Talking of Selfridges magnificent food hall, as I was, I just bought some wild venison steaks to eat tonight
Does meat get more ethical than that? Britain is overrun with deer. We surely have too many. They are wild. They have nice lives. I eat them after they are briskly shot dead
Can any vegetarian object to that? I don’t see how
Venison? With inflation the way it is, sounds a bit deer.
Well, if I can’t exactly have deer, I’ll have something of that elk, anyway
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Yes this is my position. I know that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy diet without meat as I haven't eaten meat in 35 years and am in great health. I've never tried to force this view on anyone else and as far as I can see on this forum the greatest proselytisers are from the eating dead animals camp. I do wish they would fuck off as I believe the government likes to put it.
I've never tried to make someone eat meat.
I've definitely had vegans and vegetarians try and make me eat their diet at events, either directly or through moral blackmail, or use their diet to exercise control in social situations. At a macro level there's a strong movement to tax or regulate me out of meat too.
So I wish they would fuck off, actually.
I've seen people - usually old fogies - insist on trying to feed meat to vegetarians or pescetarians even when given ample notice to go for one of their other perfectlyt normal recipes.
Telling migrants to f**k off to France is going to go down stratospherically badly with the sort of (ex) Conservative voter in LibDem target seats who f**ks off to France on holiday every year.
I realise that for Lee Anderthal “France” is an insult in itself, but some of us quite like the place.
I am totally convinced that the moron Anderthal will be re- elected, probably says more about the state of this country, than it does about him
Talking of Selfridges magnificent food hall, as I was, I just bought some wild venison steaks to eat tonight
Does meat get more ethical than that? Britain is overrun with deer. We surely have too many. They are wild. They have nice lives. I eat them after they are briskly shot dead
Can any vegetarian object to that? I don’t see how
Venison? With inflation the way it is, sounds a bit deer.
Well, if I can’t exactly have deer, I’ll have something of that elk, anyway
Talking of Selfridges magnificent food hall, as I was, I just bought some wild venison steaks to eat tonight
Does meat get more ethical than that? Britain is overrun with deer. We surely have too many. They are wild. They have nice lives. I eat them after they are briskly shot dead
Can any vegetarian object to that? I don’t see how
Venison? With inflation the way it is, sounds a bit deer.
Well, if I can’t exactly have deer, I’ll have something of that elk, anyway
Talking of Selfridges magnificent food hall, as I was, I just bought some wild venison steaks to eat tonight
Does meat get more ethical than that? Britain is overrun with deer. We surely have too many. They are wild. They have nice lives. I eat them after they are briskly shot dead
Can any vegetarian object to that? I don’t see how
Venison? With inflation the way it is, sounds a bit deer.
Well, if I can’t exactly have deer, I’ll have something of that elk, anyway
Sunak has bigger problems than Anderson, personnel wise. Shapps and Cleverly are both far more personable and charismatic.
When he is flailing in the polls and another 1000 Tory councillors have lost, who then will support him?
Who will support him? Shapps and Cleverly for a start.
You have a theory based on concern from the Tory membership/councillor base that Sunak hasn't got what it takes to turn this around.
I get that, but where you run into problems is that enough of the MPs have decided that the Sunak/Hunt approach of trying to avoid further market chaos whilst throwing out a bit of red meat on immigration, ULEZ etc is the only prospect of limiting losses. They've lashed themselves to the mast, the world king across the water is now an ex-MP, and anyone vaguely credible is resigned to sit it out, survive the election, and stand for leader of the opposition (a much better position than taking the poison chalice with weeks left in the term).
So I just don't see the realistic mechanism for you to get what you want this side of an election.
My feeling is the membership are usually 9 months ahead of the MPs on this.
MPs panic close to an election when polls are low. They'll push the button when they realise they're going to lose their seats otherwise.
Quite a few Tory MPs are standing down, quite a few won't in fact lose their seats (in the 1997 massacre only just over half did), and quite a few who are in serious danger will conclude that defenestration with weeks to go makes their prospects worse not better.
Quite apart from that, is who will take on the job in that situation. All the best candidates will sit on their hands until after the election, leaving a choice between maniacs and incredibly pompous, unappealing Sir Bufton Tufton types answering the nation's call at time of crisis.
I see your frustration, but I don't see how it realistically resolves in the way you describe.
Politics happens very slowly, then all at once.
Local donors will start drying up (this is how Tory MP's election campaign funds are secured), numbers of leaflet deliverers will dry up, councillors will be down.
Plus, come October, the 1 year moratorium on VONC within the PCP expires. It could be there are already a good number in; and every by election lost makes the threshold easier to reach.
Firstly, this assumes Sunak will push a General Election it beyond next May (and a further loss of councillors). I know that's a fairly widespread assumption, but I'm not sure. It's not a great round of elections for the Tories and, particularly if he does feel under any pressure, I think he'll chance it.
Secondly, I think enough Tory activists and donors either quite like Sunak or will stick with it come what may. As with the Lib Dems in 2015, on the ground and in local parties of threatened MPs, there is some rallying round. It may well not save seats - it didn't for the Lib Dems in 2015 - but actually in a backs-to-the-wall situation, quite a lot of people fight rather than take flight. Even being very cynical, if you're an ambitious Tory in the seat of an under-threat MP, you help them man the barricades and come out with a lot of credit as well as a vacancy.
Thirdly, there isn't a great deal of evidence of letters being planned or going in. Maybe there are behind the scenes, and maybe people are bring quiet, but there does need to be some noise to get momentum.
Finally, and crucially, a VONC needs to pass by a majority. I know Johnson went having survived a VONC, but that was through a further scandal and mass resignations. That's just not happening with Sunak - he's not likely to be embroiled in a scandal and his cabinet have either bought into his project or decided to wait until after the election as being disloyal isn't a winning formula.
Every Tory leader since Major who has survived a VONC hasn't survived the year....
The year counting from next may, runs in to ragnarok. This is like a dinosaur 65m and 1 years ago agonizing over whether its diet is the one most likely to ensure its longevity.
Secondly, it is beyond bonkers to think that HM might refuse a dissolution following the Lascelles principles. They and the SA and Canada cases referred to by Lascelles were immediately post GE crises, with a real issue as to what happens for the next 5 years, not at the fag end of a government. Apart from that, we have conventions about conventions in our wacky non codified constitution and the convention is not to put HMK in a spot where he has to make a political decision. If the tories start buggering him about (and it would have to be anti sunakite tories asking him to refuse) the punishment doled out by the electorate at GE 24 or 25 won't be KT, it will be end Permian. It would literally destroy the party. No decade in the wilderness and triumphant return under dishface.
Nope, the monarch wouldn't grant a dissolution because the PM was running scared of his party. Especially the first request for dissolution in the reign....
I may have picked up the wrong end of the stick, but…
If Sunak is PM, and there is not an active leadership election ongoing, then the King will grant a dissolution request. No ifs, buts, or maybes.
This is the ongoing scenario we've been discussing:
- PM has lost confidence of party - PM knows he won't last as leader - PM requests dissolution
- Monarch says no, I'll find someone else who can lead your party which has, checks notes, a huge majority in the current, viable parliament.
We already played it out during May and Johnson's fag ends. In short, the monarch won't grant a dissolution to a PM who is facing the sack and only going to the country to run from his own party.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Not really sure what the argument is here tbh. Some things eat meat? Yes. Dead animals get consumed by carrion-eaters and/or decompose? Also, yes.
Neither is an argument against humans eating a plant-based diet.
But is an argument against the more moralistic arguments against eating meat.
We can get by without it, but there's nothing wrong with doing it as a concept, so more efficient, ethical and eco friendly ways of doing it is a good idea, and an easier sell at present than just don't do it
The “in nature” fallacy is by no means an argument against a moralistic position against eating meat, just as it wouldn’t be moral to argue that I have a right to kill someone and steal their house because that’s what would likely have happened when homo sapiens were early in their evolution.
Non sentient creatures are not constrained by morality due to the fact they can’t conceive of it. Humanity can. No moral question can be answered by nature.
To do Pratchett again:
Take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. and yet... and yet you act as if there is some ideal order in the world, as if there is some... some rightness in the universe by which it may be judged.
Humans make that shit up. And that’s good.
That doesn't argue against the proposition one bit. It just means neither side can claim morality as some universal constant, which makes constructing a moral argument on the principle pointless.
That's why I'm favour of arguments about it being healthier and better for the environment. Because that's an actual argument which can be assessed, and someone might decide its OK for them to ear meat, but they should perhaps do so less or not all on that basis, not because humans are masters of their own destiny and so its morally wrong.
Talking of Selfridges magnificent food hall, as I was, I just bought some wild venison steaks to eat tonight
Does meat get more ethical than that? Britain is overrun with deer. We surely have too many. They are wild. They have nice lives. I eat them after they are briskly shot dead
Can any vegetarian object to that? I don’t see how
Current trends would say that we should introduce wolves to keep the deer down, and you yourself should live on a slab of soy with a side portion of virtue.
As a vegan / veggie - I am perfectly happy with deer hunting in the UK (although would prefer wolves to be reintroduced), I just don't want to eat any of it.
Presumably you feel the deer prefers being pulled to pieces by a pack of wolves as opposed to being shot in the head.
No - I prefer the idea of increasing biodiversity and having our natural fauna / ecosystem restored over what will likely be upper middle class / upper class people going out for hunting trips more often. It doesn’t really matter either way how the deer dies, but the reintroduction of wolves would more likely solve the systemic issue of deer overpopulation due to lack of predation than encouraging more hunting.
Introducing apex predators into a natural environment, tends to end badly. We’d have eliminated the deer problem, only to have introduced a wolf problem. Deer don’t generally attack dogs and children.
I mean, people should probably just accept we’re going to have some land that exists not for the benefit of humans and for the benefit of everything else.
Also North America and mainland Europe seem to manage okay with wolves and even bears. Granted, we have a much greater population density - but again, just give over a load of land and see “here be wolves, enter at your own risk”.
Talking of Selfridges magnificent food hall, as I was, I just bought some wild venison steaks to eat tonight
Does meat get more ethical than that? Britain is overrun with deer. We surely have too many. They are wild. They have nice lives. I eat them after they are briskly shot dead
Can any vegetarian object to that? I don’t see how
Current trends would say that we should introduce wolves to keep the deer down, and you yourself should live on a slab of soy with a side portion of virtue.
As a vegan / veggie - I am perfectly happy with deer hunting in the UK (although would prefer wolves to be reintroduced), I just don't want to eat any of it.
Presumably you feel the deer prefers being pulled to pieces by a pack of wolves as opposed to being shot in the head.
No - I prefer the idea of increasing biodiversity and having our natural fauna / ecosystem restored over what will likely be upper middle class / upper class people going out for hunting trips more often. It doesn’t really matter either way how the deer dies, but the reintroduction of wolves would more likely solve the systemic issue of deer overpopulation due to lack of predation than encouraging more hunting.
Introducing apex predators into a natural environment, tends to end badly. We’d have eliminated the deer problem, only to have introduced a wolf problem. Deer don’t generally attack dogs and children.
I mean, people should probably just accept we’re going to have some land that exists not for the benefit of humans and for the benefit of everything else.
Also North America and mainland Europe seem to manage okay with wolves and even bears. Granted, we have a much greater population density - but again, just give over a load of land and see “here be wolves, enter at your own risk”.
Indeed. I was in a car a few days ago when the driver pulled over to show a bear walking past the side of the road. Quite interesting to see and bear attacks on cars are thankfully rare as while we may have looked like tinned food to them, they lack a can opener.
Cyclists or pedestrians might have a bit of a problem, but that's not an issue for you?
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Yes this is my position. I know that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy diet without meat as I haven't eaten meat in 35 years and am in great health. I've never tried to force this view on anyone else and as far as I can see on this forum the greatest proselytisers are from the eating dead animals camp. I do wish they would fuck off as I believe the government likes to put it.
I've never tried to make someone eat meat.
I've definitely had vegans and vegetarians try and make me eat their diet at events, either directly or through moral blackmail, or use their diet to exercise control in social situations. At a macro level there's a strong movement to tax or regulate me out of meat too.
So I wish they would fuck off, actually.
I've seen people - usually old fogies - insist on trying to feed meat to vegetarians or pescetarians even when given ample notice to go for one of their other perfectlyt normal recipes.
People trying to force others to eat a certain way can really set people off. I still get annoyed about a relative plonking something in front of me theyve known for 35 years I don't like (im teased about it all the time in the family) then acting bemused and asking if I hadn't gotten over that yet.
No I shouldn't have gotten annoyed, it's irrational, but I truly was.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Yes this is my position. I know that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy diet without meat as I haven't eaten meat in 35 years and am in great health. I've never tried to force this view on anyone else and as far as I can see on this forum the greatest proselytisers are from the eating dead animals camp. I do wish they would fuck off as I believe the government likes to put it.
I've never tried to make someone eat meat.
I've definitely had vegans and vegetarians try and make me eat their diet at events, either directly or through moral blackmail, or use their diet to exercise control in social situations. At a macro level there's a strong movement to tax or regulate me out of meat too.
So I wish they would fuck off, actually.
I like the idea that veggies and vegans have tried to make you eat “their food” at events. Like, vegetables? Would you just like a plate of meat and nothing else?
The reason for the macro level policy moves are to combat many of the things we’ve been discussing in the thread - dietary issues and the long term impact of farming practices on the environment. I also think it is the realm of politics to, in part, provide policy that enforces the moral norms (not that this is always good). I think if humanity survives the climate catastrophe we will see most people eating less meat than most people do now - partly out of necessity and partly out of shifting moral norms.
You haven’t lived if you haven’t been invited to an Indian wedding, where the food is veggie, the bar is dry, and the bride and groom turn up three hours late!
Talking of Selfridges magnificent food hall, as I was, I just bought some wild venison steaks to eat tonight
Does meat get more ethical than that? Britain is overrun with deer. We surely have too many. They are wild. They have nice lives. I eat them after they are briskly shot dead
Can any vegetarian object to that? I don’t see how
Venison? With inflation the way it is, sounds a bit deer.
Well, if I can’t exactly have deer, I’ll have something of that elk, anyway
There are real and difficult issues at play here - the Right doesn't have a clue as to how to stop migrants coming to the UK, the Left doesn't have a clue what to do with them once they are here.
"Throwing them out" is, as might be expected, a simplistic answer to a complex problem. We have seen how determined and desperate some are to get here and a little bit of coarse language from Lee Anderson isn't going to butter many parsnips.
As a sad old lefty-liberal (to the likes of Mr Anderson and his elk or ilk). I bump up against my common humanity when it comes to how we treat people who aren't really criminals (I think). Some might argue there are plenty of British hotel rooms which aren't far off jail cells but the fact remains whether it's a barge, a hotel room, a tent or on a military base, we need to be able to treat these people as people.
Perhaps the best thing we could do is to speed up the application and decision process so purgatory (or at least transient limbo) is reduced as much as possible.
The answer is there are no easy answers - Britain is the place many some people want to come (in spite of Lee Anderson) and whether we are perceived as a "soft touch" or whether it's down to the English language as the lingua franca of global business or whether it's further away from where they came from I don't see that appeal ending anytime soon.
The other side of the dilemma is or are the clear labour shortages in many sectors - our economy needs cheap labour in order to fuel growth and in the absence of a cheap pool of workers, those already here can lead a nice round of wage inflation from which we all suffer in time. Yet there's a social, cultural and political price for freedom of movement - it can't just be about growth, can it?
Few big political problems have easy answers. If there were easy answers, they'd have been instituted already... although given this Conservative government, even if there was an easy answer, they'd cock it up somehow...
There are some good answers. Processes should be faster: this is both fairer to applicants and saves us money. The government is spending a lot of money housing and feeding asylum seekers, who it forbids from working, because it is "saving" money by not resourcing the Home Office well enough. Processing speeds have collapsed. Deportations have collapsed.
I think the vast majority of voters do recognise many seeking asylum as being deserving. We should want those people to get a positive decision as quickly as possible, so that they can then get on with re-building their lives and give back to society by working, which also helps integrate them into their new country. This all seems compatible with Conservative values to me.
I think the vast majority of voters recognise many seeking asylum are not deserving. Instead of paying for these people, we should want them to get a negative decision as quickly as possible and then get them deported.
Now, there's a lot of people seeking asylum where opinion may differ as to whether they are deserving, and there's different views over what "as quickly as possible" means with respect to fair processes, but there are some obvious wins here from investing in processing claims.
