Becoming Vegan

Facebook is littered with nasty, horrible unbelievable photos of the cruelty meted out to animals in the pursuit of our (ahem) need for cheap meat. It's not because of one of those photos that I chucked in the towel and stopped eating meat, it was an undercover report by Animal Aid into slaughterhouses in 2009 which made me turn the corner.

I think I can truly say that I will never eat meat again. In all honesty, I can't understand why people do. It's revolting. As far as I'm concerned, the minute a biological creature dies, it begins decomposing. Yuck! And that's just for starters. I really can't get my head around 'cannibal' equals bad but eating bodies which aren't human equals 'acceptable'. Yes, I am aware that biological and viral diseases are passed on when people eat human meat but, that asides, I can't see the difference. 

I'm not writing this to 'turn' anyone or to look at the despicable cruelty that goes on in the animal trade nor the concept that mankind believes he has the right of ownership over everything on this planet, no, I'd like to briefly discuss veganism.

I do consider vegetarianism the 'half-way' point between omnivorous and herbivorous lifestyles. And, yes, it is a lifestyle. Until you start to scrutinise the world around you in a bid to avoid animal bits, you don't realise how much you have to change your buying habits - and living habits. 

Animal bits are everywhere. The vitamin capsules (or medications) you take very likely have gelatine in them (or as I refer to gelatine - boiled bones). Same goes for kids jelly sweets. I mean, yuck! How can people feed their kids this crap? The cheap jam you bought often has cochineal in - a red dye made from crushing certain insects. Blergh! The conditioner you use may have lanolin in (a substance found on wool - and if you consider it may have been retrieved from wool on a corpse in a slaughterhouse, bigger yuck!).

It is so difficult to avoid all this crap - but it is possible.

However, the biggest issues I have found are from the world at large and from the vegan community itself. 

The world at large is so brainwashed by a multi- million dollar industry into believing that we 'need' to eat meat. Some believe that there's something rebellious or odd about caring so much for the misery and pain billions of animals are put through every year. A lot of people have said to me that they don't like slaughterhouse and farming practices - but they support it by continuing to eat cheap meat from their local supermarkets. They admire my 'stance' but won't try to experience not eating meat itself. 

Try walking into a restaurant and getting a veggie meal. Most menus are restricted to macaroni cheese or veggie burger (and my experience of veggie burgers in some establishments recently has been a dry burger slapped in a bun - yawn). I even got told in one place that it was my own fault or restricting my diet!! There are veggie meals out here which far surpass meat dishes in nutrition and imagination!! (I had a 50/50 menu on my wedding day (Balgeddie House Hotel in Glenrothes - because they deserve a plug!) and a few of my meat eating guests had the veggie dishes because they were so delicious) So, if the world at large has issues with being veggie, can you imagine their outrage at veganism?

Which leads me to my next point, with a bit of forethought, all of the above issues can be overcome. Sometimes though, help from those who've experienced it all before would be very, very welcome. What I've noticed though from just a casual skim of the vegan community is that, while there are some lovely, lovely helpful people, there are also a right bunch of contemptible and smug vegans. 

Why are they like this? Well, a wee bitty background to the necessity of veganism. Female chickens lay eggs. Males can't. So when male chicks hatch, they are considered worthless and murdered. In milk production, milk is produced by a cow for her calf. So, how do we keep them producing? Simple, inseminate them and keep them pregnant. Then take their calves and kill them. Boy calves especially. Oh, and they are sometimes kept for veal. So, being veggie but still consuming dairy also promotes death and cruelty. And this is the point that vegans make. And understandably so. I can bang on till I'm blue in the face about how I don't actually eat animals, but I still support the industry by consuming dairy. So, I accept I am hypocritical in my distaste towards those who eat meat.

But, after seeing some of the comments made by vegans  I'm afraid, they're often the last people I'd ask for help. Don't get me wrong, I see their point - they aren't saying anything wrong as such, but their attitude does not make me want to seek them out for advice or help. There is a fine line between encouragement and chastisement and may vegans step over that line without realising the potential harm they are doing.

I'm trying to write this in as balanced a way as possible because I don't want to offend vegans. I mean, bloody hell, you all work hard at your life style and it is not easy. You live by your principles. But shouting at people turns them away. I want help to be like you (I have imagination issues which sometimes keeps me unintentionally blinkered) and I would like to think that you want more people to be vegan but, insulting me when I'm half way there does nothing to help. 

It is difficult seeing the reality of the meat industry and I'd like to scream and shout my head off at people for passively accepting it but, I know I can't, I know I have to divert most of my anger towards educating and encouraging people to look at their lifestyle. And to me, that will reap more reward than insulting. 

So, if you're one of those who insult vegetarians for not being vegan,  next time you speak to a vegetarian, consider offering advice instead of insults.

