Are Vegetarians Allowed To Eat Meat ?

 Politics  1 Response »
Apr 262010
 

Goo … sorry I meant searching for some information on the mythical vegetarian saveloy, I came across a mildly interesting discussion revolving around whether vegetarians were allowed to eat meat-based sausages (and saveloys). The suggestion was that of course vegetarians are allowed to eat meat products because it is a personal choice.

Rubbish.

First of all, the choice of becoming a vegetarian may be made for religious or health reasons. The relevant discussion ignored the possibility of being vegetarian for such reasons and specifically mentioned Muslims not being allowed to eat non-Halal meat. Of course becoming a Muslim or one of the “must not eat meat” religions (such as Buddhism) is a matter of choice, but once made you are not allowed by religious “law” to eat what is prohibited.

But it goes further than that. The word “allow” implies an external authority which dictates what is and what is not allowed. Indeed there are such authorities, such as your neighbourhood government’s laws. But this ignores that you can be your own authority – I can allow myself to write blog entries in the evening and prohibit writing them at work. It does not matter that nobody enforces these restrictions other than myself.

Indeed, whatever the authorities may say, almost all restrictions they impose are in the end “enforced” by the individual – it does not matter who says that killing people is wrong, it is my decision whether I kill somebody or not.

Nobody has told me that I cannot eat meat; it is a decision that I have come to – that I am not allowed to eat meat.

Trivialising vegetarianism by saying that vegetarians are allowed to eat meat is extremely insulting to those vegetarians who are very devoted to the cause. If people say that vegetarians are allowed to eat meat, it implies that vegetarians are just being awkward in refusing to eat meat (we’re not) and that (for example) it’s perfectly ok to feed vegetarians meat as a joke.

Not the sort of joke any vegetarian would find funny.

Hill Conquered

Tactical Voting Is Smart Voting

 Politics  No Responses »
Apr 262010
 

Under our current voting system, voting for the candidate who represents the party you wan in government is not necessarily a smart way to vote. In some cases, choosing the party you want in government is throwing you vote away on a party that is very unlikely to win in your constituency. For instance in the constituency that I live in – Portsmouth South – anyone who votes Labour is pretty much throwing their vote away. The effective choices are between Liberal, or Conservative candidates.

With a transferable vote system (which of course we do not have), a Labour supporter (which isn’t me!) may well vote Labour as their first choice, and Liberal as their second choice to reduce the possibility that the Conservative candidate would win. Similarly, a Tory supporter in Scotland may choose Liberal as their second choice to reduce the chance of a Labour candidate winning.

Under our current system, it is probably better to choose between the two (or rarely three) leading candidates, picking the one that you least dislike the least. Whilst it may go against the grain to vote for somebody other than your preferred candidate, it does mean that your vote against the candidate you dislike the least is more effective.

Smart tactical voting is more complex than this of course – it involves checking the details of your constituency (you may also want to check the Voting Power details for your constituency, and the relevant Wikipedia article), and working out from the previous election results which two (or three if the third is within about 5% of the second placed candidate) and working out which one you would least dislike.

The Tories are warning that a vote for the Liberal party is voting to keep Gordon Brown in power – which is effectively saying that smart voting can accomplish something, but obviously slanted towards favouring voting Tory wherever you are. Whilst no party will encourage tactical voting, it can be for the benefit of whatever party you would prefer.

Vote tactically – it’s the smart thing to do!

Government Bailout Of The Airlines? Hell No!

 Politics  No Responses »
Apr 232010
 

Now that the ash cloud is no longer looming over the UK and Europe, and aircraft are criss-crossing our skies again, it is time to look at some of what has happened.

Of course the airlines are complaining about all the unexpected expenses they have had to undergo and are beginning to hint that the governments (and Europe) should think about paying out some form of compensation. Sounds reasonable doesn’t it ? After all it was not the fault of the airlines that they could not fly and it certainly cost them lots of lost business.

Well hang on a minute. It was hardly the fault of any of the governments that a volcano in Iceland blew up and spewed ash across the skies of Europe. So why should we as taxpayers bail out the airlines?

There has been a hint that the relevant authorities were being a bit cautious closing the skies because of the ash cloud. Well perhaps, but they were only following established procedures. If the airlines think that the governments were being too cautious when it comes to the safety of passengers, perhaps they should have complained about it well before now.

And it seems a bit peculiar that the airlines are complaining about a risk to their business that is known well in advance. The single-man ice cream van that sets up shop on the seafront every day is not likely to get compensated by the government because the weather is bad one summer, so why should the airlines get compensated for something that is very similar ? If your business has a particular risk you have two options.

You can shoulder that risk and use whatever funds you have available to get through the rough time.

Or you can buy an insurance policy that keeps you going through a rough time.

There is another aspect to this that need considering too … airlines are supposed to pay for accommodating inconvenienced passengers on the second leg of their journey, and to arrange transport when it becomes available. From the EU website FAQ on the volcanic ash cloud situation (the “you” means “you the airline customer”) :-

  • You have the right to either reimbursement or re-routing
  • You have the right to information – there is an obligation for airlines to inform you about rights and flight schedules
  • You have the right to care- that means food, drinks, accommodation as appropriate

It is hard to get concrete evidence on exactly what the airlines are doing in this situation; many airlines are paying through the nose to treat their customers fairly. But there are plenty of indications that other airlines are either ignoring their obligations entirely or trying to get away with the minimum possible.

Looking around the Internet you can find plenty of indications that various airlines are :-

  1. Refusing to pay for any accomodation
  2. Putting an arbitrary limit on the length of stay that they will pay a hotel for – 3 or 4 days.
  3. Not providing information. Even going so far as to close their desks to avoid passengers.

