Off Topic Political Debate

They'd have a whale of a time!

 

I'm not going to get involved in this, but whaling is something that disgusts me, it should have no place in the 21st century.

I honestly hope it's banned in the next few years, it certainly looks like it might be...

 

,

 

I think only Norway, Iceland and Japan still advocate whaling in any matterial way - unfortunately I cannot see any of them giving it up. Japan cheats all conventions by claiming their whaling is for scientific purposes.

 

No one in my family has been in whaling for above 200 years.

I am not defending whaling industry but what you may read about whaling will be wrong mostly. Most writing are looking from a do not hurt animals emotional view and are not objective. Iceland in the last three years have killed 81, then 60 and last year 58 minke whales and none of other types, not over 300 each year as written by some people. In the years between 2005 and 2010 the average number of whales caught was less than 40 for each year. Here it is an industry but very small and will die completely when people stop using whale products.

http://uk.whales.org is a good site. Their failure is for you to a dopt a whale, how can you know which is your animal? Contribute yes, adopt no.

 

One whale killed is one too many. Time to leave such a barbaric and pointless practice behind

 

Whale meet again

 

We could be beginning a whole new debate here. Why is whaling worse than pulling any other fish out of the water ? Why is it worse than factory farming or the way we handle poultry ? Or scientific testing on animals ? Is it because they are an endangered species ? Or because they are mammals, and therefore related to ourselves ? Surely we should be rethinking our entire relationship to the animal World.

 

..

 

Do not supermarkets in the UK only sell halal meat now? This production is very cruel. 114 million animals having their throats cut to bleed to their deaths against 58 whales for Ísland last year.

Killing whales is an issue only because they are mammals and are thought to be endangered, no one really knows as the oceans are a big place and you cannot follow all the whales all the time. You might react in the same way for dolphins but killer whale?

Do you eat horse, rabbit or venison? Aboriginals all over the world eat many larvae, honey ants, dogs and other things are they all wrong as well? The French eat frog and snail, we eat svið and head cheese (you have this it is called brawn).

 

I can't wait until the world finally sorts out the Animal Rights issue, unfortunately I doubt it'll happen in my lifetime...

 

I am not sure if UK supermarkets sell halal meat at all.

I tend to agree that you should not generally distinguish between killing one animal rather than another. If you support eating meat then you are prepared to kill animals. However there are a few other considerations. 1 animals must be killed humanely. 2 Any species remotely threatened or endangered must be "off" the list. 3 It is wrong to "waste" animals - the practice of killing a shark for its fin and throwing the rest away is as barbaric as killing elephants for their tusks. I would add a fourth - and that is that some animals just seem too important to kill to eat - and I am afraid I would put whales into this category.

 

Animal rights campaigners want votes for highland terriers in the Scottish vote tomorrow.

 

Why do these people really want to come to Britain?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-29249687

 

and what has it got to do with Britain - surely it is up to the French to police France

 

Exactly.

 

Ditto

 

From Cologne elsewhere:

I am not underestimating the differences. There are two separate issues. One is government of England - not the UK and the other is how to equalise wealth in the UK as a whole. Have to toddle down to the beach now so will post more later

 

I think the unequal distribution of wealth in the UK is a massive issue. But that is between "classes" if we must call them that and regions as well as naions. All three need to be addressed but they are 3 distinct issues.

The Scottish referendum highlighted that there is a wealth difference between Scotland and England. There is disagreement on who subsidises whom - but that depends on whether you look only at the fact that the Scots receive about £1,600 per head more than the English from UK funds - or whether you balance that with the fact that the UK uses oil which can legitimately be claimed by Scotland. That debate of course conveniently ignored the fact that both Wales and Northern Ireland are far poorer than either England or Scotland and do not have the luxury of either a London financial cetnre or an Aberdeen oil industry.

If you honestly believe in a UK you should want all four elements that make it up to benefit from it - and that will always mean subsidies from the richer nations - Scotland and England to the poorer ones - Wales and Ireland. If you do not want that then you really haave no choice but to support independence for all 4 nations and let them get on with their own issues - I think that would be a real shame - I am very proud to be English but also love being part of the wider family of the UK. In my book that means a UK government must exist to share a degree of wealth around each of the countries and to try to generate economic growth where it does not flower on its own.

The next level is nationhood. England is a nation - it is a "united "kingdom not a collection of regions. That is where we differ fundamentally from Germany and Switzerland. Their history of those countries is very different and they came into being as the sum of parts. you have to go back over a 1,000 years to find anything similar here - and nobody today thinks of themselves as Mercian or a Wessexer (apart maybe Hornethologist ) You therefore must have a government for England. We do not. Due to the dominance of England in the UK the English tended to think of the UK as English and saw no problem in using the Union Jack as the "English" flag - even though it was not. We sing Rule Britannia as our national song - we should not. Only in the last 20 to 30 years have English supporters correctly used the cross of St George and begun to realise that England is NOT the UK. We need to address that and have an English parliament for purely English matters.

Lastly the regional question. This is the hardest of them all. Our counties have come and gone over recent years - people have tried to create something like a Northumbria without success. Many cities are far biiger in all respects other than area than most counties or "regions". Who is to define a region? It is very complicated. Yet there are vast inequalities of wealth throughout England - as there is in the UK - and therein lies the answer. We need as the UK to "subsidise" the nations that need it; in England we need to subsidise the "regions and cities" that need it. The problem cannot be solved by setting up regional governments as it is finance that is the key - and we will never go down the route of levying different levels of income tax indifferent parts of England. We cannot even allow local councils and authorities to have much variance in local taxation - council tax as was. We are too small an island - people could move too easily to a low tax area and work in a higher tax one - councils would find their anticipated revenues failed to materialise.

The only way to reduce disparity of wealth between regions and nations in the UK is for the relevant central body to distribute centralised wealth.

The reasons why that has not happened are complex and for another monologue from me - if anyone is still awake and reading

 

Totally agree Leo. I believe in the United Kingdom as a body that should be responsible for ensuring that wealth / opportunity becomes elevated for all. Historically there has not been a problem inter nation but the countries problems arise from an aristocracy that exploited the proletariat whether this be the Highland clearances, the Irish potato famine, the Welsh coalmines or the British steel workers... Thats history, we already live in a society with a high level of education available to all. There remain problems in society mainly caused by poor parenting, how we get over this is very very difficult. The independence issues are driven by folk wanting to take control of the high share in revenue with no thought about the rest. We wll end up paying more tax here soon and we'll see how employers handle that, the quality f life we have is better than in England and we have total mobility within the nation so no reason for a Glaswegian not to move to London if they want the London life and no excuse, there are south americans, far eastern citizens all types of immigrants who go and succeed in the big smoke with far fewer givens than equivalent Britts....