A few millennia ago Prophets wore tardy clothes and had long grey
beards, while predicting the bleeding obvious. Back then, people listened to
them too, possibly because they had no radio or glamorous politicians to
otherwise distract them.
Few things have changed really. Now we have Mystic Meg predicting that
we are all going to die in the next eighty years or some has-been druid
masquerading as an astrologist predicting we will meet a tall dark stranger.
Quite rightly, those of us with an IQ higher that our shoe-size will dismiss
this as mumbo jumbo and get on with making our own mistakes in life.
But how many of us stop and think, hmmm, what will happen if, er, we ignore
this problem….?
Oh dear, now I’m sounding like that preacher they have on radio four
every morning who comes up with blandly profound statements about how we should
all have a group hug every day…
Well, I am no Nostrodamus but, a week ago I did make a prediction that
those caught in the headlights of paddock-gate scandal might just start and
divert the heat into profit somewhere else. And low and behold, the
supermarkets are managing to bring on the smoke-screens right in front of our
very eyes so that the dreaded word ‘horsemeat’ escaped the limelight.
Firstly we get a news headline scaring us that the price of fuel will
quadruple in ten years and that we should all start panic-buying petrol on the
forecourts and stocking up on paraffin lamps just in case. Thankfully they are
on offer this week in store near you.
Next we get we get adverts for tasty vegetarian meat-substitute burgers
appearing on our TV. How perfectly timed is that?
‘Worried that the meat in your
burger might be unidentifiable?’ says the narrator. ‘Well, why not try this regurgitated vegetable crap, grown and
hand-picked by peasants in a third world country we don’t care about, mashed up
in a concrete mixer, then seasoned with essence of cow - which is actually
refined from a krypto-boroglutin and camel dung - and bound together with
dandelion stalks! It’s good for you.’
On radio 2 I heard the normally funny Giles Coren being interviewed
about his latest and excellently timed book entitled something like: ‘Let’s all
eat Fish’. His opinions, which go much further reaching than anything I could
print, stated that the reason we all want to eat meat is because we were
brain-washed by the government in the days when this country produced so much
meat that they had to get rid of it somehow!
‘What?!!’ I screamed desperately at the car radio. ‘Mankind has been
carnivorous for a hundred million years, you prat!’
‘But now we don’t produce enough meat to go round, we have to top it up
with other creatures instead…’
‘FF Sake!’ I bellow, ‘we can produce as much meat as you want, if tw*ts
like you stopped preaching vegetarian!’
‘It won’t stop there,’ continues he, not stopping there. ‘There will be
all sorts of other stuff in those meat pies. Cat, dogs, snakes, insects.
Anything they can find to make up the volume….’
‘INSECTS?!!’ By now I am yelling so loud that my eyes are running and I
inadvertently run an old lady in a Renault Clio off the road. Why is this man
on primetime radio, instead of someone with an atom of agricultural knowledge
and 2 spoon-fulls of common sense?!
Where, oh where, was the representative from the National Beef Association,
that lobby which all cattle farmers subscribe to, preaching from the rooftops
of every building in London
with a massive told-you-so slogan?
Why isn’t their chairman on every TV program and late night show,
promoting their produce, stamping their foot and quoting what it says on their
website:
‘Our aims are to improve the
quality and safety of beef … and the education of … the general public…’
Because, instead of holding live ‘EXPO’ shows every year to preach to
already converted farmers and brown-nose the corporate fat cats further up the
supply chain, this is where their duty lies. Spend some of your registration
fees properly!
To quote Rugby coach, Jim Telfer: ‘..this
is your Everest, boys..!’
But so far, while the vegans have loaded up their yaks and are leaving
base-camp with their sunglasses on, you useless people haven’t even woken up
to see the dawn of golden opportunity to get your voice heard by the nation for once.
Perhaps, Giles is right. Within a few years we may all be eating
insect-burgers, after our own industry has failed to do anything other than
fall on the sword placed directly at the bottom of their own stairs by the
clever people.
Come on British Farmers. Tell the public how great your beef product is, not
in your own boardrooms, but through loud-hailers and hard-hitting channels of
TV and Radio! Haven’t you learned anything from the French?
It is about time a common sense party was formed in an attempt to stop all the nonsense and propaganda to which we are constantly subjected.
ReplyDeleteThis latest episode started by the discovery of horse DNA (it sounds scientific and adds to the mystery) in certain processed products and slowly developed into 100% horsemeat in other products. Nobody reacted quickly enough as it must be blindingly obvious that if horsemeat was being used to fill pies etc the other products of the carcases would almost certainly be in the food chain. At last they have started testing stock cubes etc. Of course the British have long had some peculiar attitudes to various foods, and so it comes as no surprise that we are told that the products in question are “contaminated”.
This has not happened overnight and as far as I am aware there has not been any report of a health problem in spite of what the horses may or may not have been injected with. In any event the principle drug mentioned may be beneficial to arthritis sufferers. On the periphery we learn that several products have also been “contaminated with pork.
Where did all this horsemeat suddenly appear from? Perhaps some emerging eastern European country has removed all its horse drawn vehicles and invested in cars, vans and trucks on the back of the opportunity soon to be presented to it of flooding the British labour market. In that case its own market would be awash with unwanted horses.
Can we now expect mass suicides from the ones whose religious beliefs have been affronted by the discovery that they have inadvertently consumed forbidden meat or will they just settle for litigation?
At a time of economic stagnation brought about by the incompetent politicos and their armies of experts and advisors we are advised to use the cheaper cuts of meat. This is but a cunning ploy to reserve the best cuts for the bankers and other tossers that have not had to suffer the massive downturn or pay the price for trying to solve the problem. It, of course, is necessary to slaughter animals to get the cheaper cuts and this in no way reduces the amount of better cuts. The economic result being that the cheaper cuts increase in price and the aforementioned tossers laugh all the way to the butchers and back, as the top end of the market becomes proportionately cheaper.
Perhaps we should tax processed foods at a huge percentage to dissuade its production and put about that it is for the common good in a further attempt to cut obesity and add it to the long list of items prevented by taxation for example smoking, drinking and global warming.
Tax the sun for causing life and cure everything.