The movement of people over international borders is addressed better through international cooperation. When we were in the EU, the Dublin regulation allowed for the deportation of people to the EU country where they first claimed asylum. There was a mechanism to address something many voters see as unfair, people travelling through multiple safe countries before getting to the UK. There was also agreement on joint action to reduce, through various ways, the flows into the EU, and joint action on homing those who were in need. We left the EU. The Conservative government didn't within the Brexit agreement or subsequently negotiate anything comparable. This is another obvious approach. Indeed, the one thing this government has successfully done was the negotiation with Albania that greatly reduced the number of Albanians coming over in small boats. More of that is a good idea.
So, there are relatively easy measures that would help. A future non-Tory government has options. This isn't some overwhelmingly difficult challenge.
Bah! Here am I, solving political challenge of the decade, and you all want to talk about veggie burgers...
You haven't solved it. 'International cooperation' has been a complete failure. We've pissed money at the French and it's got worse, as I predicted it would. Their money should at the very least been based per boat prevented from travelling and boat driver arrested. They have zero incentive to stop any boats, knowing that Sunak will write cheques regardless. You like 'international cooperation' so you're suggesting more of it as a solution, rather than thinking of an actual solution.
Sales of veggie burgers on the slide, I fear we are headed for a beyond Beyond Meat world.
Price. Could be downpricing to lentils or beans instead. Inflation in food prices innit.
Good point.
On a purely personal level, when I have a meat-free meal, I prefer a "genuine" vegetarian dish to ersatz meat. There are some really tasty vegetarian dishes in their own right - they don't have to be a slightly worse version of an equivalent meat dish.
Indeed. As I noted earlier, our vegetarian dishes tend to be beans or lentil based, though I should have added tofu - no more processed than cheese, inherently. We do use Quorn sometimes but usually as straight as possible, as mince, esp if I can't get the local hoggett ot mutton mince.
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
But the literal example given by the site talks about red or processed meat and uses sausages and bacon as an example - again what I'd assume is a lot of pork consumption (and lots of chicken will be processed). And sure, those areas with lower meat consumption will likely lean on chicken or pork (and non processed chicken or pork) over red or processed meats.
Well then we're not producing enough red meat for everyone to get their 75 grams. Like Bart you can't have this both ways.
I think this is another culture war thing where both sides scream at each other and adopt extreme positions, neither of which are true.
We need to eat a smaller amount of higher quality meat.
We should not eat no meat. And we should not continue to consume current levels of meat.
Human beings do not need to eat meat.
And vegetarians on average live about 9 years longer than flesheaters.
Source?
"For example, several studies with large sample sizes conducted in Australia18 and the United Kingdom19,20 did not show that meat eating correlated negatively with life expectancy after controlling for health-related elements of lifestyles"
I suspect that's right. Basically, there aren't that many vegetarian smokers
In general, though, you want to eat a balanced diet, and avoid too much sugar and salt.
And for most people, that probably means they are eating more green vegetables and reducing quantities of processed food (which is going to include burgers and fries).
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Yes this is my position. I know that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy diet without meat as I haven't eaten meat in 35 years and am in great health. I've never tried to force this view on anyone else and as far as I can see on this forum the greatest proselytisers are from the eating dead animals camp. I do wish they would fuck off as I believe the government likes to put it.
I've never tried to make someone eat meat.
I've definitely had vegans and vegetarians try and make me eat their diet at events, either directly or through moral blackmail, or use their diet to exercise control in social situations. At a macro level there's a strong movement to tax or regulate me out of meat too.
So I wish they would fuck off, actually.
I've seen people - usually old fogies - insist on trying to feed meat to vegetarians or pescetarians even when given ample notice to go for one of their other perfectlyt normal recipes.
Yes, I've been vegetarian ever since I was a teenager (I'm in my 50s now) and my father never accepted it. Whenever I dropped round, he'd offer me a bacon sandwich or suchlike and then act all hurt when I turned it down. I never really understood his determination to make me eat meat when I was obviously doing fine without it.
On the assumption that all the science is correct it seems to me that a technical solution through decarbonisation and adaptation is the most feasible answer to the problem of global warming. It is quite obvious that it is not going to be realistic to stop consumption in developing counties, if you stake all your hopes on this, accepting the massive economic hit that would be involved, then you are going to end up disappointed and you will not innovate (which is necessary to solve the problem) at the same rate.
Perhaps this position is actually a form of faith in technical progress, but there is evidence of success to justify it, ie with the improving efficiency of solar panels, the emergence of electric cars, etc. To the contrary I've seen little evidence that developing countries will slow down their growth in consumption. It seems to me that the environmental activists and their fellow travellers are right to point out the problem but by catastrophising and preaching that consumption is a sin they are actually getting in the way of the optimum solution.
That to me is what feels more like a religious belief "a new technology will save us" where we have no actual reason to believe it will, when instead we have had the means to make the necessary changes in the last 30 years and it was decided not to. If environmentalists making demands for revolution sound like religious zealots, it's partly because the last 30 years have been such monumental failures:
The point is that there have been massive positive technological changes in the past three decades.
The religious are those who say that little or nothing has been done.
That technological change has not reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe and has increased it. In the last 30 years we've had the incentive, we've had the knowledge and we've had the technology to massively change economies - the issue has been that the "market" (see those invested in oil) have incentives for short term profit over long term sustainability. We do not currently have viable carbon capture tech, and to assume that we will have it in time to save us sounds more akin to a faith based position than the materialist approach of just reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and reducing our consumption. I don't advocate going back to the stone age - we could have a globally average standard of living that is very good that is also not highly destructive to the environment. What you can't have is that and growth growth growth at the same time.
So in your alternative vision, 8 billion people would collectively have a higher standard of living but with lower aggregate consumption? How does that add up?
Redistribution of resources. The analogy of growth is always "you might get a smaller slice, but of a bigger pie, so you'll be richer". I'm saying we need to shrink the pie, but give more people bigger slices. That means some people will get smaller slices, yes, but most of those people already have massive slices and they'll be relatively worse off compared to their life previously, but still very well off compared to the standard of living across the whole of human history. Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates are not people who deserve millions times more resources at their disposal than any other human being.
And that is because you are a religious zealot who doesn't give a damn about the environment.
Shrinking the pie, but keeping dirty technologies, does not help the environment, does not solve CO2 and other emissions, does not address climate change. It does nothing positive.
Having economic growth, with clean technologies, is better for the planet, better for the environment, and raises living standards.
They are not perfect individuals, far from it, but Elon Musk with the assistance he has given to push the switch to electric vehicles and Bill Gates with his Foundation have done more for the planet than anyone in Greenpeace or Just Stop Oil or any other hairshirt zealot ever has.
Elon Musk today is driving down CO2 production by encouraging people to switch off Twitter, so well done that man!
Of course, this argument over reduced consumption vs technological innovation as solutions to climate change is silly. We need both and both are happening.
No, the only thing we need is technological innovation.
Consumption is higher than its ever been, and ought to be higher still in the future. That is a good thing.
And apparently environmentalists are the zealots...
Why must consumption be ever rising?
Because consumption is a good thing. It is a positive for human health and happiness.
So long as it can be sustainably generated from renewable resources, then what could you possibly want to consume less of? Healthcare? Education? Food for those in need?
The world doesn't consume enough, that is why there are people in poverty.
To eliminate hunger, we need more food consumed - and more and better healthier foods to replace calorie-intensive sugars.
To lift everyone to healthy standards of living, we need to be consuming far more than we are now as a species. To do that needs development in sustainable, clean, renewable technologies. Not hairshirts, or leaving people in poverty.
I could consume more now. I could go and eat some ice cream (homemade raspberry), but I'm full after lunch and that wouldn't be good for my health. I could turn the speakers up and consume more electricity, but my background music is as loud as I want it. Maybe I'll turn on my portable radiator and my portable air con unit at the same time! More consumption is not necessarily a good thing for everyone in every situation.
I didn't say it was a good thing for everyone in every situation.
It is a good thing, in aggregate, for our species though.
You may be full after lunch, but others across the planet are hungry.
You may have music, others can't afford entertainment.
You may have your room at a nice temperature, others are too hot or too cold.
To get everyone on the planet to be able to eat as well as you can, have a heated/air conditioned room as well as you can, the entertainment you take for granted etc will require much more consumption globally than we have as a species today.
So either we want people to remain in poverty (I don't), living standards to fall (I don't), or we need more consumption globally (I do).
So the question is how as a species we can both increase consumption and responsibly look after the planet. To which the answer is technology as it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. But it needs to be clean technologies.
So you accept that overconsumption is possible?
My position is essentially that current occasions of overconsumption is greater than the shortfall needed to make up the under consumption to bring poor people up to a decent standard of living.
I would therefore prefer to look for a solution that equal out this equation using what is already there rather than adding more stuff to the under consumption side to equal it out; redistribution.
Why is that necessarily bad, and why would piling more side onto the under consumption side necessarily be better?
And your position is bullshit.
People are only overconsuming calories because of the abundance of processed crap like sugars, not because of an overconsumption of healthy foods.
How do we ensure everyone on the planet can get abundant supply of healthy beef and other healthy food that we take for granted, without a reliance upon processed carbs?
By leveraging the resources dedicated to processed carbs - the subsidies, the labour, the land, the marketing - to healthier food options. And redistributing what we currently have.
Just on the issue of meat:
Current guidance is more than 90g of red or processed meat a day is probably bad, and that it should be closer to 70g.
Note that the UK averages more than twice the recommended amount, and the US averages more than three times the recommended amount. And we also know that richer people have more access to meat if they want it.
The problem though is that the processed carb crap is less resource intensive than clean foods like meat. A bad food like sugar is a much easier cash crop to generate than a healthy food like beef. So to switch to a healthier diet needs more resources, not less.
The current guidance is out of date and badly flawed. Anyone who follows that guidance is eating too much carbs and not enough protein in my and many other people's eyes. Which is what leads to obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
To be able to get 8 billion to be able to consume enough meat is not something we currently generate. We need to be able to generate far more meat and far less carbs.
But either way 8 billion x 70g x 365.25 is more than current global production, is it not?
No. That's 204.54 million tonnes of meat. Current global production is 350 million tonnes.
@148grss is mixing up a recommened value for red meat with meat in general.
It says red or processed meat - as someone who has not eaten meat for a very long time that sounds like most meat to me? The consumption map works on the basis of "expected EU average by 2030" which is 165g of meat.
Chickens and pigs do the heavy lifting (~ 150 million tonnes) globally so no.
But the literal example given by the site talks about red or processed meat and uses sausages and bacon as an example - again what I'd assume is a lot of pork consumption (and lots of chicken will be processed). And sure, those areas with lower meat consumption will likely lean on chicken or pork (and non processed chicken or pork) over red or processed meats.
Well then we're not producing enough red meat for everyone to get their 75 grams. Like Bart you can't have this both ways.
I think this is another culture war thing where both sides scream at each other and adopt extreme positions, neither of which are true.
We need to eat a smaller amount of higher quality meat.
We should not eat no meat. And we should not continue to consume current levels of meat.
Human beings do not need to eat meat.
And vegetarians on average live about 9 years longer than flesheaters.
Source?
"For example, several studies with large sample sizes conducted in Australia18 and the United Kingdom19,20 did not show that meat eating correlated negatively with life expectancy after controlling for health-related elements of lifestyles"
I suspect that's right. Basically, there aren't that many vegetarian smokers
In general, though, you want to eat a balanced diet, and avoid too much sugar and salt.
And for most people, that probably means they are eating more green vegetables and reducing quantities of processed food (which is going to include burgers and fries).
I tend to be live and let live...eat what you enjoy but I have found some but not all vegans/vegetarians evangelical, indeed a vegan was one of the only two times I have lodged a complaint with hr about a co worker
Sunak has bigger problems than Anderson, personnel wise. Shapps and Cleverly are both far more personable and charismatic.
When he is flailing in the polls and another 1000 Tory councillors have lost, who then will support him?
Who will support him? Shapps and Cleverly for a start.
You have a theory based on concern from the Tory membership/councillor base that Sunak hasn't got what it takes to turn this around.
I get that, but where you run into problems is that enough of the MPs have decided that the Sunak/Hunt approach of trying to avoid further market chaos whilst throwing out a bit of red meat on immigration, ULEZ etc is the only prospect of limiting losses. They've lashed themselves to the mast, the world king across the water is now an ex-MP, and anyone vaguely credible is resigned to sit it out, survive the election, and stand for leader of the opposition (a much better position than taking the poison chalice with weeks left in the term).
So I just don't see the realistic mechanism for you to get what you want this side of an election.
My feeling is the membership are usually 9 months ahead of the MPs on this.
MPs panic close to an election when polls are low. They'll push the button when they realise they're going to lose their seats otherwise.
Quite a few Tory MPs are standing down, quite a few won't in fact lose their seats (in the 1997 massacre only just over half did), and quite a few who are in serious danger will conclude that defenestration with weeks to go makes their prospects worse not better.
Quite apart from that, is who will take on the job in that situation. All the best candidates will sit on their hands until after the election, leaving a choice between maniacs and incredibly pompous, unappealing Sir Bufton Tufton types answering the nation's call at time of crisis.
I see your frustration, but I don't see how it realistically resolves in the way you describe.
Politics happens very slowly, then all at once.
Local donors will start drying up (this is how Tory MP's election campaign funds are secured), numbers of leaflet deliverers will dry up, councillors will be down.
Plus, come October, the 1 year moratorium on VONC within the PCP expires. It could be there are already a good number in; and every by election lost makes the threshold easier to reach.
Firstly, this assumes Sunak will push a General Election it beyond next May (and a further loss of councillors). I know that's a fairly widespread assumption, but I'm not sure. It's not a great round of elections for the Tories and, particularly if he does feel under any pressure, I think he'll chance it.
Secondly, I think enough Tory activists and donors either quite like Sunak or will stick with it come what may. As with the Lib Dems in 2015, on the ground and in local parties of threatened MPs, there is some rallying round. It may well not save seats - it didn't for the Lib Dems in 2015 - but actually in a backs-to-the-wall situation, quite a lot of people fight rather than take flight. Even being very cynical, if you're an ambitious Tory in the seat of an under-threat MP, you help them man the barricades and come out with a lot of credit as well as a vacancy.
Thirdly, there isn't a great deal of evidence of letters being planned or going in. Maybe there are behind the scenes, and maybe people are bring quiet, but there does need to be some noise to get momentum.
Finally, and crucially, a VONC needs to pass by a majority. I know Johnson went having survived a VONC, but that was through a further scandal and mass resignations. That's just not happening with Sunak - he's not likely to be embroiled in a scandal and his cabinet have either bought into his project or decided to wait until after the election as being disloyal isn't a winning formula.
Every Tory leader since Major who has survived a VONC hasn't survived the year....
The year counting from next may, runs in to ragnarok. This is like a dinosaur 65m and 1 years ago agonizing over whether its diet is the one most likely to ensure its longevity.
Secondly, it is beyond bonkers to think that HM might refuse a dissolution following the Lascelles principles. They and the SA and Canada cases referred to by Lascelles were immediately post GE crises, with a real issue as to what happens for the next 5 years, not at the fag end of a government. Apart from that, we have conventions about conventions in our wacky non codified constitution and the convention is not to put HMK in a spot where he has to make a political decision. If the tories start buggering him about (and it would have to be anti sunakite tories asking him to refuse) the punishment doled out by the electorate at GE 24 or 25 won't be KT, it will be end Permian. It would literally destroy the party. No decade in the wilderness and triumphant return under dishface.
Nope, the monarch wouldn't grant a dissolution because the PM was running scared of his party. Especially the first request for dissolution in the reign....
You really have got this round your neck, haven't you? Your initial misstatement of the case was "You know that the constitutional advice on a PM requesting a dissolution in the event of his imminent ousting is that it won't be accepted, right?" which just completely misunderstands the principles. It isn't a 50-50, mibbee ayes, mibbee naws, sort of call that HMK has to make, like an umpire adjudging an LBW appeal. The default, null, safe option is to grant the dissolution, it's only in insanely rare crises that you think about doing anything else.. If Charles grants a dissolution he isn't really doing anything. Not sticking his head above the parapet. What makes you think he wants to kick off his reign by enabling 6 months of Suella Braverman PM? Most GEs happen after 4 and a bit years anyway, and Sunak can just say he feels it's about time for one. And at the time he makes the request there's unlikely to be anything beyond tittle tattle about letters to Old Lady to suggest an imminent ousting anyway. On the face of it he will command a 62 seat majority.This is merely bonkers.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Not really sure what the argument is here tbh. Some things eat meat? Yes. Dead animals get consumed by carrion-eaters and/or decompose? Also, yes.
