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A straight-talking cabinet minister BBC Farming Today naturally took an interest in how the new food and rural affairs minister, Rt Hon Hilary Benn MP, who is a vegetarian (thus “Veggie Benn”, his father having been “Wedgie Benn”), would get on with livestock farmers. This morning an interviewer probed his convictions: –
BBC: Why are you a vegetarian?
Benn: I am a vegetarian – and I have been a vegetarian for 35 years – because of a personal decision I took not to eat meat.
A classic piece of political honesty, I hope you agree.
[An exercise for title wonks: He is ‘Rt Hon’ now, since he’s been in the cabinet for a while, and thus a Privy Counsellor. However, was he ‘Hon’ before that? Wedgie Benn disclaimed his viscountcy, which will revive on his death. Not that they would, but are his children entitled to style themselves “The Honourable” in the meantime?]
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An honest politician! And articulate! And with a principle which he has held for 35 years! I’ll bet it was a Spitting Image’ comedy routine! You almost fooled me!
Q. What do you call an honest politician?
A…… Don’t worry, nobody else knows either!
Q. How can you tell when a politician is lying?
A. His lips are moving!
This being the world of politics, I expect a photo of Benn chowing down on a quarter-pound burger to appear any second now…
But it’s likely he’s telling the truth. A friend of mine was forcibly brainwashed out of eating meat at a young age, when his parents had him meet the bull at one end of the abattoir, let him observe the butchering and bleeding and so on, then forced him to eat exactly one hamburger afterwards. (Apparently, they tried to put him off of cheese the same way, but it had no effect.)
Many years ago, when they were young and cute, I took my children to a local farm to see the newborn lambs. After the usual oohs & aahs and having held a lamb, we went for a walk through the fields and saw some of the farm’s free range pigs. Small noisy asked, in the sort of tone reserved to 6 year olds (loud): “You get sausages from pigs don’t you?” After a moments panic, thinking we were about to acquire a veggie I answered with an honest “Yes dear”.
Her reaction was “You’ll get lots from that one – he’s huge!” I feel she was never equiped for a vegetarian diet.
Why are you a vegetarian?
Honest? He didn’t really answer did he?
“because of a personal decision I took not to eat meat.”
Not because I don’t like the taste. Or I think it is wrong, or immoral, etc. Just a ‘personal’ decision.
So we really don’t know what his agenda is on meat apart from it is anti in some unspecified way – brilliant that they put him in charge of farming then. And typical of a politician that he took the job.
Phil A,
I think you are too harsh. How do you know that he has any “agenda” on meat? His reply indicated that it was a personal decision and it is refreshing, and to be encouraged, when a politician doesn’t want to impose his private preferences on others.
I would have been more concerned if he had gone into more detail as it would perhaps have been a tacit admission that it would affect the decisions he makes in his job.
Phil A,
That was my original point. I thought the quote spoke for itself, but to clarify: because the answer is near tautologous, it is difficult to treat it as dishonest in any ordinary sense, but Hilary B has merely defined his vegetarianism, not explained it. But equally, he isn’t going very far in the direction of pretending to answer the question.
Political honesty is providing a useless truth rather making a misleading statement.
Actually it was honest because in not going into details he basically said: “What I eat is none of your business”.
I only wish the rest of the cabinet would grant us the reciprocal courtesy of not caring what we eat or why we eat it.
Guy,
You listen to “Farming Today”? It must be a riot chez Herbert!
For 35 years at least, man and boy. It was better when it had fatstock prices and Hagberg numbers, and hadn’t been steadily converted into Ramblers and Organic Nuts Today.
What I find remarkable is that you are up that time of a morning Guy.
I am too, but I’m just going to bed!
There are some remarkably squeemish people about arnt there? I used to watch cows being slaughtered age 5, Beano on my knee. Thrilling to the crack of the humane killer and the poleaxe bolt to the brain. The flopping out of the two stomachs and the river of blood.
Still I suppose it’s different if your Dad own the abattoir, like mine did.
Look folks this Is Hillary, son of Tony. I have met his dad on several occasions, and if he is anywhere near as barmy as him we are in trouble. I say we, more like my farming relations, and they are in enought trouble already.
Can you imagine the French giving a job like Food and Rural Affairs to a Vegetarian!!! Sheesh!
He didn’t want to admit the real reason for vegetarianism. He’s a really lousy hunter.
Have you seen a picture of him Sunfish?
He looks like he doesn’t know how to find “Outside”
let alone the “Countryside” 🙂
Sunfish (you’ll know) Is “Vegetarian” not a native American (Comanche I think) dialect for “really lousy hunter”?
I once went on a Round Table jaunt to our twin table in France with a vegetarian in the party; the poor sod nearly died as the wine flowed like water and he had nothing to eat all weekend!
Honest or not, an Ideological vegetarian shouldn’t be put in a place where he is required to help lifestock farmers.
It’s like making a communist the minister for trade, ffs.
How do you know that he has any “agenda” on meat?
Because there is no nutritional reason not to eat meat, the only people who refuse to do so are those who do it for ideological reasons.
Therefore, he has an ideological problem with the consumption of meat, and therefore he is ideologically opposed to the very people he is supposed to be helping.
This is seriously a big issue, if I was a UK farmer I would be extremely concerned.
The old “take the kids to the abbatoir” chestnut doesn’t really ring true.
Myself and pretty much every kid I know either watched or participated in the slaughter and butchering of lambs from the age of about 8 years old. We live in a sheep farming town.
I don’t know a single one of them who is a vegetarian.
Yobbo,
My wife is an ideological vegetarian. She has cooked meat for me when I’ve been unable to cook. She wasn’t happy about it but not for ideological reasons. She wasn’t happy because she’d never done it before and therefore had no intuition as to when it was “done”.
I honestly don’t see a problem in principle here. In fact quite the reverse. It’s called tolerance and understanding and being able to seperate your own personal feelings from the job in hand. And we’ve all had to do that at some time or another.
Yobbo: I don’t know about “ringing true”, but I do have a vegetarian friend, and that’s what his story was, and he didn’t seem to be lying about it. I admit that many, or maybe even most, people would still be omnivorous after watching hamburger being made, but this particular guy wasn’t.
In my youth I used to wake up to listen the patriotic tunes that Radio 4 started the day with, so I to heard “Farming Today”. These days I do not get up so early – but then the patriotic tunes were banned some time ago.
As for Mr Benn.
I suppose he was saying “it is none of your business” – but it would have been interesting if had actually said “it is none of your business” – as it was his reply was daft.
Just like me replying to the question “why are you a libertarian” by saying “because of a personal decision I took to be a libertarian”.
AFAIK, it is correct to style the children of life peers ‘Honourable’. The point about the title is that it is a ‘courtesy title’ accorded by others and by custom, rather than claimed by the holder; I am told that it is incorrect and bad form to put it on one’s business card or notepaper, for example.
Yes, smallwit, but in the Benn case the situation id the opposite. Tony is a life non-peer, though Hilary was born before the Stansgate peerage had been disclaimed.
Since when did carrots stop being food?
Guy Herbert wrote:
You rang? Yes, he was the Hon. Hilary Benn prior to his membership of the Privy Council. His elder brother who will be the 3rd Viscount Stansgate when Wedgie pops his clogs is the Hon. Stephen Benn.