Oh, and if there are any vegans who'd like to give me the benefit of their advice to help me move to the next stage, please follow me on Twitter (being a bit lonely on twitter, please follow me anyways ;) @aspidistratum) or get in touch with me here.

My Humble Support for Workfare Protests

I once watched a documentary on American workfare schemes. I can't remember when or what channel the programme was on - or even what it was called, but I do remember the gist of it.

One of the stories concerned a young American woman with a baby. She had to get up at 6am and travel a fair distance to work a job for her welfare payment. She didn't get home till about 7pm and had very little time with her child before the baby went to bed. Then she had to do it all again the next day, and the next or lose her money.

What this programme said to me was that not only did the woman have very little time to look for proper, renumerated work,  she also had a child who never saw her mum. How could this possibly be considered right or just? How could no one in the political system predict the future for this woman, or indeed any others caught in this scheme?  A child with no mother to bring her up and a mother trapped in poverty with barely the time to look for proper, paying work.

Today, I've been reading tweets around the boycott workfare protests and, while I have issues with some of their targets (British heart foundation - while I loathe that they test on animals*, they are a charity and so any work done here could be said to be beneficial), the protests to my mind, are right and just. 

No one works for fun (those of you that do and enjoy your work - you are very lucky and should never take your good fortune for granted) nor do they work to do anyone a 'favour' and yet, this is what the government expects of jobseekers.

The narrative passing through the media (and the comments sections of pro-selfish, pro- Tory news websites) is that people should work for their benefits. Now, correct me if I am wrong but surely people are receiving benefits because they are trying to get work. And surely, if there's work to be done, they should be offered positions as legal employees while their benefits claims are closed down because, well, they have a job! This scheme makes a mockery of those right wing cries of 'work for the money I, a taxpayer, give you in benefits'. Surely providing free labour to companies discourages them from hiring real employees and so, means the taxpayers pay just as much in taxes for benefit provision?

Apparently though, I'm wrong. People should work at below minimum wage positions for profit making companies and, according to some, be grateful for the privilege? Are these people insane? I mean, really?

What is going on today that we see ourselves as lumps of biological material to be used, abused and lied to - and be happy about it? 

Right now, our country is going through enforced social change the likes of which my generation has never seen before and if we don't all get involved, we are all going to end up living in a society which blames the poor for being poor - regardless of how they got there, and applauds the mega rich for being mega rich - again regardless of how they got there, and, nothing in between. This workfare idea is one area which is just plain wrong in intent (increasing profit for already profitable companies) and in execution and like the programme I referred to which looked at American welfare to work, has massive potential to create more harm than good.

I know that what I have just written (and what you, poor reader, have just read) has been said again and again and again by many writers online, but I would just like to add my support for the actions taken today and, maybe I am a little naive in my thinking, but I'd like to hope that today's actions are another start to a mass protest against this governments idiotic and self-serving policy changes which will destroy any good which has come about in the past. 

If we do not protest, we will lose our humanity.


* source http://www.animalaid.org.uk/h/n/CAMPAIGNS/experiments//281//

Where's the discussion?

I just finished Bill Hicks short essay on the presidential elections in 1992 (Bill Hicks, Love all the People, p122 'Capitol Hill') where he rants (as he was wont to do!!) about how the American government has been arming the world to the teeth and making a pretty profit into the bargain - while everyone complains about Madonna's twat in her (ahem) book, Sex. Yes, hence the name of this blog. 

His short essay/rant was and is a great reflection of life in the West today. While governments push through legislation and changes which affect us directly (usually to our detriment), we sit around and complain about pointless banalities like flipping Britain's Got Talent or Eastenders or whatever nonsense is making front page news this week (frankly, I couldn't give a toss which overpaid footballer is boinking which hooker this week!!).

What about the real issues??? So called austerity and the guff our government is spewing around the issue, the fact that women and families will be disproportionately affected by benefit and tax credit changes, the fact that all 'job seekers' will be unfairly penalised looking for jobs which aren't there - the list goes on and on.

Where is the talk on that? Or is it that the whole 'us' (people who work) and 'them' (people who don't) discourse which has gone through our popular media has succeeded in splitting the nation? The idea that most people on benefits sit on their arses all day watching Jeremy Kyle and munching McDonalds while laughing at the idiots who rush past on their way to or from work just doesn't exist. (yes, there are a few but, rather than villify them, ask why? What makes a person give up on the opprtunity to improve their life chances? How has our society failed them?)

My point here being that there are a lot of big nasty changes coming which seem only to benefit those with the cash to splash at the expense of those with nothing in the first place and yet, I don't hear anyone talking about it at all.


I'm glad those that fought for our rights in the past - the suffragettes, suffragists, trade unions etc aren't around today to see what an apathetic population we have become. After all, first comes talk, then comes action ...