Neither is an argument against humans eating a plant-based diet.
But is an argument against the more moralistic arguments against eating meat.
We can get by without it, but there's nothing wrong with doing it as a concept, so more efficient, ethical and eco friendly ways of doing it is a good idea, and an easier sell at present than just don't do it
The “in nature” fallacy is by no means an argument against a moralistic position against eating meat, just as it wouldn’t be moral to argue that I have a right to kill someone and steal their house because that’s what would likely have happened when homo sapiens were early in their evolution.
Non sentient creatures are not constrained by morality due to the fact they can’t conceive of it. Humanity can. No moral question can be answered by nature.
To do Pratchett again:
Take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. and yet... and yet you act as if there is some ideal order in the world, as if there is some... some rightness in the universe by which it may be judged.
Humans make that shit up. And that’s good.
That doesn't argue against the proposition one bit. It just means neither side can claim morality as some universal constant, which makes constructing a moral argument on the principle pointless.
That's why I'm favour of arguments about it being healthier and better for the environment. Because that's an actual argument which can be assessed, and someone might decide its OK for them to ear meat, but they should perhaps do so less or not all on that basis, not because humans are masters of their own destiny and so its morally wrong.
I didn’t say it argued against the opposite - just that moral quandaries can only be applied to the acts if people, not animals (although obviously people are animals).
For example - I don’t think all dogs should be vegetarian or vegan. But, it I had a pet dog I would feed them that way. Why? Because I think there are moral arguments against eating meat / animal products, I am making moral positions on behalf of my dog, and dogs can live healthy lives in that lifestyle. Cats, for example, cannot; they are obligate carnivores.
Some politics is a discussion of what moral positions we feel the need to encode into our society based on the norms and understanding of issues at the time. At one time it was thought okay to own people as property, and it was legal to do so. At one time it was thought okay for wives to be assaulted by their husbands, and it was legal to do so. Those things have (rightly in my opinion) been shown to be immoral and therefore are no longer legal.
I can certainly see a future where most people look at the harm done to animals to eat them and their products versus the ease with which we could swap to healthy plant based diets and therefore encode that in law. I don’t personally advocate for that (because I don’t find it an important enough hill to die on) but I would agree in general with it as a position.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Yes this is my position. I know that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy diet without meat as I haven't eaten meat in 35 years and am in great health. I've never tried to force this view on anyone else and as far as I can see on this forum the greatest proselytisers are from the eating dead animals camp. I do wish they would fuck off as I believe the government likes to put it.
I've never tried to make someone eat meat.
I've definitely had vegans and vegetarians try and make me eat their diet at events, either directly or through moral blackmail, or use their diet to exercise control in social situations. At a macro level there's a strong movement to tax or regulate me out of meat too.
So I wish they would fuck off, actually.
I've seen people - usually old fogies - insist on trying to feed meat to vegetarians or pescetarians even when given ample notice to go for one of their other perfectlyt normal recipes.
People trying to force others to eat a certain way can really set people off. I still get annoyed about a relative plonking something in front of me theyve known for 35 years I don't like (im teased about it all the time in the family) then acting bemused and asking if I hadn't gotten over that yet.
No I shouldn't have gotten annoyed, it's irrational, but I truly was.
Indeed. Prospective parents-in-law - or, worse, actual parents in law - trying to do that to their child's spouse is a big no no. Likewise their children's friends. Though some folk know muich better. My late mum, no vegetarian, knew what to do with a grouse, but would think nothing of picking something else like a fish pie or cheese souffle as appropriate for my grown up shoolfriends when they came visiting.
Having read Mr Anderson's reported comments, I have decided he is little better than a sh*t-stirrer and, at best, is a nasty piece of work who has no business being in public office.
I have actually tried elk, in Finland. As a steak, and smoked. Very nice
I also tried bear in Finland. Less convinced
I have a viewpoint of trying anything once, food-related that is. You don't know what you'll like until you've tried it.
The one meat I tried that I wouldn't recommend or try again is whale. Tried that in Iceland where its traditional and legal, wasn't that keen on it and wouldn't try it again.
Sales of veggie burgers on the slide, I fear we are headed for a beyond Beyond Meat world.
Price. Could be downpricing to lentils or beans instead. Inflation in food prices innit.
Good point.
On a purely personal level, when I have a meat-free meal, I prefer a "genuine" vegetarian dish to ersatz meat. There are some really tasty vegetarian dishes in their own right - they don't have to be a slightly worse version of an equivalent meat dish.
Indeed. As I noted earlier, our vegetarian dishes tend to be beans or lentil based, though I should have added tofu - no more processed than cheese, inherently. We do use Quorn sometimes but usually as straight as possible, as mince, esp if I can't get the local hoggett ot mutton mince.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Yes this is my position. I know that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy diet without meat as I haven't eaten meat in 35 years and am in great health. I've never tried to force this view on anyone else and as far as I can see on this forum the greatest proselytisers are from the eating dead animals camp. I do wish they would fuck off as I believe the government likes to put it.
I've never tried to make someone eat meat.
I've definitely had vegans and vegetarians try and make me eat their diet at events, either directly or through moral blackmail, or use their diet to exercise control in social situations. At a macro level there's a strong movement to tax or regulate me out of meat too.
So I wish they would fuck off, actually.
I've seen people - usually old fogies - insist on trying to feed meat to vegetarians or pescetarians even when given ample notice to go for one of their other perfectlyt normal recipes.
Yes, I've been vegetarian ever since I was a teenager (I'm in my 50s now) and my father never accepted it. Whenever I dropped round, he'd offer me a bacon sandwich or suchlike and then act all hurt when I turned it down. I never really understood his determination to make me eat meat when I was obviously doing fine without it.
I cook a lot and have people around if someone is a vegetarian/vegan I have always made a main dish for them that is vegatarian/vegan....what I won't do is make the whole main dish vegetarian/vegan. The rest of us will be eating meat
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Yes this is my position. I know that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy diet without meat as I haven't eaten meat in 35 years and am in great health. I've never tried to force this view on anyone else and as far as I can see on this forum the greatest proselytisers are from the eating dead animals camp. I do wish they would fuck off as I believe the government likes to put it.
I've never tried to make someone eat meat.
I've definitely had vegans and vegetarians try and make me eat their diet at events, either directly or through moral blackmail, or use their diet to exercise control in social situations. At a macro level there's a strong movement to tax or regulate me out of meat too.
So I wish they would fuck off, actually.
I've seen people - usually old fogies - insist on trying to feed meat to vegetarians or pescetarians even when given ample notice to go for one of their other perfectlyt normal recipes.
Yes, I've been vegetarian ever since I was a teenager (I'm in my 50s now) and my father never accepted it. Whenever I dropped round, he'd offer me a bacon sandwich or suchlike and then act all hurt when I turned it down. I never really understood his determination to make me eat meat when I was obviously doing fine without it.
Impressive willpower.
A good friend of mine, Fayaz is his name, and he’s a Muslim vegetarian. He can still be persuaded by the occasional bacon sandwich though, especially when he has a hangover.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Yes this is my position. I know that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy diet without meat as I haven't eaten meat in 35 years and am in great health. I've never tried to force this view on anyone else and as far as I can see on this forum the greatest proselytisers are from the eating dead animals camp. I do wish they would fuck off as I believe the government likes to put it.
I've never tried to make someone eat meat.
I've definitely had vegans and vegetarians try and make me eat their diet at events, either directly or through moral blackmail, or use their diet to exercise control in social situations. At a macro level there's a strong movement to tax or regulate me out of meat too.
So I wish they would fuck off, actually.
I've seen people - usually old fogies - insist on trying to feed meat to vegetarians or pescetarians even when given ample notice to go for one of their other perfectlyt normal recipes.
Yes, I've been vegetarian ever since I was a teenager (I'm in my 50s now) and my father never accepted it. Whenever I dropped round, he'd offer me a bacon sandwich or suchlike and then act all hurt when I turned it down. I never really understood his determination to make me eat meat when I was obviously doing fine without it.
I cook a lot and have people around if someone is a vegetarian/vegan I have always made a main dish for them that is vegatarian/vegan....what I won't do is make the whole main dish vegetarian/vegan. The rest of us will be eating meat
Yes. I've gone out of my way to cook vegan meals for vegan guests.
Never had the favour reciprocated though, vegan hosts never seem to return the favour and go out of their way to cook a meat dish for their meat-eating guests.
Talking of Selfridges magnificent food hall, as I was, I just bought some wild venison steaks to eat tonight
Does meat get more ethical than that? Britain is overrun with deer. We surely have too many. They are wild. They have nice lives. I eat them after they are briskly shot dead
Can any vegetarian object to that? I don’t see how
Current trends would say that we should introduce wolves to keep the deer down, and you yourself should live on a slab of soy with a side portion of virtue.
As a vegan / veggie - I am perfectly happy with deer hunting in the UK (although would prefer wolves to be reintroduced), I just don't want to eat any of it.
Presumably you feel the deer prefers being pulled to pieces by a pack of wolves as opposed to being shot in the head.
No - I prefer the idea of increasing biodiversity and having our natural fauna / ecosystem restored over what will likely be upper middle class / upper class people going out for hunting trips more often. It doesn’t really matter either way how the deer dies, but the reintroduction of wolves would more likely solve the systemic issue of deer overpopulation due to lack of predation than encouraging more hunting.
Introducing apex predators into a natural environment, tends to end badly. We’d have eliminated the deer problem, only to have introduced a wolf problem. Deer don’t generally attack dogs and children.
I mean, people should probably just accept we’re going to have some land that exists not for the benefit of humans and for the benefit of everything else.
Also North America and mainland Europe seem to manage okay with wolves and even bears. Granted, we have a much greater population density - but again, just give over a load of land and see “here be wolves, enter at your own risk”.
Indeed. I was in a car a few days ago when the driver pulled over to show a bear walking past the side of the road. Quite interesting to see and bear attacks on cars are thankfully rare as while we may have looked like tinned food to them, they lack a can opener.
Cyclists or pedestrians might have a bit of a problem, but that's not an issue for you?
I don’t drive, but I also wouldn’t walk alone through an area known to have wolves or bears without knowing what to do if I encountered them.
I have a friend who lives in Canada that had a bear sit outside their lodge once - apparently they shouted until it went away.
I would really love to see a bear or wolf in the wild, but I think I’m in the minority there.
Having read Mr Anderson's reported comments, I have decided he is little better than a sh*t-stirrer and, at best, is a nasty piece of work who has no business being in public office.
Well he has been elected. The Tories, however, chose to promote him.
There are real and difficult issues at play here - the Right doesn't have a clue as to how to stop migrants coming to the UK, the Left doesn't have a clue what to do with them once they are here.
"Throwing them out" is, as might be expected, a simplistic answer to a complex problem. We have seen how determined and desperate some are to get here and a little bit of coarse language from Lee Anderson isn't going to butter many parsnips.
As a sad old lefty-liberal (to the likes of Mr Anderson and his elk or ilk). I bump up against my common humanity when it comes to how we treat people who aren't really criminals (I think). Some might argue there are plenty of British hotel rooms which aren't far off jail cells but the fact remains whether it's a barge, a hotel room, a tent or on a military base, we need to be able to treat these people as people.
Perhaps the best thing we could do is to speed up the application and decision process so purgatory (or at least transient limbo) is reduced as much as possible.
The answer is there are no easy answers - Britain is the place many some people want to come (in spite of Lee Anderson) and whether we are perceived as a "soft touch" or whether it's down to the English language as the lingua franca of global business or whether it's further away from where they came from I don't see that appeal ending anytime soon.
The other side of the dilemma is or are the clear labour shortages in many sectors - our economy needs cheap labour in order to fuel growth and in the absence of a cheap pool of workers, those already here can lead a nice round of wage inflation from which we all suffer in time. Yet there's a social, cultural and political price for freedom of movement - it can't just be about growth, can it?
Few big political problems have easy answers. If there were easy answers, they'd have been instituted already... although given this Conservative government, even if there was an easy answer, they'd cock it up somehow...
There are some good answers. Processes should be faster: this is both fairer to applicants and saves us money. The government is spending a lot of money housing and feeding asylum seekers, who it forbids from working, because it is "saving" money by not resourcing the Home Office well enough. Processing speeds have collapsed. Deportations have collapsed.
I think the vast majority of voters do recognise many seeking asylum as being deserving. We should want those people to get a positive decision as quickly as possible, so that they can then get on with re-building their lives and give back to society by working, which also helps integrate them into their new country. This all seems compatible with Conservative values to me.
I think the vast majority of voters recognise many seeking asylum are not deserving. Instead of paying for these people, we should want them to get a negative decision as quickly as possible and then get them deported.
Now, there's a lot of people seeking asylum where opinion may differ as to whether they are deserving, and there's different views over what "as quickly as possible" means with respect to fair processes, but there are some obvious wins here from investing in processing claims.
The movement of people over international borders is addressed better through international cooperation. When we were in the EU, the Dublin regulation allowed for the deportation of people to the EU country where they first claimed asylum. There was a mechanism to address something many voters see as unfair, people travelling through multiple safe countries before getting to the UK. There was also agreement on joint action to reduce, through various ways, the flows into the EU, and joint action on homing those who were in need. We left the EU. The Conservative government didn't within the Brexit agreement or subsequently negotiate anything comparable. This is another obvious approach. Indeed, the one thing this government has successfully done was the negotiation with Albania that greatly reduced the number of Albanians coming over in small boats. More of that is a good idea.
So, there are relatively easy measures that would help. A future non-Tory government has options. This isn't some overwhelmingly difficult challenge.
Bah! Here am I, solving political challenge of the decade, and you all want to talk about veggie burgers...
You haven't solved it. 'International cooperation' has been a complete failure. We've pissed money at the French and it's got worse, as I predicted it would. Their money should at the very least been based per boat prevented from travelling and boat driver arrested. They have zero incentive to stop any boats, knowing that Sunak will write cheques regardless. You like 'international cooperation' so you're suggesting more of it as a solution, rather than thinking of an actual solution.
Talking of Selfridges magnificent food hall, as I was, I just bought some wild venison steaks to eat tonight
Does meat get more ethical than that? Britain is overrun with deer. We surely have too many. They are wild. They have nice lives. I eat them after they are briskly shot dead
Can any vegetarian object to that? I don’t see how
Current trends would say that we should introduce wolves to keep the deer down, and you yourself should live on a slab of soy with a side portion of virtue.
As a vegan / veggie - I am perfectly happy with deer hunting in the UK (although would prefer wolves to be reintroduced), I just don't want to eat any of it.
Presumably you feel the deer prefers being pulled to pieces by a pack of wolves as opposed to being shot in the head.
No - I prefer the idea of increasing biodiversity and having our natural fauna / ecosystem restored over what will likely be upper middle class / upper class people going out for hunting trips more often. It doesn’t really matter either way how the deer dies, but the reintroduction of wolves would more likely solve the systemic issue of deer overpopulation due to lack of predation than encouraging more hunting.
Introducing apex predators into a natural environment, tends to end badly. We’d have eliminated the deer problem, only to have introduced a wolf problem. Deer don’t generally attack dogs and children.
I mean, people should probably just accept we’re going to have some land that exists not for the benefit of humans and for the benefit of everything else.
Also North America and mainland Europe seem to manage okay with wolves and even bears. Granted, we have a much greater population density - but again, just give over a load of land and see “here be wolves, enter at your own risk”.
Indeed. I was in a car a few days ago when the driver pulled over to show a bear walking past the side of the road. Quite interesting to see and bear attacks on cars are thankfully rare as while we may have looked like tinned food to them, they lack a can opener.
Cyclists or pedestrians might have a bit of a problem, but that's not an issue for you?
I don’t drive, but I also wouldn’t walk alone through an area known to have wolves or bears without knowing what to do if I encountered them.
I have a friend who lives in Canada that had a bear sit outside their lodge once - apparently they shouted until it went away.
I would really love to see a bear or wolf in the wild, but I think I’m in the minority there.
Yes, this was in Canadian wild that I saw the bear. Its surprisingly common apparently.
One thing that amused me in the town I was at is that all their bins (even in town) are bear-proof bins. So that bears don't get attracted by them and start digging in them next to people's homes or shops.
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, And I'll tell them to fuck off back to where they came from!”
Sunak has bigger problems than Anderson, personnel wise. Shapps and Cleverly are both far more personable and charismatic.
