Jan 122020
Mike Meredith
Jan 122020
To be plain, I’m not a vegan; I’m a vegetarian and have been for over 30 years now. Somebody has to eat all that surplus cheese, and what else am I going to put on my morning muesli? Navy-strength rum? It’s a nice idea, but I doubt my employer would be too impressed.
The old joke goes: “How do you know if someone is vegan? They’ll tell you.”. And somebody always makes it every time veganism is mentioned.
Here’s a few thought on that …
First of all, how do you know that all vegans will tell you and preach? The existence of noisy ones doesn’t provide you any information about quiet ones – you (and I) don’t know whether it is 1% of vegans being quiet, 25%, 50%, 75%, or 99%. From my experience of vegetarianism, the ones most inclined to make a noise about it are the newly converted … and vegans have been around for ages. I even know a few that have been vegan for longer than I’ve been a vegetarian.
Secondly, I know from my own experience that eating out with a bunch of relative strangers (co-workers, sales critters, and the like) is likely to result in being questioned on your menu selection: “Why are you eating that bloody rabbit food?”. It’s kind of hard to avoid the topic when you’re being interrogated all meal long about it.
Finally, I think that ‘normals’ overlook just how much pressure there is to conform to the standard carnivorous diet – from the restaurant menu that sticks vegetarian/vegan choices in the ‘restricted diet’ section, through to jokes about a steak is overdone if it doesn’t “moo” when you stick a fork in it.
Is it any wonder vegans are in your face?
Lastly, with the exception of a certain Twitter exchange, vegans have never been in my face.
Jan 052020
So the US has blown up Soleimani with a drone strike; what’s the problem?
Well it isn’t that Soleimani didn’t deserve it, although I would lean in favour of being imprisoned for life after a conviction for crimes against humanity (yes this would be a lot more difficult to arrange). And no it isn’t because the one effectively pressing the button was an orange-painted idiotic sociopath.
No, it’s the way he was killed.
What seems to be commonly overlooked is that a total of ten people were killed by the drone strike – did all of those there deserve to die? Each and every one? No, probably not.
And who made the decision to go ahead and make the drone strike? The president of the USA with an arbitrary decision rather than any proper due process. In other words, this ‘execution’ (or assassination) wasn’t sanctioned by a court of law .
And lastly, this was an act of war by the USA against Iraqi territory and an Iranian general. Either could use this act as justification (as much as any war is justified) for war with the USA. And as the USA has used similar acts by others as justification for war, it can hardly claim that they are not. At least not honestly.
In terms of reactions to this assassination, it doesn’t matter what USA citizens think; it matters what Iraqis and Iranians think. And judging by the public reactions so far, they don’t appear to like it much. That will further radicalise ordinary Iranians and Iraqis and make them more likely to side with the Islamic terrorists.
Jan 012020
The vegan sausage roll. What is it made of? Given the logic of naming meat products (“Pork sausage”, “Beef sausage”, “Turkey sausage”, …), you would kind of expect it to be made out of vegans. Sorry … that’s a joke I keep making because I find it funny.
But who is the vegan sausage roll (and all meat-free meat products) really for? I’m no vegan, but I have been a vegetarian for over 30 years, and I say the vegan sausage roll is not really for vegans at all.
It’s not bad, but the best part of it is the pastry wrapped around that faux-meat. The faux-meat is too much like meat to be something that a vegan or vegetarian hankers after (except those who are newly converted). I’ve also just tried an incredible burger, and the results were quite similar – the burger was impressively meat-like, but frankly a spicy-bean burger is nicer (for me).
No, this stuff is for those who hanker after meat but want to limit their meat intake. Which is no bad thing, but can we at least start naming these thing properly? Apart from anything else, it’ll stop me making really bad jokes about meat products consisting of vegans.
Two Bridges
Dec 222019
