Vegans and Vegetarians

[Macca]

Poorly educated women tend to have children as a means of boosting their self-worth.

Incidentally, Joe, I read the Daily Mail sometimes when I am at my mother's house and there is never anything in it like you describe. Aside from a couple of pages of sport and world news it is more like one of those women's magazines: Full of articles about healthy eating and cures for cancer. Don't get me wrong, it is completely shit as a newspaper, but not in the way you or all the other people who never read it imagine it to be.

[Marco]

Poorly educated women tend to have children as a means of boosting their self-worth.

Interesting... Maybe they should get a job instead! So what excuse do the men have?

There's nothing like earning a living and supporting yourself, for boosting self-worth. And it doesn't matter what that job is, the point is that it makes you feel proud (or should do) because you're not relying on handouts from others. Then pop-out a few sprogs when you have the means to support them, not the other way round...

Somehow, for a lot of these folk, I don't think that's exactly their mentality!

Marco.

[struth]

Basically, the better the education, the smaller the family. Up until not that long ago, in Britain at least, it was Irish Catholics who had bigger families. This was partly down to the Church's teaching in birth control, and partly because Irish Catholics tended to come from a rural background, where the bigger the family the better, because there would (eventually) be more hands to work the land. Gradually, Catholic families have become smaller, and I would imagine the same thing will happen other ethnic minority groups in due course.

The problem with the type of programme you mentioned, and with the Daily Mail in particular, is that they give the government the public support they need to target 'benefit scroungers', with the result that people genuinely in need of help are subjected to additional pressures. For example, people with serious mental and physical disabilities are having to 'prove' they are unfit to work even when they are clearly not able to hold down a job. Many have committed suicide as a result. Meanwhile, attention is usefully deflected from those individuals and companies at the top of the money tree who manage their financial affairs in such a way as to avoid paying much, or indeed any tax. They also bung the political parties a few hundred thousand pounds every now and then to keep them sweet.

Usea lot of dirty tricks too to stop payment on disabled etc too.
Must go to an address in a big city where parking is difficult. Situate the office up stairs. Make sure the lift is out of order. If you get up stairs your obviously fit irrellevent of how you got up. Dont get up, then youve missed appointment and money stopped.. the list is endless.

[Joe]

Poorly educated women tend to have children as a means of boosting their self-worth.

Incidentally, Joe, I read the Daily Mail sometimes when I am at my mother's house and there is never anything in it like you describe. Aside from a couple of pages of sport and world news it is more like one of those women's magazines: Full of articles about healthy eating and cures for cancer. Don't get me wrong, it is completely shit as a newspaper, but not in the way you or all the other people who never read it imagine it to be.

Fair enough. I can't actually remember the last time I even glanced through a copy. Certainly the Mail Online is basically celebs' 'wardrobe malfunctions' and not much more.

[Macca]

Fair enough. I can't actually remember the last time I even glanced through a copy. Certainly the Mail Online is basically celebs' 'wardrobe malfunctions' and not much more.

Yes, it is that sort of thing. Plus loads of ads for cruises and stairlifts. It's dull as ditchwater I'm afraid.

[Macca]

Interesting... Maybe they should get a job instead! So what excuse do the men have?

.

The men aren't looking to produce children, they just want a shag and figure it is up to the women to take precautions. If she doesn't then it is her problem. That's why you get these birds with 5 children by 5 different fathers, none of whom pay any support and all of whom have another 5 kids with 5 other women.

[Spectral Morn]

Right then, this year I have made quite a few new acquaintences with vegans and vegetarians and do not under any circumstance want this to be directed at any individual or establishment. I do not want what I am about to say to be taken as some kind of psuedo religous rant or anti statement but I just don't think they get the whole concept of animal cruelty.

Back in the late seventies I worked for a huge chemical giant that specialised in agrochemicals that were mainly unbelievably toxic. I think we have all heard of permethrin...? Well, to take one example, this one, the company decided that permethrin (an active pyrethroid) was not efficient enough so they tagged a cyanide molecule on to it to make the new active ingredient cypermethrin. I worked on this compound for many years carrying out product development and optimisation. Cypermethrin is used worldwide to kill the cotton weevil that if not addressed will decimate cotton crops. Cotton is used by vegans for clothing. So am I correct that it is OK to kill billions of insects every minute of every day throughout the world but it is cruel and inhummane to kill animals that look cute and cuddly but on which we feed...?

Most animals are killed by what is considered humane methods but insects are killed by chemical warfare which is effectively the equivalent of using a nerve toxin on a human as cypermethrin works as a neurotoxin. Yes, one could argue that insects are not sentient beings and therefore they are nothing like us but what other animals in the world are actually like us...? What animals are aware of life and death...?