When he is flailing in the polls and another 1000 Tory councillors have lost, who then will support him?
Who will support him? Shapps and Cleverly for a start.
You have a theory based on concern from the Tory membership/councillor base that Sunak hasn't got what it takes to turn this around.
I get that, but where you run into problems is that enough of the MPs have decided that the Sunak/Hunt approach of trying to avoid further market chaos whilst throwing out a bit of red meat on immigration, ULEZ etc is the only prospect of limiting losses. They've lashed themselves to the mast, the world king across the water is now an ex-MP, and anyone vaguely credible is resigned to sit it out, survive the election, and stand for leader of the opposition (a much better position than taking the poison chalice with weeks left in the term).
So I just don't see the realistic mechanism for you to get what you want this side of an election.
My feeling is the membership are usually 9 months ahead of the MPs on this.
MPs panic close to an election when polls are low. They'll push the button when they realise they're going to lose their seats otherwise.
Quite a few Tory MPs are standing down, quite a few won't in fact lose their seats (in the 1997 massacre only just over half did), and quite a few who are in serious danger will conclude that defenestration with weeks to go makes their prospects worse not better.
Quite apart from that, is who will take on the job in that situation. All the best candidates will sit on their hands until after the election, leaving a choice between maniacs and incredibly pompous, unappealing Sir Bufton Tufton types answering the nation's call at time of crisis.
I see your frustration, but I don't see how it realistically resolves in the way you describe.
Politics happens very slowly, then all at once.
Local donors will start drying up (this is how Tory MP's election campaign funds are secured), numbers of leaflet deliverers will dry up, councillors will be down.
Plus, come October, the 1 year moratorium on VONC within the PCP expires. It could be there are already a good number in; and every by election lost makes the threshold easier to reach.
Firstly, this assumes Sunak will push a General Election it beyond next May (and a further loss of councillors). I know that's a fairly widespread assumption, but I'm not sure. It's not a great round of elections for the Tories and, particularly if he does feel under any pressure, I think he'll chance it.
Secondly, I think enough Tory activists and donors either quite like Sunak or will stick with it come what may. As with the Lib Dems in 2015, on the ground and in local parties of threatened MPs, there is some rallying round. It may well not save seats - it didn't for the Lib Dems in 2015 - but actually in a backs-to-the-wall situation, quite a lot of people fight rather than take flight. Even being very cynical, if you're an ambitious Tory in the seat of an under-threat MP, you help them man the barricades and come out with a lot of credit as well as a vacancy.
Thirdly, there isn't a great deal of evidence of letters being planned or going in. Maybe there are behind the scenes, and maybe people are bring quiet, but there does need to be some noise to get momentum.
Finally, and crucially, a VONC needs to pass by a majority. I know Johnson went having survived a VONC, but that was through a further scandal and mass resignations. That's just not happening with Sunak - he's not likely to be embroiled in a scandal and his cabinet have either bought into his project or decided to wait until after the election as being disloyal isn't a winning formula.
Every Tory leader since Major who has survived a VONC hasn't survived the year....
The year counting from next may, runs in to ragnarok. This is like a dinosaur 65m and 1 years ago agonizing over whether its diet is the one most likely to ensure its longevity.
Secondly, it is beyond bonkers to think that HM might refuse a dissolution following the Lascelles principles. They and the SA and Canada cases referred to by Lascelles were immediately post GE crises, with a real issue as to what happens for the next 5 years, not at the fag end of a government. Apart from that, we have conventions about conventions in our wacky non codified constitution and the convention is not to put HMK in a spot where he has to make a political decision. If the tories start buggering him about (and it would have to be anti sunakite tories asking him to refuse) the punishment doled out by the electorate at GE 24 or 25 won't be KT, it will be end Permian. It would literally destroy the party. No decade in the wilderness and triumphant return under dishface.
Nope, the monarch wouldn't grant a dissolution because the PM was running scared of his party. Especially the first request for dissolution in the reign....
You really have got this round your neck, haven't you? Your initial misstatement of the case was "You know that the constitutional advice on a PM requesting a dissolution in the event of his imminent ousting is that it won't be accepted, right?" which just completely misunderstands the principles. It isn't a 50-50, mibbee ayes, mibbee naws, sort of call that HMK has to make, like an umpire adjudging an LBW appeal. The default, null, safe option is to grant the dissolution, it's only in insanely rare crises that you think about doing anything else.. If Charles grants a dissolution he isn't really doing anything. Not sticking his head above the parapet. What makes you think he wants to kick off his reign by enabling 6 months of Suella Braverman PM? Most GEs happen after 4 and a bit years anyway, and Sunak can just say he feels it's about time for one. And at the time he makes the request there's unlikely to be anything beyond tittle tattle about letters to Old Lady to suggest an imminent ousting anyway. On the face of it he will command a 62 seat majority.This is merely bonkers.
An insanely rare situation like.....a PM who has lost control of his own party wanting to dissolve parliament?
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Yes this is my position. I know that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy diet without meat as I haven't eaten meat in 35 years and am in great health. I've never tried to force this view on anyone else and as far as I can see on this forum the greatest proselytisers are from the eating dead animals camp. I do wish they would fuck off as I believe the government likes to put it.
I've never tried to make someone eat meat.
I've definitely had vegans and vegetarians try and make me eat their diet at events, either directly or through moral blackmail, or use their diet to exercise control in social situations. At a macro level there's a strong movement to tax or regulate me out of meat too.
So I wish they would fuck off, actually.
I've seen people - usually old fogies - insist on trying to feed meat to vegetarians or pescetarians even when given ample notice to go for one of their other perfectlyt normal recipes.
Yes, I've been vegetarian ever since I was a teenager (I'm in my 50s now) and my father never accepted it. Whenever I dropped round, he'd offer me a bacon sandwich or suchlike and then act all hurt when I turned it down. I never really understood his determination to make me eat meat when I was obviously doing fine without it.
I cook a lot and have people around if someone is a vegetarian/vegan I have always made a main dish for them that is vegatarian/vegan....what I won't do is make the whole main dish vegetarian/vegan. The rest of us will be eating meat
Why not ?
Vegan, I can understand since it's quite limiting, and requires specialist knowledge - but ruling out serving a vegetarian dish, given the universe of culinary possibilities, sounds a bit weird.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Yes this is my position. I know that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy diet without meat as I haven't eaten meat in 35 years and am in great health. I've never tried to force this view on anyone else and as far as I can see on this forum the greatest proselytisers are from the eating dead animals camp. I do wish they would fuck off as I believe the government likes to put it.
I've never tried to make someone eat meat.
I've definitely had vegans and vegetarians try and make me eat their diet at events, either directly or through moral blackmail, or use their diet to exercise control in social situations. At a macro level there's a strong movement to tax or regulate me out of meat too.
So I wish they would fuck off, actually.
I've seen people - usually old fogies - insist on trying to feed meat to vegetarians or pescetarians even when given ample notice to go for one of their other perfectlyt normal recipes.
Yes, I've been vegetarian ever since I was a teenager (I'm in my 50s now) and my father never accepted it. Whenever I dropped round, he'd offer me a bacon sandwich or suchlike and then act all hurt when I turned it down. I never really understood his determination to make me eat meat when I was obviously doing fine without it.
I cook a lot and have people around if someone is a vegetarian/vegan I have always made a main dish for them that is vegatarian/vegan....what I won't do is make the whole main dish vegetarian/vegan. The rest of us will be eating meat
I certainly don't expect people to go out of their way to accommodate my tastes, but I am grateful when they do. The rest of my family eat meat, though it seems in ever decreasing amounts. I cook veggie meals, which everyone seems to like, while my missus sometimes cooks meat-based meals, in which case I'll have defrosted leftovers or something. I won't eat meat myself, but I'm not going to berate others for doing so.
Er, wrong sort of elk. Leon is talking about what you call moose in Americanesian. Elk are elk in Finland. Alces alces. The beasts in that paper are Cervus species.
Sales of veggie burgers on the slide, I fear we are headed for a beyond Beyond Meat world.
Price. Could be downpricing to lentils or beans instead. Inflation in food prices innit.
Good point.
On a purely personal level, when I have a meat-free meal, I prefer a "genuine" vegetarian dish to ersatz meat. There are some really tasty vegetarian dishes in their own right - they don't have to be a slightly worse version of an equivalent meat dish.
Indeed. As I noted earlier, our vegetarian dishes tend to be beans or lentil based, though I should have added tofu - no more processed than cheese, inherently. We do use Quorn sometimes but usually as straight as possible, as mince, esp if I can't get the local hoggett ot mutton mince.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Yes this is my position. I know that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy diet without meat as I haven't eaten meat in 35 years and am in great health. I've never tried to force this view on anyone else and as far as I can see on this forum the greatest proselytisers are from the eating dead animals camp. I do wish they would fuck off as I believe the government likes to put it.
I've never tried to make someone eat meat.
I've definitely had vegans and vegetarians try and make me eat their diet at events, either directly or through moral blackmail, or use their diet to exercise control in social situations. At a macro level there's a strong movement to tax or regulate me out of meat too.
So I wish they would fuck off, actually.
I've seen people - usually old fogies - insist on trying to feed meat to vegetarians or pescetarians even when given ample notice to go for one of their other perfectlyt normal recipes.
Yes, I've been vegetarian ever since I was a teenager (I'm in my 50s now) and my father never accepted it. Whenever I dropped round, he'd offer me a bacon sandwich or suchlike and then act all hurt when I turned it down. I never really understood his determination to make me eat meat when I was obviously doing fine without it.
I cook a lot and have people around if someone is a vegetarian/vegan I have always made a main dish for them that is vegatarian/vegan....what I won't do is make the whole main dish vegetarian/vegan. The rest of us will be eating meat
I'm the opposite. Rabid meat eater. But if I'm giving a dinner party and there is a veggie there I will give everyone veggie food. Gives me a chance to show off my creativity although warning: putting (delicious) open cap mushrooms in things turns everything grey. I think it's rude to give people different things effectively singling them out for their dietary choices. I invited them, after all.
Talking of Selfridges magnificent food hall, as I was, I just bought some wild venison steaks to eat tonight
Does meat get more ethical than that? Britain is overrun with deer. We surely have too many. They are wild. They have nice lives. I eat them after they are briskly shot dead
Can any vegetarian object to that? I don’t see how
Current trends would say that we should introduce wolves to keep the deer down, and you yourself should live on a slab of soy with a side portion of virtue.
As a vegan / veggie - I am perfectly happy with deer hunting in the UK (although would prefer wolves to be reintroduced), I just don't want to eat any of it.
Presumably you feel the deer prefers being pulled to pieces by a pack of wolves as opposed to being shot in the head.
No - I prefer the idea of increasing biodiversity and having our natural fauna / ecosystem restored over what will likely be upper middle class / upper class people going out for hunting trips more often. It doesn’t really matter either way how the deer dies, but the reintroduction of wolves would more likely solve the systemic issue of deer overpopulation due to lack of predation than encouraging more hunting.
Introducing apex predators into a natural environment, tends to end badly. We’d have eliminated the deer problem, only to have introduced a wolf problem. Deer don’t generally attack dogs and children.
I mean, people should probably just accept we’re going to have some land that exists not for the benefit of humans and for the benefit of everything else.
Also North America and mainland Europe seem to manage okay with wolves and even bears. Granted, we have a much greater population density - but again, just give over a load of land and see “here be wolves, enter at your own risk”.
Indeed. I was in a car a few days ago when the driver pulled over to show a bear walking past the side of the road. Quite interesting to see and bear attacks on cars are thankfully rare as while we may have looked like tinned food to them, they lack a can opener.
Cyclists or pedestrians might have a bit of a problem, but that's not an issue for you?
I don’t drive, but I also wouldn’t walk alone through an area known to have wolves or bears without knowing what to do if I encountered them.
I have a friend who lives in Canada that had a bear sit outside their lodge once - apparently they shouted until it went away.
I would really love to see a bear or wolf in the wild, but I think I’m in the minority there.
Yes, this was in Canadian wild that I saw the bear. Its surprisingly common apparently.
One thing that amused me in the town I was at is that all their bins (even in town) are bear-proof bins. So that bears don't get attracted by them and start digging in them next to people's homes or shops.
There are hundreds of security camera videos capturing bears playing around people's homes, using their hammocks and pools.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Yes this is my position. I know that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy diet without meat as I haven't eaten meat in 35 years and am in great health. I've never tried to force this view on anyone else and as far as I can see on this forum the greatest proselytisers are from the eating dead animals camp. I do wish they would fuck off as I believe the government likes to put it.
I've never tried to make someone eat meat.
I've definitely had vegans and vegetarians try and make me eat their diet at events, either directly or through moral blackmail, or use their diet to exercise control in social situations. At a macro level there's a strong movement to tax or regulate me out of meat too.
So I wish they would fuck off, actually.
I've seen people - usually old fogies - insist on trying to feed meat to vegetarians or pescetarians even when given ample notice to go for one of their other perfectlyt normal recipes.
Yes, I've been vegetarian ever since I was a teenager (I'm in my 50s now) and my father never accepted it. Whenever I dropped round, he'd offer me a bacon sandwich or suchlike and then act all hurt when I turned it down. I never really understood his determination to make me eat meat when I was obviously doing fine without it.
I cook a lot and have people around if someone is a vegetarian/vegan I have always made a main dish for them that is vegatarian/vegan....what I won't do is make the whole main dish vegetarian/vegan. The rest of us will be eating meat
Yes. I've gone out of my way to cook vegan meals for vegan guests.
Never had the favour reciprocated though, vegan hosts never seem to return the favour and go out of their way to cook a meat dish for their meat-eating guests.
Well, I routinely cook non-vegan meals for my non-vegan family if we’re trading anecdotes.
But if someone morally objects to consuming meat, why would you expect them to cook you a meat dish? It’s not like you can’t eat vegetables.
As a parallel, I have friends and family who keep kosher. I wouldn’t expect them to serve up ham sandwiches for my kids, nor would I serve them non-kosher food at our house. Kind of goes without saying, I’d have thought.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Yes this is my position. I know that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy diet without meat as I haven't eaten meat in 35 years and am in great health. I've never tried to force this view on anyone else and as far as I can see on this forum the greatest proselytisers are from the eating dead animals camp. I do wish they would fuck off as I believe the government likes to put it.
I've never tried to make someone eat meat.
I've definitely had vegans and vegetarians try and make me eat their diet at events, either directly or through moral blackmail, or use their diet to exercise control in social situations. At a macro level there's a strong movement to tax or regulate me out of meat too.
So I wish they would fuck off, actually.
I've seen people - usually old fogies - insist on trying to feed meat to vegetarians or pescetarians even when given ample notice to go for one of their other perfectlyt normal recipes.
Yes, I've been vegetarian ever since I was a teenager (I'm in my 50s now) and my father never accepted it. Whenever I dropped round, he'd offer me a bacon sandwich or suchlike and then act all hurt when I turned it down. I never really understood his determination to make me eat meat when I was obviously doing fine without it.
A friend of mine attended a work do in France with a set menu. He said he was a vegetarian so they brought him a ham omelette instead!!! Fortunately he isn't particularly strict so ate it
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Yes this is my position. I know that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy diet without meat as I haven't eaten meat in 35 years and am in great health. I've never tried to force this view on anyone else and as far as I can see on this forum the greatest proselytisers are from the eating dead animals camp. I do wish they would fuck off as I believe the government likes to put it.
I've never tried to make someone eat meat.
I've definitely had vegans and vegetarians try and make me eat their diet at events, either directly or through moral blackmail, or use their diet to exercise control in social situations. At a macro level there's a strong movement to tax or regulate me out of meat too.
So I wish they would fuck off, actually.
I've seen people - usually old fogies - insist on trying to feed meat to vegetarians or pescetarians even when given ample notice to go for one of their other perfectlyt normal recipes.
Yes, I've been vegetarian ever since I was a teenager (I'm in my 50s now) and my father never accepted it. Whenever I dropped round, he'd offer me a bacon sandwich or suchlike and then act all hurt when I turned it down. I never really understood his determination to make me eat meat when I was obviously doing fine without it.
I cook a lot and have people around if someone is a vegetarian/vegan I have always made a main dish for them that is vegatarian/vegan....what I won't do is make the whole main dish vegetarian/vegan. The rest of us will be eating meat
Why not ?
Vegan, I can understand since it's quite limiting, and requires specialist knowledge - but ruling out serving a vegetarian dish, given the universe of culinary possibilities, sounds a bit weird.
