Cowards complain as Ramsay kills turkey

I'll admit to a degree of bias on this report from BBC News as I'm a vegetarian. However it seems quite clear to me that people who complain about seeing where their food comes from are just being cowards. If you don't like the fact that cute little animals get killed for your pleasure, then don't eat them. I would go so far as to say that you should be prepared to kill them yourself, or you shouldn't be eating them. Why should someone else be expected to do your dirty work?

This is the argument at the heart of my vegetarianism - I'm not particularly sensitive about cute little animals, although I think that mistreating any living thing is probably bad for the people who do it, as well as the victims. I don't have a religious objection as I don't have a religion. It just seems counter to my conscience to ask others to do things that I am not comfortable doing. Just don't ask where that conscience comes from - I have no idea.

Merry Hell

A BBC News Magazine article entitled Merry Hell talks about the effect evil minority pressure groups, such as the one that caused so much trouble over 'Jerry Springer: The Opera' earlier this year, can have on retailers. Sainsburys and Woolworths have pulled the DVD of the show from their shelves following complaints. It suggests that bloggers and other rational people are capable of writing more complaints than a bunch of nutters. Sounds like a plan...
I was thinking of boycotting them until I realised that it would leave me without a source of food. The supermarkets have pretty much done for the independent retailers around here. I'm boycotting ASDA because of Wal-Mart's atrocious human rights record, both with their direct employees and those of their suppliers, Tescos because I just don't think it is healthy for one company to be so dominant and Waitrose don't have a store that I can get to without burning unacceptable quantities of fossil fuels. So if I refused to shop at Sainsburys I'd get hungry. If only Ocado would improve their site design so that it didn't take longer to place an order than it does to drive round to Sainsburys and just buy the stuff.

Ends and means

Condi Rice's statement today sounded awfully close to a claim that the end justifies the means. US foreign policy has always seemed to have an element of 'might is right' about it, but as soon as you start to suggest that anything is permissible if it prevents terrorism, it seems to me that you have adopted the terrorists logic. And if you have adopted their logic, their morality goes along with it. Once you have thus surrendered the moral high ground, you will be locked into an escalating cycle of violence which no-one can win. Someone in the US State Department needs to start reading the history books and thinking with their brain, assuming they can find one.