I'll start on GMO's next...!

Marco, if this is too sensitive then please delete.

Some build cities, farm, harvest, and wage war.... sounds pretty human to me.

But being serious folks often have a propensity for selective thinking and not following through on their convictions, so there is hierarchy of what is and isn't ok. Often that leads to hypocrisy.

Vegetables are living and eating them kills them.

I eat meat and yes I have been to a slaughter house and seen what happens and I am happy to eat meat. Frankly slaughtering animals is less cruel than hunting them down and killing them out in the wild, but only slightly less cruel. I am content that things are as humane as possible and I think that is much as we can do. If folks want to avoid meat and wearing leather etc I really don't mind though producing artificial fabrics is costly to the environment particularly artificial leather which is a type of plastic

[Marco]

Partly it's my own family history. My mother, who came from an Irish Catholic background, was one of seven children. She had four children, and would have had more had she not been warned that it would be medically dangerous for herself and any future children. Between the four of us, we have had nine children, but there's only three children in the next generation (and most of my nieces and nephews are in their forties now, so there's unlikely to be many more). The experiences of many of my contemporaries at school has been similar; they came from families of four or five children, but have limited themselves to one or two.

As I said upthread, Irish Catholics were, not too long ago, stigmatised for producing too many children for whom they could not provide. Here, for example, is an extract from a US writer at the end of the 19th century:

'We owe it to our children to adopt an amendment to the constitution which shall forbid appropriations for the benefit of any institution under sectarian control or for any religious or non-religious sect. All ecclesiastical property shall be held in trust by a board of trustees numbering not less than five members of the congregation owning or donating the property. No property shall be exempt from taxation except it belong to the state or nation. All new voters shall be able to read and write. Unless such an amendment be passed, Rome will hold the republic in her grasp. The ballot is not free. Romanists are slaves of a foreign master.
The plan is thus outlined to subvert our free institutions and to papalize America: "Send over the surplus population of Europe. They will come with foreign views and feelings and will form a heterogeneous mass, and in the course of time rise and overthrow the republic."

Keep such facts before the people, and there will be a coming out from Rome or a coming out against Rome. I would not be an alarmist. The republic cannot afford to forget the peril: 1. In free immigration, which is bringing to America the scum of Europe. 2. The surrender to Rome through marriage, in which children are given to Rome. 3. The constant inculcation of fertility, ostensibly to carry out the Biblical injunction but really to increase political power. 4. The influence of the women's rights craze, which is giving our school interests over the Roman Catholics.'

Sound familiar?

Yes, but I don't think it should prevent anyone from thinking for themselves, regardless of what they (perhaps) have been brainwashed into believing. I'm a practicing Catholic, believe in God and try and live my life according to the teachings of my faith.

*BUT*, if I disagree with some of those teachings or consider that they've been manipulated/mangled, over the years by those with a biased agenda, then I still have a mind of my own, with which to choose to dismiss them.

A good example of this is gay people, and how God apparently frowns upon them (and subsequently those beliefs are practiced by the Catholic church). Bollocks! God MADE THEM GAY in the first place, the same as he made hetrosexual people and every other living being and creature on earth, so how could he possibly be anti-gay??

No, that bit was clearly 'written into' the scriptures in the distant past by some misguided homophobe. It certainly wasn't the word of God.

You have to learn sometimes to CHALLENGE and QUESTION your beliefs, not simply follow them like a mindless sheep... And that also applies to the ethnic minorities you're referring to - at least those capable of thinking for themselves.

Marco.

[Joe]

I have no argument with any of that. My possibly over-optimitistic view is that people of other faiths will gradually become more pragmatic and less dogmatic about the teachings of their chosen religion. In some ways, the Church of England got there ahead of anyone else, in Britain at least; it is a broad church which accommodates a wide range of beliefs, from almost-Catholic to almost-agnostic.

[Marco]

The men aren't looking to produce children, they just want a shag and figure it is up to the women to take precautions. If she doesn't then it is her problem. That's why you get these birds with 5 children by 5 different fathers, none of whom pay any support and all of whom have another 5 kids with 5 other women.

Indeed, and it's neanderthal. They're no better than feral animals, and I detest folk who shirk away from their responsibilities.

Good job a lot of these thoughtless, irresponsible wankers are eventually caught and MADE to PAY for their offspring, by the relevant authorities. Me? I'd castrate them as soon as they reached puberty!

They're simply no use to man nor beast.

Marco.