Because when I invite people over I want them to enjoy it. Most enjoy meat. So I will do something like a beef wellington, and prepare a separate main for a vegetarian/vegan. Why should I limit whatevery one else can have for a guest with a self imposed dietary requirement.
Now if its an allergy like for example someone I know who is allergic to garlic then I will cook everything garlic free. But that is because its a medical necessity not a choice.
Same as if I invite a christian round. If they want to say grace they can but I won't insist everyone else does before they eat
Sunak has bigger problems than Anderson, personnel wise. Shapps and Cleverly are both far more personable and charismatic.
When he is flailing in the polls and another 1000 Tory councillors have lost, who then will support him?
Who will support him? Shapps and Cleverly for a start.
You have a theory based on concern from the Tory membership/councillor base that Sunak hasn't got what it takes to turn this around.
I get that, but where you run into problems is that enough of the MPs have decided that the Sunak/Hunt approach of trying to avoid further market chaos whilst throwing out a bit of red meat on immigration, ULEZ etc is the only prospect of limiting losses. They've lashed themselves to the mast, the world king across the water is now an ex-MP, and anyone vaguely credible is resigned to sit it out, survive the election, and stand for leader of the opposition (a much better position than taking the poison chalice with weeks left in the term).
So I just don't see the realistic mechanism for you to get what you want this side of an election.
My feeling is the membership are usually 9 months ahead of the MPs on this.
MPs panic close to an election when polls are low. They'll push the button when they realise they're going to lose their seats otherwise.
Quite a few Tory MPs are standing down, quite a few won't in fact lose their seats (in the 1997 massacre only just over half did), and quite a few who are in serious danger will conclude that defenestration with weeks to go makes their prospects worse not better.
Quite apart from that, is who will take on the job in that situation. All the best candidates will sit on their hands until after the election, leaving a choice between maniacs and incredibly pompous, unappealing Sir Bufton Tufton types answering the nation's call at time of crisis.
I see your frustration, but I don't see how it realistically resolves in the way you describe.
Politics happens very slowly, then all at once.
Local donors will start drying up (this is how Tory MP's election campaign funds are secured), numbers of leaflet deliverers will dry up, councillors will be down.
Plus, come October, the 1 year moratorium on VONC within the PCP expires. It could be there are already a good number in; and every by election lost makes the threshold easier to reach.
Firstly, this assumes Sunak will push a General Election it beyond next May (and a further loss of councillors). I know that's a fairly widespread assumption, but I'm not sure. It's not a great round of elections for the Tories and, particularly if he does feel under any pressure, I think he'll chance it.
Secondly, I think enough Tory activists and donors either quite like Sunak or will stick with it come what may. As with the Lib Dems in 2015, on the ground and in local parties of threatened MPs, there is some rallying round. It may well not save seats - it didn't for the Lib Dems in 2015 - but actually in a backs-to-the-wall situation, quite a lot of people fight rather than take flight. Even being very cynical, if you're an ambitious Tory in the seat of an under-threat MP, you help them man the barricades and come out with a lot of credit as well as a vacancy.
Thirdly, there isn't a great deal of evidence of letters being planned or going in. Maybe there are behind the scenes, and maybe people are bring quiet, but there does need to be some noise to get momentum.
Finally, and crucially, a VONC needs to pass by a majority. I know Johnson went having survived a VONC, but that was through a further scandal and mass resignations. That's just not happening with Sunak - he's not likely to be embroiled in a scandal and his cabinet have either bought into his project or decided to wait until after the election as being disloyal isn't a winning formula.
Every Tory leader since Major who has survived a VONC hasn't survived the year....
The year counting from next may, runs in to ragnarok. This is like a dinosaur 65m and 1 years ago agonizing over whether its diet is the one most likely to ensure its longevity.
Secondly, it is beyond bonkers to think that HM might refuse a dissolution following the Lascelles principles. They and the SA and Canada cases referred to by Lascelles were immediately post GE crises, with a real issue as to what happens for the next 5 years, not at the fag end of a government. Apart from that, we have conventions about conventions in our wacky non codified constitution and the convention is not to put HMK in a spot where he has to make a political decision. If the tories start buggering him about (and it would have to be anti sunakite tories asking him to refuse) the punishment doled out by the electorate at GE 24 or 25 won't be KT, it will be end Permian. It would literally destroy the party. No decade in the wilderness and triumphant return under dishface.
Nope, the monarch wouldn't grant a dissolution because the PM was running scared of his party. Especially the first request for dissolution in the reign....
You really have got this round your neck, haven't you? Your initial misstatement of the case was "You know that the constitutional advice on a PM requesting a dissolution in the event of his imminent ousting is that it won't be accepted, right?" which just completely misunderstands the principles. It isn't a 50-50, mibbee ayes, mibbee naws, sort of call that HMK has to make, like an umpire adjudging an LBW appeal. The default, null, safe option is to grant the dissolution, it's only in insanely rare crises that you think about doing anything else.. If Charles grants a dissolution he isn't really doing anything. Not sticking his head above the parapet. What makes you think he wants to kick off his reign by enabling 6 months of Suella Braverman PM? Most GEs happen after 4 and a bit years anyway, and Sunak can just say he feels it's about time for one. And at the time he makes the request there's unlikely to be anything beyond tittle tattle about letters to Old Lady to suggest an imminent ousting anyway. On the face of it he will command a 62 seat majority.This is merely bonkers.
An insanely rare situation like.....a PM who has lost control of his own party wanting to dissolve parliament?
"Lost control of his party" will be PB tittle tattle, not something of which regal notice has to be taken, at the time he asks Chas to blow the whistle.
Let me guess, you are a disgruntled party member, voted for Truss, itching for a Sunakian Ides of March. Not going to happen. He, to coin a phrase, holds all the cards.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Yes this is my position. I know that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy diet without meat as I haven't eaten meat in 35 years and am in great health. I've never tried to force this view on anyone else and as far as I can see on this forum the greatest proselytisers are from the eating dead animals camp. I do wish they would fuck off as I believe the government likes to put it.
I've never tried to make someone eat meat.
I've definitely had vegans and vegetarians try and make me eat their diet at events, either directly or through moral blackmail, or use their diet to exercise control in social situations. At a macro level there's a strong movement to tax or regulate me out of meat too.
So I wish they would fuck off, actually.
I've seen people - usually old fogies - insist on trying to feed meat to vegetarians or pescetarians even when given ample notice to go for one of their other perfectlyt normal recipes.
Yes, I've been vegetarian ever since I was a teenager (I'm in my 50s now) and my father never accepted it. Whenever I dropped round, he'd offer me a bacon sandwich or suchlike and then act all hurt when I turned it down. I never really understood his determination to make me eat meat when I was obviously doing fine without it.
I cook a lot and have people around if someone is a vegetarian/vegan I have always made a main dish for them that is vegatarian/vegan....what I won't do is make the whole main dish vegetarian/vegan. The rest of us will be eating meat
I'm the opposite. Rabid meat eater. But if I'm giving a dinner party and there is a veggie there I will give everyone veggie food. Gives me a chance to show off my creativity although warning: putting (delicious) open cap mushrooms in things turns everything grey. I think it's rude to give people different things effectively singling them out for their dietary choices. I invited them, after all.
If someone wants to make a dietary choice, then that's their choice, but everyone else doesn't have to suffer for it.
My choice is to eat meat, and if I was eating at a vegan household I'd be seriously impressed and pleased if they put the effort in to make a meal suitable to my choices, not feel singled out.
For some reason though most vegans think they should be catered for, but there's no onus on them to return the favour.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Yes this is my position. I know that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy diet without meat as I haven't eaten meat in 35 years and am in great health. I've never tried to force this view on anyone else and as far as I can see on this forum the greatest proselytisers are from the eating dead animals camp. I do wish they would fuck off as I believe the government likes to put it.
I've never tried to make someone eat meat.
I've definitely had vegans and vegetarians try and make me eat their diet at events, either directly or through moral blackmail, or use their diet to exercise control in social situations. At a macro level there's a strong movement to tax or regulate me out of meat too.
So I wish they would fuck off, actually.
I've seen people - usually old fogies - insist on trying to feed meat to vegetarians or pescetarians even when given ample notice to go for one of their other perfectlyt normal recipes.
Yes, I've been vegetarian ever since I was a teenager (I'm in my 50s now) and my father never accepted it. Whenever I dropped round, he'd offer me a bacon sandwich or suchlike and then act all hurt when I turned it down. I never really understood his determination to make me eat meat when I was obviously doing fine without it.
I cook a lot and have people around if someone is a vegetarian/vegan I have always made a main dish for them that is vegatarian/vegan....what I won't do is make the whole main dish vegetarian/vegan. The rest of us will be eating meat
I'm the opposite. Rabid meat eater. But if I'm giving a dinner party and there is a veggie there I will give everyone veggie food. Gives me a chance to show off my creativity although warning: putting (delicious) open cap mushrooms in things turns everything grey. I think it's rude to give people different things effectively singling them out for their dietary choices. I invited them, after all.
If someone wants to make a dietary choice, then that's their choice, but everyone else doesn't have to suffer for it.
My choice is to eat meat, and if I was eating at a vegan household I'd be seriously impressed and pleased if they put the effort in to make a meal suitable to my choices, not feel singled out.
For some reason though most vegans think they should be catered for, but there's no onus on them to return the favour.
Suppose I like tripe? Doesn't mean I expect to be given andouillettes, or tripe and onions, in a normal household when visiting: ie a household hwere even handling and cooking the stuff, and its smell, puts everyone off their dinner, whatever it is. .
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Yes this is my position. I know that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy diet without meat as I haven't eaten meat in 35 years and am in great health. I've never tried to force this view on anyone else and as far as I can see on this forum the greatest proselytisers are from the eating dead animals camp. I do wish they would fuck off as I believe the government likes to put it.
I've never tried to make someone eat meat.
I've definitely had vegans and vegetarians try and make me eat their diet at events, either directly or through moral blackmail, or use their diet to exercise control in social situations. At a macro level there's a strong movement to tax or regulate me out of meat too.
So I wish they would fuck off, actually.
I've seen people - usually old fogies - insist on trying to feed meat to vegetarians or pescetarians even when given ample notice to go for one of their other perfectlyt normal recipes.
Yes, I've been vegetarian ever since I was a teenager (I'm in my 50s now) and my father never accepted it. Whenever I dropped round, he'd offer me a bacon sandwich or suchlike and then act all hurt when I turned it down. I never really understood his determination to make me eat meat when I was obviously doing fine without it.
I cook a lot and have people around if someone is a vegetarian/vegan I have always made a main dish for them that is vegatarian/vegan....what I won't do is make the whole main dish vegetarian/vegan. The rest of us will be eating meat
I'm the opposite. Rabid meat eater. But if I'm giving a dinner party and there is a veggie there I will give everyone veggie food. Gives me a chance to show off my creativity although warning: putting (delicious) open cap mushrooms in things turns everything grey. I think it's rude to give people different things effectively singling them out for their dietary choices. I invited them, after all.
You say singling them out, I call it going out of my way to honour their dietary choices. As long as I put as much effort into their main as everyone elses I dont see it as a snub
Sunak has bigger problems than Anderson, personnel wise. Shapps and Cleverly are both far more personable and charismatic.
When he is flailing in the polls and another 1000 Tory councillors have lost, who then will support him?
Who will support him? Shapps and Cleverly for a start.
You have a theory based on concern from the Tory membership/councillor base that Sunak hasn't got what it takes to turn this around.
I get that, but where you run into problems is that enough of the MPs have decided that the Sunak/Hunt approach of trying to avoid further market chaos whilst throwing out a bit of red meat on immigration, ULEZ etc is the only prospect of limiting losses. They've lashed themselves to the mast, the world king across the water is now an ex-MP, and anyone vaguely credible is resigned to sit it out, survive the election, and stand for leader of the opposition (a much better position than taking the poison chalice with weeks left in the term).
So I just don't see the realistic mechanism for you to get what you want this side of an election.
My feeling is the membership are usually 9 months ahead of the MPs on this.
MPs panic close to an election when polls are low. They'll push the button when they realise they're going to lose their seats otherwise.
Quite a few Tory MPs are standing down, quite a few won't in fact lose their seats (in the 1997 massacre only just over half did), and quite a few who are in serious danger will conclude that defenestration with weeks to go makes their prospects worse not better.
Quite apart from that, is who will take on the job in that situation. All the best candidates will sit on their hands until after the election, leaving a choice between maniacs and incredibly pompous, unappealing Sir Bufton Tufton types answering the nation's call at time of crisis.
I see your frustration, but I don't see how it realistically resolves in the way you describe.
Politics happens very slowly, then all at once.
Local donors will start drying up (this is how Tory MP's election campaign funds are secured), numbers of leaflet deliverers will dry up, councillors will be down.
Plus, come October, the 1 year moratorium on VONC within the PCP expires. It could be there are already a good number in; and every by election lost makes the threshold easier to reach.
Firstly, this assumes Sunak will push a General Election it beyond next May (and a further loss of councillors). I know that's a fairly widespread assumption, but I'm not sure. It's not a great round of elections for the Tories and, particularly if he does feel under any pressure, I think he'll chance it.
Secondly, I think enough Tory activists and donors either quite like Sunak or will stick with it come what may. As with the Lib Dems in 2015, on the ground and in local parties of threatened MPs, there is some rallying round. It may well not save seats - it didn't for the Lib Dems in 2015 - but actually in a backs-to-the-wall situation, quite a lot of people fight rather than take flight. Even being very cynical, if you're an ambitious Tory in the seat of an under-threat MP, you help them man the barricades and come out with a lot of credit as well as a vacancy.
Thirdly, there isn't a great deal of evidence of letters being planned or going in. Maybe there are behind the scenes, and maybe people are bring quiet, but there does need to be some noise to get momentum.
Finally, and crucially, a VONC needs to pass by a majority. I know Johnson went having survived a VONC, but that was through a further scandal and mass resignations. That's just not happening with Sunak - he's not likely to be embroiled in a scandal and his cabinet have either bought into his project or decided to wait until after the election as being disloyal isn't a winning formula.
Every Tory leader since Major who has survived a VONC hasn't survived the year....
The year counting from next may, runs in to ragnarok. This is like a dinosaur 65m and 1 years ago agonizing over whether its diet is the one most likely to ensure its longevity.
Secondly, it is beyond bonkers to think that HM might refuse a dissolution following the Lascelles principles. They and the SA and Canada cases referred to by Lascelles were immediately post GE crises, with a real issue as to what happens for the next 5 years, not at the fag end of a government. Apart from that, we have conventions about conventions in our wacky non codified constitution and the convention is not to put HMK in a spot where he has to make a political decision. If the tories start buggering him about (and it would have to be anti sunakite tories asking him to refuse) the punishment doled out by the electorate at GE 24 or 25 won't be KT, it will be end Permian. It would literally destroy the party. No decade in the wilderness and triumphant return under dishface.
Nope, the monarch wouldn't grant a dissolution because the PM was running scared of his party. Especially the first request for dissolution in the reign....
You really have got this round your neck, haven't you? Your initial misstatement of the case was "You know that the constitutional advice on a PM requesting a dissolution in the event of his imminent ousting is that it won't be accepted, right?" which just completely misunderstands the principles. It isn't a 50-50, mibbee ayes, mibbee naws, sort of call that HMK has to make, like an umpire adjudging an LBW appeal. The default, null, safe option is to grant the dissolution, it's only in insanely rare crises that you think about doing anything else.. If Charles grants a dissolution he isn't really doing anything. Not sticking his head above the parapet. What makes you think he wants to kick off his reign by enabling 6 months of Suella Braverman PM? Most GEs happen after 4 and a bit years anyway, and Sunak can just say he feels it's about time for one. And at the time he makes the request there's unlikely to be anything beyond tittle tattle about letters to Old Lady to suggest an imminent ousting anyway. On the face of it he will command a 62 seat majority.This is merely bonkers.
An insanely rare situation like.....a PM who has lost control of his own party wanting to dissolve parliament?
"Lost control of his party" will be PB tittle tattle, not something of which regal notice has to be taken, at thetime he asks Chas to blow the whistle.
Let me guess, you are a disgruntled party member, voted for Truss, itching for a Sunakian Ides of March. Not going to happen. He, to coin a phrase, holds all the cards.
Lol. Holds all the cards? He doesn't even have 2-7 off suit
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Yes this is my position. I know that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy diet without meat as I haven't eaten meat in 35 years and am in great health. I've never tried to force this view on anyone else and as far as I can see on this forum the greatest proselytisers are from the eating dead animals camp. I do wish they would fuck off as I believe the government likes to put it.