Some are worse than others – the worst offender seems to be Ryanair. Which is understandable given they first tried to insist that their responsibility began and ended with merely refunding the cost of the ticket. They rapidly backtracked from this, and tried to claim that their statement was misunderstood. Yeah right!

Of course because of their actions many of us are of the opinion that Ryanair are a bunch of money-grabbing vampires with nothing but contempt for the people who travel in their cattle-class shuttles. And there are a few other airlines that are not a whole lot better

Some of the other airlines are saying that the European Union should compensate their costs for taking care of the stranded travellers. Well that might be a reasonable request if the airlines had been fully compliant with EU regulations regarding the care of the stranded travellers.

Perhaps the EU should offer to compensate the airlines solely for the cost of customer care only for those airlines who took proper care of their customers. A difficult task but perhaps it could be accomplished by simply compensating those airlines who have received no complaints that have been found to be reasonable. As for Ryanair, “No fscking chance” 🙂

Hung Parliament? Good or Bad ?

 Politics  No Responses »
Apr 182010
 

There is a suspicion that the elections in the UK just might result in a hung parliament where no party has an overall majority. In other words no party has more MPs than all the other parties put together. In such a situation, a government formed from the largest party tends to be quite nervous as it can be thrown out by its enemies if they all manage to agree.

The preferred option is for a coalition to form out of two or more parties who can swing (if all their MPs obey the party whip) an overall majority.

However in either case, the government is not as stable as it would otherwise be. Hung parliaments usually have a poor reputation because they typically do not last very long and spend more time arguing amongst themselves rather than actually doing anything constructive.

At least in the UK. In Europe, hung parliaments are common enough that coalition government is the norm rather than the exception.

The Tories – after the first “presidential” TV debate where Nick Clegg was surprisingly effective – are suddenly banging on about how dangerous hung parliaments can be. Ignoring those scum-sucking lying politicians for the moment (at least as far as we can), are hung parliaments actually good or bad ?

Well the truth is that they do not happen enough in the UK for us to know. We do know that hung parliaments in Europe are quite common and that it does not appear to be a complete catastrophe there. Of course there will be those who point at countries like Italy and ask whether we want a government as unstable as they have. But I will also point at Italy’s economy and say that it doesn’t seem to have done much harm – Italy is the 7th largest country in the world in terms of GDP.

It is entirely possible that a hung parliament in the UK will cause a momentary loss of confidence by the financial markets, although those that panic are eventually going to be counter-balanced by those with cooler heads that realise that the UK is not going to go bust just because it has a potentially unstable government. It is likely that the economic effect of a certain cloud of volcanic ash will have a greater effect than a day or two of instability in the economic markets.

If we can avoid being distracted by the probably relatively minor economic problems of a hung parliament, we can look at more interesting aspects of one.

This will be an opportunity to get a government which does not let either of the old major parties (Labour and Tory) have everything their own way. Of course a coalition government will have one or other comprising the largest part, but another party – most likely the Liberals – will have a big say.

The likely result of such a hung parliament is significant electoral reform because the smaller parties are more interested in it than the old school parties who do quite well out of our archaic and undemocratic electoral system. Sure you hear of Tory and Labour plans for electoral reform, but what they plan is tinkering around the edges, and the Tory plans revolve around making the political system cheaper with the effect of making our current system even less democratic than it is at the moment.

If the thought of a hung parliament is currently making you consider one of the big two parties, perhaps you should reconsider – a hung parliament is not quite as bad as the politicians of the big two will have you believe, and the increased chance of genuine electoral reform is worth taking that risk.

Universal Suffrage In The UK

 History, Politics  No Responses »
Apr 132010
 

It is a curious fact of history that the UK’s Representation of the People Act 1918 is remembered for being giving universal suffrage to women. What is less known is that it also gave universal suffrage to men! Before 1918, and what is known as the fourth reform act, men were only entitled to vote if they had some form of property entitlement – either a freehold of sufficient value or a leasehold of sufficient value. This meant that around 40% of men had no vote at all, although the suspicion is that for various other reasons many of the 60% could not in fact vote.

This in effect meant that only rich women were disenfranchised – poor women were disenfranchised for being poor in the same way that poor men were.

Whilst the 1918 did not make the right to vote equal between the sexes, the real answer to the question “how long did it take for women to get the vote after men did” is somewhere between 0 and 10 years for the UK. Women aged 21-29 had to wait until 1928 to get the vote.

Even more curiously, before the much needed Reform Act of 1832 (which amongst other things abolished rotten boroughs with ridiculously small numbers of voters), there was actually no legal impediment to women voting. It was probably exceptionally rare that any women did vote except possibly in towns where the electorate was restricted to the membership of certain guilds (women could and sometimes were members of mediæval guilds), but in theory it could happen. The Reform Act of 1832 was the first act which explicitly restricted the right to vote, to male property owners.

So in effect it was only for less than a 100 years that women were denied the vote in this country; before 1832 the overwhelming majority were denied the vote for being poor.

Added: It turns out that there were some women who could vote before 1832. See http://www.historyofwomen.org/suffrage.html

Added2: It appears that an anti-feminist blog entry is pointing at this site as evidence. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion of course, but this blog post was not intended to be anti-feminist. It was intended to make two points :-

  1. The time difference between universal suffrage for men and universal suffrage for women in the UK was a lot less than is commonly believed.
  2. And that before 1832, it was possible that women could (and according to the first amendment to this post, did) vote although it was probably very rare.

Through The Doorway

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