I've never tried to make someone eat meat.
I've definitely had vegans and vegetarians try and make me eat their diet at events, either directly or through moral blackmail, or use their diet to exercise control in social situations. At a macro level there's a strong movement to tax or regulate me out of meat too.
So I wish they would fuck off, actually.
I've seen people - usually old fogies - insist on trying to feed meat to vegetarians or pescetarians even when given ample notice to go for one of their other perfectlyt normal recipes.
Yes, I've been vegetarian ever since I was a teenager (I'm in my 50s now) and my father never accepted it. Whenever I dropped round, he'd offer me a bacon sandwich or suchlike and then act all hurt when I turned it down. I never really understood his determination to make me eat meat when I was obviously doing fine without it.
I cook a lot and have people around if someone is a vegetarian/vegan I have always made a main dish for them that is vegatarian/vegan....what I won't do is make the whole main dish vegetarian/vegan. The rest of us will be eating meat
I'm the opposite. Rabid meat eater. But if I'm giving a dinner party and there is a veggie there I will give everyone veggie food. Gives me a chance to show off my creativity although warning: putting (delicious) open cap mushrooms in things turns everything grey. I think it's rude to give people different things effectively singling them out for their dietary choices. I invited them, after all.
If someone wants to make a dietary choice, then that's their choice, but everyone else doesn't have to suffer for it.
My choice is to eat meat, and if I was eating at a vegan household I'd be seriously impressed and pleased if they put the effort in to make a meal suitable to my choices, not feel singled out.
For some reason though most vegans think they should be catered for, but there's no onus on them to return the favour.
As I said I believe it is rude. I have invited the person for dinner and the essence of good manners is not to make someone feel awkward or out of place. Hence everyone gets veggie food. Rolling out a separate dish for them, although I'm sure would be appreciated, is imo bad manners. But then I'm an old fashioned kind of guy.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Yes this is my position. I know that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy diet without meat as I haven't eaten meat in 35 years and am in great health. I've never tried to force this view on anyone else and as far as I can see on this forum the greatest proselytisers are from the eating dead animals camp. I do wish they would fuck off as I believe the government likes to put it.
I've never tried to make someone eat meat.
I've definitely had vegans and vegetarians try and make me eat their diet at events, either directly or through moral blackmail, or use their diet to exercise control in social situations. At a macro level there's a strong movement to tax or regulate me out of meat too.
So I wish they would fuck off, actually.
I've seen people - usually old fogies - insist on trying to feed meat to vegetarians or pescetarians even when given ample notice to go for one of their other perfectlyt normal recipes.
Yes, I've been vegetarian ever since I was a teenager (I'm in my 50s now) and my father never accepted it. Whenever I dropped round, he'd offer me a bacon sandwich or suchlike and then act all hurt when I turned it down. I never really understood his determination to make me eat meat when I was obviously doing fine without it.
I cook a lot and have people around if someone is a vegetarian/vegan I have always made a main dish for them that is vegatarian/vegan....what I won't do is make the whole main dish vegetarian/vegan. The rest of us will be eating meat
Why not ?
Vegan, I can understand since it's quite limiting, and requires specialist knowledge - but ruling out serving a vegetarian dish, given the universe of culinary possibilities, sounds a bit weird.
Because when I invite people over I want them to enjoy it. Most enjoy meat. So I will do something like a beef wellington, and prepare a separate main for a vegetarian/vegan. Why should I limit what everyone else can have for a guest with a self imposed dietary requirement..
You're not.
You are limiting yourself by ruling out all dishes which don't involve meat. I didn't argue you ought to cook vegetarian every time - just that your determination to serve only meat dishes on every occasion seems a bit weird.
Sunak has bigger problems than Anderson, personnel wise. Shapps and Cleverly are both far more personable and charismatic.
When he is flailing in the polls and another 1000 Tory councillors have lost, who then will support him?
Who will support him? Shapps and Cleverly for a start.
You have a theory based on concern from the Tory membership/councillor base that Sunak hasn't got what it takes to turn this around.
I get that, but where you run into problems is that enough of the MPs have decided that the Sunak/Hunt approach of trying to avoid further market chaos whilst throwing out a bit of red meat on immigration, ULEZ etc is the only prospect of limiting losses. They've lashed themselves to the mast, the world king across the water is now an ex-MP, and anyone vaguely credible is resigned to sit it out, survive the election, and stand for leader of the opposition (a much better position than taking the poison chalice with weeks left in the term).
So I just don't see the realistic mechanism for you to get what you want this side of an election.
My feeling is the membership are usually 9 months ahead of the MPs on this.
MPs panic close to an election when polls are low. They'll push the button when they realise they're going to lose their seats otherwise.
Quite a few Tory MPs are standing down, quite a few won't in fact lose their seats (in the 1997 massacre only just over half did), and quite a few who are in serious danger will conclude that defenestration with weeks to go makes their prospects worse not better.
Quite apart from that, is who will take on the job in that situation. All the best candidates will sit on their hands until after the election, leaving a choice between maniacs and incredibly pompous, unappealing Sir Bufton Tufton types answering the nation's call at time of crisis.
I see your frustration, but I don't see how it realistically resolves in the way you describe.
Politics happens very slowly, then all at once.
Local donors will start drying up (this is how Tory MP's election campaign funds are secured), numbers of leaflet deliverers will dry up, councillors will be down.
Plus, come October, the 1 year moratorium on VONC within the PCP expires. It could be there are already a good number in; and every by election lost makes the threshold easier to reach.
Firstly, this assumes Sunak will push a General Election it beyond next May (and a further loss of councillors). I know that's a fairly widespread assumption, but I'm not sure. It's not a great round of elections for the Tories and, particularly if he does feel under any pressure, I think he'll chance it.
Secondly, I think enough Tory activists and donors either quite like Sunak or will stick with it come what may. As with the Lib Dems in 2015, on the ground and in local parties of threatened MPs, there is some rallying round. It may well not save seats - it didn't for the Lib Dems in 2015 - but actually in a backs-to-the-wall situation, quite a lot of people fight rather than take flight. Even being very cynical, if you're an ambitious Tory in the seat of an under-threat MP, you help them man the barricades and come out with a lot of credit as well as a vacancy.
Thirdly, there isn't a great deal of evidence of letters being planned or going in. Maybe there are behind the scenes, and maybe people are bring quiet, but there does need to be some noise to get momentum.
Finally, and crucially, a VONC needs to pass by a majority. I know Johnson went having survived a VONC, but that was through a further scandal and mass resignations. That's just not happening with Sunak - he's not likely to be embroiled in a scandal and his cabinet have either bought into his project or decided to wait until after the election as being disloyal isn't a winning formula.
Every Tory leader since Major who has survived a VONC hasn't survived the year....
The year counting from next may, runs in to ragnarok. This is like a dinosaur 65m and 1 years ago agonizing over whether its diet is the one most likely to ensure its longevity.
Secondly, it is beyond bonkers to think that HM might refuse a dissolution following the Lascelles principles. They and the SA and Canada cases referred to by Lascelles were immediately post GE crises, with a real issue as to what happens for the next 5 years, not at the fag end of a government. Apart from that, we have conventions about conventions in our wacky non codified constitution and the convention is not to put HMK in a spot where he has to make a political decision. If the tories start buggering him about (and it would have to be anti sunakite tories asking him to refuse) the punishment doled out by the electorate at GE 24 or 25 won't be KT, it will be end Permian. It would literally destroy the party. No decade in the wilderness and triumphant return under dishface.
Nope, the monarch wouldn't grant a dissolution because the PM was running scared of his party. Especially the first request for dissolution in the reign....
You really have got this round your neck, haven't you? Your initial misstatement of the case was "You know that the constitutional advice on a PM requesting a dissolution in the event of his imminent ousting is that it won't be accepted, right?" which just completely misunderstands the principles. It isn't a 50-50, mibbee ayes, mibbee naws, sort of call that HMK has to make, like an umpire adjudging an LBW appeal. The default, null, safe option is to grant the dissolution, it's only in insanely rare crises that you think about doing anything else.. If Charles grants a dissolution he isn't really doing anything. Not sticking his head above the parapet. What makes you think he wants to kick off his reign by enabling 6 months of Suella Braverman PM? Most GEs happen after 4 and a bit years anyway, and Sunak can just say he feels it's about time for one. And at the time he makes the request there's unlikely to be anything beyond tittle tattle about letters to Old Lady to suggest an imminent ousting anyway. On the face of it he will command a 62 seat majority.This is merely bonkers.
An insanely rare situation like.....a PM who has lost control of his own party wanting to dissolve parliament?
"Lost control of his party" will be PB tittle tattle, not something of which regal notice has to be taken, at thetime he asks Chas to blow the whistle.
Let me guess, you are a disgruntled party member, voted for Truss, itching for a Sunakian Ides of March. Not going to happen. He, to coin a phrase, holds all the cards.
Lol. Holds all the cards? He doesn't even have 2-7 off suit
Now you are just being silly. But you are better informed about the Lascelles Principles than you were 12 hours ago, so therels that.
Talking of Selfridges magnificent food hall, as I was, I just bought some wild venison steaks to eat tonight
Does meat get more ethical than that? Britain is overrun with deer. We surely have too many. They are wild. They have nice lives. I eat them after they are briskly shot dead
Can any vegetarian object to that? I don’t see how
Current trends would say that we should introduce wolves to keep the deer down, and you yourself should live on a slab of soy with a side portion of virtue.
As a vegan / veggie - I am perfectly happy with deer hunting in the UK (although would prefer wolves to be reintroduced), I just don't want to eat any of it.
Presumably you feel the deer prefers being pulled to pieces by a pack of wolves as opposed to being shot in the head.
No - I prefer the idea of increasing biodiversity and having our natural fauna / ecosystem restored over what will likely be upper middle class / upper class people going out for hunting trips more often. It doesn’t really matter either way how the deer dies, but the reintroduction of wolves would more likely solve the systemic issue of deer overpopulation due to lack of predation than encouraging more hunting.
Introducing apex predators into a natural environment, tends to end badly. We’d have eliminated the deer problem, only to have introduced a wolf problem. Deer don’t generally attack dogs and children.
I mean, people should probably just accept we’re going to have some land that exists not for the benefit of humans and for the benefit of everything else.
Also North America and mainland Europe seem to manage okay with wolves and even bears. Granted, we have a much greater population density - but again, just give over a load of land and see “here be wolves, enter at your own risk”.
Indeed. I was in a car a few days ago when the driver pulled over to show a bear walking past the side of the road. Quite interesting to see and bear attacks on cars are thankfully rare as while we may have looked like tinned food to them, they lack a can opener.
Cyclists or pedestrians might have a bit of a problem, but that's not an issue for you?
I don’t drive, but I also wouldn’t walk alone through an area known to have wolves or bears without knowing what to do if I encountered them.
I have a friend who lives in Canada that had a bear sit outside their lodge once - apparently they shouted until it went away.
I would really love to see a bear or wolf in the wild, but I think I’m in the minority there.
I saw a wild bear in Colorado. Mesa verde
It was nonchalantly crossing the road in front of my car, going from woodland to woodland
What surprised me was my instinctive fear. I stopped the car and stayed rigid for a minute. What was the bear gonna do, come up and unlock the car doors?
Yet that is the power of the reflex, when you see a big apex predator
This week I am mostly eating corugettes and tomatoes because the blooming things always come in a glut.
I’m having a lean year for both. I’ve got one small courgette and a dozen tomatoes that have been green for what feels like two months. My olive tree has given fruit for the first time ever though, albeit only a couple.
Strawbs and raspberries have been good though, and my hops are running as wild and vigorous as ever expecting another huge crop that I will fail to do anything with.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Yes this is my position. I know that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy diet without meat as I haven't eaten meat in 35 years and am in great health. I've never tried to force this view on anyone else and as far as I can see on this forum the greatest proselytisers are from the eating dead animals camp. I do wish they would fuck off as I believe the government likes to put it.
I've never tried to make someone eat meat.
I've definitely had vegans and vegetarians try and make me eat their diet at events, either directly or through moral blackmail, or use their diet to exercise control in social situations. At a macro level there's a strong movement to tax or regulate me out of meat too.
So I wish they would fuck off, actually.
I've seen people - usually old fogies - insist on trying to feed meat to vegetarians or pescetarians even when given ample notice to go for one of their other perfectlyt normal recipes.
Yes, I've been vegetarian ever since I was a teenager (I'm in my 50s now) and my father never accepted it. Whenever I dropped round, he'd offer me a bacon sandwich or suchlike and then act all hurt when I turned it down. I never really understood his determination to make me eat meat when I was obviously doing fine without it.
I cook a lot and have people around if someone is a vegetarian/vegan I have always made a main dish for them that is vegatarian/vegan....what I won't do is make the whole main dish vegetarian/vegan. The rest of us will be eating meat
I'm the opposite. Rabid meat eater. But if I'm giving a dinner party and there is a veggie there I will give everyone veggie food. Gives me a chance to show off my creativity although warning: putting (delicious) open cap mushrooms in things turns everything grey. I think it's rude to give people different things effectively singling them out for their dietary choices. I invited them, after all.
If someone wants to make a dietary choice, then that's their choice, but everyone else doesn't have to suffer for it.
My choice is to eat meat, and if I was eating at a vegan household I'd be seriously impressed and pleased if they put the effort in to make a meal suitable to my choices, not feel singled out.
For some reason though most vegans think they should be catered for, but there's no onus on them to return the favour.
I you don't eat meat because you consider the farming and slaughter of animals to be cruel, it would be inconsistent in the extreme to serve it to other people.
Sunak has bigger problems than Anderson, personnel wise. Shapps and Cleverly are both far more personable and charismatic.
When he is flailing in the polls and another 1000 Tory councillors have lost, who then will support him?
Who will support him? Shapps and Cleverly for a start.
You have a theory based on concern from the Tory membership/councillor base that Sunak hasn't got what it takes to turn this around.
I get that, but where you run into problems is that enough of the MPs have decided that the Sunak/Hunt approach of trying to avoid further market chaos whilst throwing out a bit of red meat on immigration, ULEZ etc is the only prospect of limiting losses. They've lashed themselves to the mast, the world king across the water is now an ex-MP, and anyone vaguely credible is resigned to sit it out, survive the election, and stand for leader of the opposition (a much better position than taking the poison chalice with weeks left in the term).
So I just don't see the realistic mechanism for you to get what you want this side of an election.
My feeling is the membership are usually 9 months ahead of the MPs on this.
MPs panic close to an election when polls are low. They'll push the button when they realise they're going to lose their seats otherwise.
Quite a few Tory MPs are standing down, quite a few won't in fact lose their seats (in the 1997 massacre only just over half did), and quite a few who are in serious danger will conclude that defenestration with weeks to go makes their prospects worse not better.
Quite apart from that, is who will take on the job in that situation. All the best candidates will sit on their hands until after the election, leaving a choice between maniacs and incredibly pompous, unappealing Sir Bufton Tufton types answering the nation's call at time of crisis.
I see your frustration, but I don't see how it realistically resolves in the way you describe.
Politics happens very slowly, then all at once.
Local donors will start drying up (this is how Tory MP's election campaign funds are secured), numbers of leaflet deliverers will dry up, councillors will be down.
Plus, come October, the 1 year moratorium on VONC within the PCP expires. It could be there are already a good number in; and every by election lost makes the threshold easier to reach.
Firstly, this assumes Sunak will push a General Election it beyond next May (and a further loss of councillors). I know that's a fairly widespread assumption, but I'm not sure. It's not a great round of elections for the Tories and, particularly if he does feel under any pressure, I think he'll chance it.
Secondly, I think enough Tory activists and donors either quite like Sunak or will stick with it come what may. As with the Lib Dems in 2015, on the ground and in local parties of threatened MPs, there is some rallying round. It may well not save seats - it didn't for the Lib Dems in 2015 - but actually in a backs-to-the-wall situation, quite a lot of people fight rather than take flight. Even being very cynical, if you're an ambitious Tory in the seat of an under-threat MP, you help them man the barricades and come out with a lot of credit as well as a vacancy.
Thirdly, there isn't a great deal of evidence of letters being planned or going in. Maybe there are behind the scenes, and maybe people are bring quiet, but there does need to be some noise to get momentum.
Finally, and crucially, a VONC needs to pass by a majority. I know Johnson went having survived a VONC, but that was through a further scandal and mass resignations. That's just not happening with Sunak - he's not likely to be embroiled in a scandal and his cabinet have either bought into his project or decided to wait until after the election as being disloyal isn't a winning formula.
Every Tory leader since Major who has survived a VONC hasn't survived the year....
The year counting from next may, runs in to ragnarok. This is like a dinosaur 65m and 1 years ago agonizing over whether its diet is the one most likely to ensure its longevity.
Secondly, it is beyond bonkers to think that HM might refuse a dissolution following the Lascelles principles. They and the SA and Canada cases referred to by Lascelles were immediately post GE crises, with a real issue as to what happens for the next 5 years, not at the fag end of a government. Apart from that, we have conventions about conventions in our wacky non codified constitution and the convention is not to put HMK in a spot where he has to make a political decision. If the tories start buggering him about (and it would have to be anti sunakite tories asking him to refuse) the punishment doled out by the electorate at GE 24 or 25 won't be KT, it will be end Permian. It would literally destroy the party. No decade in the wilderness and triumphant return under dishface.
Nope, the monarch wouldn't grant a dissolution because the PM was running scared of his party. Especially the first request for dissolution in the reign....
You really have got this round your neck, haven't you? Your initial misstatement of the case was "You know that the constitutional advice on a PM requesting a dissolution in the event of his imminent ousting is that it won't be accepted, right?" which just completely misunderstands the principles. It isn't a 50-50, mibbee ayes, mibbee naws, sort of call that HMK has to make, like an umpire adjudging an LBW appeal. The default, null, safe option is to grant the dissolution, it's only in insanely rare crises that you think about doing anything else.. If Charles grants a dissolution he isn't really doing anything. Not sticking his head above the parapet. What makes you think he wants to kick off his reign by enabling 6 months of Suella Braverman PM? Most GEs happen after 4 and a bit years anyway, and Sunak can just say he feels it's about time for one. And at the time he makes the request there's unlikely to be anything beyond tittle tattle about letters to Old Lady to suggest an imminent ousting anyway. On the face of it he will command a 62 seat majority.This is merely bonkers.
An insanely rare situation like.....a PM who has lost control of his own party wanting to dissolve parliament?
"Lost control of his party" will be PB tittle tattle, not something of which regal notice has to be taken, at the time he asks Chas to blow the whistle.
Let me guess, you are a disgruntled party member, voted for Truss, itching for a Sunakian Ides of March. Not going to happen. He, to coin a phrase, holds all the cards.
In this context, “lost control of his party” would have to mean he’d lost a formal vote of confidence and was expected to resign as party leader.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Yes this is my position. I know that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy diet without meat as I haven't eaten meat in 35 years and am in great health. I've never tried to force this view on anyone else and as far as I can see on this forum the greatest proselytisers are from the eating dead animals camp. I do wish they would fuck off as I believe the government likes to put it.
I've never tried to make someone eat meat.
I've definitely had vegans and vegetarians try and make me eat their diet at events, either directly or through moral blackmail, or use their diet to exercise control in social situations. At a macro level there's a strong movement to tax or regulate me out of meat too.
So I wish they would fuck off, actually.
I've seen people - usually old fogies - insist on trying to feed meat to vegetarians or pescetarians even when given ample notice to go for one of their other perfectlyt normal recipes.
Yes, I've been vegetarian ever since I was a teenager (I'm in my 50s now) and my father never accepted it. Whenever I dropped round, he'd offer me a bacon sandwich or suchlike and then act all hurt when I turned it down. I never really understood his determination to make me eat meat when I was obviously doing fine without it.
I cook a lot and have people around if someone is a vegetarian/vegan I have always made a main dish for them that is vegatarian/vegan....what I won't do is make the whole main dish vegetarian/vegan. The rest of us will be eating meat
I'm the opposite. Rabid meat eater. But if I'm giving a dinner party and there is a veggie there I will give everyone veggie food. Gives me a chance to show off my creativity although warning: putting (delicious) open cap mushrooms in things turns everything grey. I think it's rude to give people different things effectively singling them out for their dietary choices. I invited them, after all.
If someone wants to make a dietary choice, then that's their choice, but everyone else doesn't have to suffer for it.
My choice is to eat meat, and if I was eating at a vegan household I'd be seriously impressed and pleased if they put the effort in to make a meal suitable to my choices, not feel singled out.
For some reason though most vegans think they should be catered for, but there's no onus on them to return the favour.
As I said I believe it is rude. I have invited the person for dinner and the essence of good manners is not to make someone feel awkward or out of place. Hence everyone gets veggie food. Rolling out a separate dish for them, although I'm sure would be appreciated, is imo bad manners. But then I'm an old fashioned kind of guy.
Once took a vege German gal to a Hunt ball. Didn't last long after that....
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Yes this is my position. I know that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy diet without meat as I haven't eaten meat in 35 years and am in great health. I've never tried to force this view on anyone else and as far as I can see on this forum the greatest proselytisers are from the eating dead animals camp. I do wish they would fuck off as I believe the government likes to put it.
I've never tried to make someone eat meat.
I've definitely had vegans and vegetarians try and make me eat their diet at events, either directly or through moral blackmail, or use their diet to exercise control in social situations. At a macro level there's a strong movement to tax or regulate me out of meat too.
So I wish they would fuck off, actually.
I've seen people - usually old fogies - insist on trying to feed meat to vegetarians or pescetarians even when given ample notice to go for one of their other perfectlyt normal recipes.
Yes, I've been vegetarian ever since I was a teenager (I'm in my 50s now) and my father never accepted it. Whenever I dropped round, he'd offer me a bacon sandwich or suchlike and then act all hurt when I turned it down. I never really understood his determination to make me eat meat when I was obviously doing fine without it.
I cook a lot and have people around if someone is a vegetarian/vegan I have always made a main dish for them that is vegatarian/vegan....what I won't do is make the whole main dish vegetarian/vegan. The rest of us will be eating meat
I'm the opposite. Rabid meat eater. But if I'm giving a dinner party and there is a veggie there I will give everyone veggie food. Gives me a chance to show off my creativity although warning: putting (delicious) open cap mushrooms in things turns everything grey. I think it's rude to give people different things effectively singling them out for their dietary choices. I invited them, after all.
If someone wants to make a dietary choice, then that's their choice, but everyone else doesn't have to suffer for it.
My choice is to eat meat, and if I was eating at a vegan household I'd be seriously impressed and pleased if they put the effort in to make a meal suitable to my choices, not feel singled out.
For some reason though most vegans think they should be catered for, but there's no onus on them to return the favour.
As I said I believe it is rude. I have invited the person for dinner and the essence of good manners is not to make someone feel awkward or out of place. Hence everyone gets veggie food. Rolling out a separate dish for them, although I'm sure would be appreciated, is imo bad manners. But then I'm an old fashioned kind of guy.
That is your choice, many though would be offended at not being served because someone is a vegetarian.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Yes this is my position. I know that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy diet without meat as I haven't eaten meat in 35 years and am in great health. I've never tried to force this view on anyone else and as far as I can see on this forum the greatest proselytisers are from the eating dead animals camp. I do wish they would fuck off as I believe the government likes to put it.
I've never tried to make someone eat meat.
I've definitely had vegans and vegetarians try and make me eat their diet at events, either directly or through moral blackmail, or use their diet to exercise control in social situations. At a macro level there's a strong movement to tax or regulate me out of meat too.
So I wish they would fuck off, actually.
I've seen people - usually old fogies - insist on trying to feed meat to vegetarians or pescetarians even when given ample notice to go for one of their other perfectlyt normal recipes.
Yes, I've been vegetarian ever since I was a teenager (I'm in my 50s now) and my father never accepted it. Whenever I dropped round, he'd offer me a bacon sandwich or suchlike and then act all hurt when I turned it down. I never really understood his determination to make me eat meat when I was obviously doing fine without it.
I cook a lot and have people around if someone is a vegetarian/vegan I have always made a main dish for them that is vegatarian/vegan....what I won't do is make the whole main dish vegetarian/vegan. The rest of us will be eating meat
I'm the opposite. Rabid meat eater. But if I'm giving a dinner party and there is a veggie there I will give everyone veggie food. Gives me a chance to show off my creativity although warning: putting (delicious) open cap mushrooms in things turns everything grey. I think it's rude to give people different things effectively singling them out for their dietary choices. I invited them, after all.
If someone wants to make a dietary choice, then that's their choice, but everyone else doesn't have to suffer for it.
My choice is to eat meat, and if I was eating at a vegan household I'd be seriously impressed and pleased if they put the effort in to make a meal suitable to my choices, not feel singled out.
For some reason though most vegans think they should be catered for, but there's no onus on them to return the favour.
Suppose I like tripe? Doesn't mean I expect to be given andouillettes, or tripe and onions, in a normal household when visiting: ie a household hwere even handling and cooking the stuff, and its smell, puts everyone off their dinner, whatever it is. .
Vegan food puts me off my food. I'll still make it for my guests if that's what they eat, despite the fact its not what I eat, even if I'm not keen on the smell.
What amuses me too is vegans on Tripadvisor. Go to non-vegan restaurants and vegans will complain about the lack of vegan options on the menu if there aren't enough on the menu in their eyes. Yet there's no options for me in a vegan restaurant - you won't see me leave scathing 1* reviews on their restaurant though, I'll simply go to one that suits me instead.
Vegans always feel like they should be catered to everywhere, yet don't think I should be. Funny that.
Sales of veggie burgers on the slide, I fear we are headed for a beyond Beyond Meat world.
Price. Could be downpricing to lentils or beans instead. Inflation in food prices innit.
Good point.
On a purely personal level, when I have a meat-free meal, I prefer a "genuine" vegetarian dish to ersatz meat. There are some really tasty vegetarian dishes in their own right - they don't have to be a slightly worse version of an equivalent meat dish.
Indeed. As I noted earlier, our vegetarian dishes tend to be beans or lentil based, though I should have added tofu - no more processed than cheese, inherently. We do use Quorn sometimes but usually as straight as possible, as mince, esp if I can't get the local hoggett ot mutton mince.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Yes this is my position. I know that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy diet without meat as I haven't eaten meat in 35 years and am in great health. I've never tried to force this view on anyone else and as far as I can see on this forum the greatest proselytisers are from the eating dead animals camp. I do wish they would fuck off as I believe the government likes to put it.
I've never tried to make someone eat meat.
I've definitely had vegans and vegetarians try and make me eat their diet at events, either directly or through moral blackmail, or use their diet to exercise control in social situations. At a macro level there's a strong movement to tax or regulate me out of meat too.
So I wish they would fuck off, actually.
I've seen people - usually old fogies - insist on trying to feed meat to vegetarians or pescetarians even when given ample notice to go for one of their other perfectlyt normal recipes.
Yes, I've been vegetarian ever since I was a teenager (I'm in my 50s now) and my father never accepted it. Whenever I dropped round, he'd offer me a bacon sandwich or suchlike and then act all hurt when I turned it down. I never really understood his determination to make me eat meat when I was obviously doing fine without it.
I cook a lot and have people around if someone is a vegetarian/vegan I have always made a main dish for them that is vegatarian/vegan....what I won't do is make the whole main dish vegetarian/vegan. The rest of us will be eating meat
I'm the opposite. Rabid meat eater. But if I'm giving a dinner party and there is a veggie there I will give everyone veggie food. Gives me a chance to show off my creativity although warning: putting (delicious) open cap mushrooms in things turns everything grey. I think it's rude to give people different things effectively singling them out for their dietary choices. I invited them, after all.
If someone wants to make a dietary choice, then that's their choice, but everyone else doesn't have to suffer for it.
My choice is to eat meat, and if I was eating at a vegan household I'd be seriously impressed and pleased if they put the effort in to make a meal suitable to my choices, not feel singled out.
For some reason though most vegans think they should be catered for, but there's no onus on them to return the favour.
Suppose I like tripe? Doesn't mean I expect to be given andouillettes, or tripe and onions, in a normal household when visiting: ie a household hwere even handling and cooking the stuff, and its smell, puts everyone off their dinner, whatever it is. .
Plums! Sorry not being rude by that comment just have tons of them. A significant branch snapped off the tree because of the weight of the fruit. Stewed lunch and dinner. Plums not me. Although I am in the pub.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Yes this is my position. I know that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy diet without meat as I haven't eaten meat in 35 years and am in great health. I've never tried to force this view on anyone else and as far as I can see on this forum the greatest proselytisers are from the eating dead animals camp. I do wish they would fuck off as I believe the government likes to put it.
I've never tried to make someone eat meat.
I've definitely had vegans and vegetarians try and make me eat their diet at events, either directly or through moral blackmail, or use their diet to exercise control in social situations. At a macro level there's a strong movement to tax or regulate me out of meat too.
So I wish they would fuck off, actually.
I've seen people - usually old fogies - insist on trying to feed meat to vegetarians or pescetarians even when given ample notice to go for one of their other perfectlyt normal recipes.
Yes, I've been vegetarian ever since I was a teenager (I'm in my 50s now) and my father never accepted it. Whenever I dropped round, he'd offer me a bacon sandwich or suchlike and then act all hurt when I turned it down. I never really understood his determination to make me eat meat when I was obviously doing fine without it.
I cook a lot and have people around if someone is a vegetarian/vegan I have always made a main dish for them that is vegatarian/vegan....what I won't do is make the whole main dish vegetarian/vegan. The rest of us will be eating meat
I'm the opposite. Rabid meat eater. But if I'm giving a dinner party and there is a veggie there I will give everyone veggie food. Gives me a chance to show off my creativity although warning: putting (delicious) open cap mushrooms in things turns everything grey. I think it's rude to give people different things effectively singling them out for their dietary choices. I invited them, after all.
If someone wants to make a dietary choice, then that's their choice, but everyone else doesn't have to suffer for it.
My choice is to eat meat, and if I was eating at a vegan household I'd be seriously impressed and pleased if they put the effort in to make a meal suitable to my choices, not feel singled out.
For some reason though most vegans think they should be catered for, but there's no onus on them to return the favour.
I you don't eat meat because you consider the farming and slaughter of animals to be cruel, it would be inconsistent in the extreme to serve it to other people.
So they expect to be served their own choice when they go to someone else's house but won't return the favour?
Sunak has bigger problems than Anderson, personnel wise. Shapps and Cleverly are both far more personable and charismatic.
When he is flailing in the polls and another 1000 Tory councillors have lost, who then will support him?
Who will support him? Shapps and Cleverly for a start.
You have a theory based on concern from the Tory membership/councillor base that Sunak hasn't got what it takes to turn this around.
I get that, but where you run into problems is that enough of the MPs have decided that the Sunak/Hunt approach of trying to avoid further market chaos whilst throwing out a bit of red meat on immigration, ULEZ etc is the only prospect of limiting losses. They've lashed themselves to the mast, the world king across the water is now an ex-MP, and anyone vaguely credible is resigned to sit it out, survive the election, and stand for leader of the opposition (a much better position than taking the poison chalice with weeks left in the term).
So I just don't see the realistic mechanism for you to get what you want this side of an election.
My feeling is the membership are usually 9 months ahead of the MPs on this.
MPs panic close to an election when polls are low. They'll push the button when they realise they're going to lose their seats otherwise.
Quite a few Tory MPs are standing down, quite a few won't in fact lose their seats (in the 1997 massacre only just over half did), and quite a few who are in serious danger will conclude that defenestration with weeks to go makes their prospects worse not better.
Quite apart from that, is who will take on the job in that situation. All the best candidates will sit on their hands until after the election, leaving a choice between maniacs and incredibly pompous, unappealing Sir Bufton Tufton types answering the nation's call at time of crisis.
I see your frustration, but I don't see how it realistically resolves in the way you describe.
Politics happens very slowly, then all at once.
Local donors will start drying up (this is how Tory MP's election campaign funds are secured), numbers of leaflet deliverers will dry up, councillors will be down.
Plus, come October, the 1 year moratorium on VONC within the PCP expires. It could be there are already a good number in; and every by election lost makes the threshold easier to reach.
Firstly, this assumes Sunak will push a General Election it beyond next May (and a further loss of councillors). I know that's a fairly widespread assumption, but I'm not sure. It's not a great round of elections for the Tories and, particularly if he does feel under any pressure, I think he'll chance it.
Secondly, I think enough Tory activists and donors either quite like Sunak or will stick with it come what may. As with the Lib Dems in 2015, on the ground and in local parties of threatened MPs, there is some rallying round. It may well not save seats - it didn't for the Lib Dems in 2015 - but actually in a backs-to-the-wall situation, quite a lot of people fight rather than take flight. Even being very cynical, if you're an ambitious Tory in the seat of an under-threat MP, you help them man the barricades and come out with a lot of credit as well as a vacancy.
Thirdly, there isn't a great deal of evidence of letters being planned or going in. Maybe there are behind the scenes, and maybe people are bring quiet, but there does need to be some noise to get momentum.
Finally, and crucially, a VONC needs to pass by a majority. I know Johnson went having survived a VONC, but that was through a further scandal and mass resignations. That's just not happening with Sunak - he's not likely to be embroiled in a scandal and his cabinet have either bought into his project or decided to wait until after the election as being disloyal isn't a winning formula.
Every Tory leader since Major who has survived a VONC hasn't survived the year....
The year counting from next may, runs in to ragnarok. This is like a dinosaur 65m and 1 years ago agonizing over whether its diet is the one most likely to ensure its longevity.
Secondly, it is beyond bonkers to think that HM might refuse a dissolution following the Lascelles principles. They and the SA and Canada cases referred to by Lascelles were immediately post GE crises, with a real issue as to what happens for the next 5 years, not at the fag end of a government. Apart from that, we have conventions about conventions in our wacky non codified constitution and the convention is not to put HMK in a spot where he has to make a political decision. If the tories start buggering him about (and it would have to be anti sunakite tories asking him to refuse) the punishment doled out by the electorate at GE 24 or 25 won't be KT, it will be end Permian. It would literally destroy the party. No decade in the wilderness and triumphant return under dishface.
Nope, the monarch wouldn't grant a dissolution because the PM was running scared of his party. Especially the first request for dissolution in the reign....
You really have got this round your neck, haven't you? Your initial misstatement of the case was "You know that the constitutional advice on a PM requesting a dissolution in the event of his imminent ousting is that it won't be accepted, right?" which just completely misunderstands the principles. It isn't a 50-50, mibbee ayes, mibbee naws, sort of call that HMK has to make, like an umpire adjudging an LBW appeal. The default, null, safe option is to grant the dissolution, it's only in insanely rare crises that you think about doing anything else.. If Charles grants a dissolution he isn't really doing anything. Not sticking his head above the parapet. What makes you think he wants to kick off his reign by enabling 6 months of Suella Braverman PM? Most GEs happen after 4 and a bit years anyway, and Sunak can just say he feels it's about time for one. And at the time he makes the request there's unlikely to be anything beyond tittle tattle about letters to Old Lady to suggest an imminent ousting anyway. On the face of it he will command a 62 seat majority.This is merely bonkers.
An insanely rare situation like.....a PM who has lost control of his own party wanting to dissolve parliament?
"Lost control of his party" will be PB tittle tattle, not something of which regal notice has to be taken, at thetime he asks Chas to blow the whistle.
Let me guess, you are a disgruntled party member, voted for Truss, itching for a Sunakian Ides of March. Not going to happen. He, to coin a phrase, holds all the cards.
Lol. Holds all the cards? He doesn't even have 2-7 off suit
Now you are just being silly. But you are better informed about the Lascelles Principles than you were 12 hours ago, so therels that.
Ha.
My turn to guess: you're rather closer to the centre of things than you let on. You're somewhat concerned about the position of Sunak given he doesn't have any ability to change the narrative, and his colleagues have started looking around for a replacement? You probably cheered the 'expectations management' figure at the last locals, and then didn't even blush when the briefed 'worst case scenario' was in fact breached.
Meat you can get whole cuts of unprocessed meat. Whereas you largely get processed crap for the alternative, which is nowhere near as healthy and not something we should wish upon our worst enemy.
While that might be true for an Asda own brand vegan burger, an Impossible burger contains 19g of protein, while there are 18g in a Beyond burger.
Also it’s a bean burger, not a pretend-meat burger! And if you think the beefburger *isn't* processed… well, ignorance is bliss I guess.
People get very strange very quickly when the consumption of flesh is questioned.
The idea that vegan food is ‘all processed carbs’ is just daft, unless you have an extraordinarily broad definition of ‘processed’ which extends to such processes as ‘picking fruit off a tree’.
It's entirely natural. The whole planet works on the basis of a living food chain.
What do people think consumes their flesh when our time on earth is up?
Little clue: they aren't vegan.
Natural does not equal necessary. It's natural for me to not be able to see clearly 4ft in front of my face, but I like my glasses. It's also natural to piss and shit straight onto the soil, but I'm sure people would get upset if I did that outside of any private compost heap I might decide to keep.
No one is saying that humans cannot get nutrients from meat, just that we can have a diet that doesn't include it.
If you feel that the consumption of meat is morally abhorrent, or just dislike the mass produced nature of a lot of meat now, then you can live a healthy life without eating meat.
Yes this is my position. I know that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy diet without meat as I haven't eaten meat in 35 years and am in great health. I've never tried to force this view on anyone else and as far as I can see on this forum the greatest proselytisers are from the eating dead animals camp. I do wish they would fuck off as I believe the government likes to put it.
I've never tried to make someone eat meat.
I've definitely had vegans and vegetarians try and make me eat their diet at events, either directly or through moral blackmail, or use their diet to exercise control in social situations. At a macro level there's a strong movement to tax or regulate me out of meat too.
So I wish they would fuck off, actually.
I've seen people - usually old fogies - insist on trying to feed meat to vegetarians or pescetarians even when given ample notice to go for one of their other perfectlyt normal recipes.
Yes, I've been vegetarian ever since I was a teenager (I'm in my 50s now) and my father never accepted it. Whenever I dropped round, he'd offer me a bacon sandwich or suchlike and then act all hurt when I turned it down. I never really understood his determination to make me eat meat when I was obviously doing fine without it.
I cook a lot and have people around if someone is a vegetarian/vegan I have always made a main dish for them that is vegatarian/vegan....what I won't do is make the whole main dish vegetarian/vegan. The rest of us will be eating meat
I'm the opposite. Rabid meat eater. But if I'm giving a dinner party and there is a veggie there I will give everyone veggie food. Gives me a chance to show off my creativity although warning: putting (delicious) open cap mushrooms in things turns everything grey. I think it's rude to give people different things effectively singling them out for their dietary choices. I invited them, after all.
If someone wants to make a dietary choice, then that's their choice, but everyone else doesn't have to suffer for it.
My choice is to eat meat, and if I was eating at a vegan household I'd be seriously impressed and pleased if they put the effort in to make a meal suitable to my choices, not feel singled out.
For some reason though most vegans think they should be catered for, but there's no onus on them to return the favour.
Suppose I like tripe? Doesn't mean I expect to be given andouillettes, or tripe and onions, in a normal household when visiting: ie a household hwere even handling and cooking the stuff, and its smell, puts everyone off their dinner, whatever it is. .
Vegan food puts me off my food. I'll still make it for my guests if that's what they eat, despite the fact its not what I eat, even if I'm not keen on the smell.
What amuses me too is vegans on Tripadvisor. Go to non-vegan restaurants and vegans will complain about the lack of vegan options on the menu if there aren't enough on the menu in their eyes. Yet there's no options for me in a vegan restaurant - you won't see me leave scathing 1* reviews on their restaurant though, I'll simply go to one that suits me instead.
Vegans always feel like they should be catered to everywhere, yet don't think I should be. Funny that.
Vegan food puts you off your food? Do the chips put you off your fish?
Comments
Taking such a Puritan/purist view will have consequences for their nutrition and they need to accept that.
The sensible thing to me seems to be to consume a reasonable amount of meat.
I have absolutely no ethical issues with it. All sorts of creatures consume all others and without being too morbid about it maggots and bacteria will consume us one day too, and then other creatures then them in turn.
Circle of life.
On a purely personal level, when I have a meat-free meal, I prefer a "genuine" vegetarian dish to ersatz meat. There are some really tasty vegetarian dishes in their own right - they don't have to be a slightly worse version of an equivalent meat dish.
Non sentient creatures are not constrained by morality due to the fact they can’t conceive of it. Humanity can. No moral question can be answered by nature.
To do Pratchett again:
Take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. and yet... and yet you act as if there is some ideal order in the world, as if there is some... some rightness in the universe by which it may be judged.
Humans make that shit up. And that’s good.
If you’re going down that road we ultimately live off a sunlight-based diet 😂
I realise that for Lee Anderthal “France” is an insult in itself, but some of us quite like the place.
Good cuts of whole meat are great for you, much better than processed carbs.
Its a shame that meat is so expensive compared to processed carbs. We should hope to boost the amount of meat eaten worldwide going forwards. 👍
I've definitely had vegans and vegetarians try and make me eat their diet at events, either directly or through moral blackmail, or use their diet to exercise control in social situations. At a macro level there's a strong movement to tax or regulate me out of meat too.
So I wish they would fuck off, actually.
Some cricket instead.
Test selection is set to get interesting, whether Ben Stokes likes it or not
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/aug/09/the-spin-ben-stokes-england-test-selection-india-tour-cricket
..Let’s assume Stokes can bowl, by hook or by crook. For the first Test at Hyderabad, the XI could look like this: 1) Zak Crawley, 2) Ben Duckett, 3) Stokes, 4) Root, 5) Harry Brook, 6) Bairstow, 7) Foakes, 8) Woakes or Curran or Ahmed or Will Jacks, 9) Wood or Olly Stone, 10) Leach, 11) Anderson or Tongue. Ollie Robinson, the closest thing to Broad, should be in there too. But he may have to spend the autumn working on his batting, so he can join the queue for No 8.
It’s a team of two halves. The batting is settled, balanced and high-powered, albeit unproven in India apart from Root (Crawley and Duckett average 12 there between them). The bowling is a collection of bits and bobs and ifs and buts. It will only resemble a proper attack if Wood and Stone are fit, Anderson returns to form and Stokes continues to coax wickets out of part-time spinners.
Can Bazball possibly work in India? It can if your name is Rishabh Pant, but then he doesn’t have to do it against Messrs Ashwin and Jadeja. England have never scored three runs an over through a series on Indian soil, let alone the five that is Stokes’s preferred tempo. Last winter, he tore up the conventions of Test cricket in Pakistan: now he has to do it in India too...
If Sunak is PM, and there is not an active leadership election ongoing, then the King will grant a dissolution request. No ifs, buts, or maybes.
The reason for the macro level policy moves are to combat many of the things we’ve been discussing in the thread - dietary issues and the long term impact of farming practices on the environment. I also think it is the realm of politics to, in part, provide policy that enforces the moral norms (not that this is always good). I think if humanity survives the climate catastrophe we will see most people eating less meat than most people do now - partly out of necessity and partly out of shifting moral norms.
- PM has lost confidence of party
- PM knows he won't last as leader
- PM requests dissolution
- Monarch says no, I'll find someone else who can lead your party which has, checks notes, a huge majority in the current, viable parliament.
We already played it out during May and Johnson's fag ends. In short, the monarch won't grant a dissolution to a PM who is facing the sack and only going to the country to run from his own party.
I also tried bear in Finland. Less convinced
That's why I'm favour of arguments about it being healthier and better for the environment. Because that's an actual argument which can be assessed, and someone might decide its OK for them to ear meat, but they should perhaps do so less or not all on that basis, not because humans are masters of their own destiny and so its morally wrong.
Also North America and mainland Europe seem to manage okay with wolves and even bears. Granted, we have a much greater population density - but again, just give over a load of land and see “here be wolves, enter at your own risk”.
Cyclists or pedestrians might have a bit of a problem, but that's not an issue for you?
No I shouldn't have gotten annoyed, it's irrational, but I truly was.
In general, though, you want to eat a balanced diet, and avoid too much sugar and salt.
And for most people, that probably means they are eating more green vegetables and reducing quantities of processed food (which is going to include burgers and fries).
For example - I don’t think all dogs should be vegetarian or vegan. But, it I had a pet dog I would feed them that way. Why? Because I think there are moral arguments against eating meat / animal products, I am making moral positions on behalf of my dog, and dogs can live healthy lives in that lifestyle. Cats, for example, cannot; they are obligate carnivores.
Some politics is a discussion of what moral positions we feel the need to encode into our society based on the norms and understanding of issues at the time. At one time it was thought okay to own people as property, and it was legal to do so. At one time it was thought okay for wives to be assaulted by their husbands, and it was legal to do so. Those things have (rightly in my opinion) been shown to be immoral and therefore are no longer legal.
I can certainly see a future where most people look at the harm done to animals to eat them and their products versus the ease with which we could swap to healthy plant based diets and therefore encode that in law. I don’t personally advocate for that (because I don’t find it an important enough hill to die on) but I would agree in general with it as a position.
Having read Mr Anderson's reported comments, I have decided he is little better than a sh*t-stirrer and, at best, is a nasty piece of work who has no business being in public office.
The one meat I tried that I wouldn't recommend or try again is whale. Tried that in Iceland where its traditional and legal, wasn't that keen on it and wouldn't try it again.
A good friend of mine, Fayaz is his name, and he’s a Muslim vegetarian. He can still be persuaded by the occasional bacon sandwich though, especially when he has a hangover.
Never had the favour reciprocated though, vegan hosts never seem to return the favour and go out of their way to cook a meat dish for their meat-eating guests.
I have a friend who lives in Canada that had a bear sit outside their lodge once - apparently they shouted until it went away.
I would really love to see a bear or wolf in the wild, but I think I’m in the minority there.
The Tories, however, chose to promote him.
SNP leads Labour by 3% in Scotland.
Scotland Westminster VI (5-6 August):
SNP 37% (+2)
Labour 34% (+2)
Conservative 17% (-4)
Liberal Democrat 7% (–)
Green 2% (–)
Reform 2% (–)
Other 1% (–)
Changes +/- 1-2 July
Redfield & Wilton Strategies
'No' leads by 3 points.
Scotland Independence Referendum Voting Intention (5–6 August):
No: 48% (-1)
Yes: 45% (–)
Don't Know: 7% (+1)
Changes +/- 1-2 July
https://agri.idaho.gov/main/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Red-Deer-versus-Elk-Genetics-002.pdf
One thing that amused me in the town I was at is that all their bins (even in town) are bear-proof bins. So that bears don't get attracted by them and start digging in them next to people's homes or shops.
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
And I'll tell them to fuck off back to where they came from!”
Vegan, I can understand since it's quite limiting, and requires specialist knowledge - but ruling out serving a vegetarian dish, given the universe of culinary possibilities, sounds a bit weird.
But if someone morally objects to consuming meat, why would you expect them to cook you a meat dish? It’s not like you can’t eat vegetables.
As a parallel, I have friends and family who keep kosher. I wouldn’t expect them to serve up ham sandwiches for my kids, nor would I serve them non-kosher food at our house. Kind of goes without saying, I’d have thought.
Now if its an allergy like for example someone I know who is allergic to garlic then I will cook everything garlic free. But that is because its a medical necessity not a choice.
Same as if I invite a christian round. If they want to say grace they can but I won't insist everyone else does before they eat
Let me guess, you are a disgruntled party member, voted for Truss, itching for a Sunakian Ides of March. Not going to happen. He, to coin a phrase, holds all the cards.
My choice is to eat meat, and if I was eating at a vegan household I'd be seriously impressed and pleased if they put the effort in to make a meal suitable to my choices, not feel singled out.
For some reason though most vegans think they should be catered for, but there's no onus on them to return the favour.
You are limiting yourself by ruling out all dishes which don't involve meat. I didn't argue you ought to cook vegetarian every time - just that your determination to serve only meat dishes on every occasion seems a bit weird.
It was nonchalantly crossing the road in front of my car, going from woodland to woodland
What surprised me was my instinctive fear. I stopped the car and stayed rigid for a minute. What was the bear gonna do, come up and unlock the car doors?
Yet that is the power of the reflex, when you see a big apex predator
Strawbs and raspberries have been good though, and my hops are running as wild and vigorous as ever expecting another huge crop that I will fail to do anything with.
What amuses me too is vegans on Tripadvisor. Go to non-vegan restaurants and vegans will complain about the lack of vegan options on the menu if there aren't enough on the menu in their eyes. Yet there's no options for me in a vegan restaurant - you won't see me leave scathing 1* reviews on their restaurant though, I'll simply go to one that suits me instead.
Vegans always feel like they should be catered to everywhere, yet don't think I should be. Funny that.
My turn to guess: you're rather closer to the centre of things than you let on. You're somewhat concerned about the position of Sunak given he doesn't have any ability to change the narrative, and his colleagues have started looking around for a replacement? You probably cheered the 'expectations management' figure at the last locals, and then didn't even blush when the briefed 'worst case scenario' was in fact breached.