Pigs culling - necessary part of transition

[LadyWithLapdog]

WTF Johnson and Brexit supporters. I’m not a raving vegan but this is nasty and indecent, this callous remark that killing animals for nothing is just to be expected. Shameful.

Thing is, pork will be imported from Europe to fill the pork meat shortages. Surely any Brexit supporter can see the issue there…..

If not, EU imports to UK ok, UK exports not possible. Get it now?

Well Phoenix, did you vote for petrol shortages, or healthy animals being culled with the danger of farmers' livelihood's being destroyed? Can you only think of insults when people don't worship at the altar of Brexit? If you look at Boris Johnson's behaviour it would be difficult to see a man who takes responsibility for anything, so it's legitimate to talk about scapegoating going on because that is what he does. Last week he thought the cull of pigs was a joke.

The only person who has referred to voters being thickos on this thread is yourself.

Peregrina,

I don’t think I mentioned which way I voted or why.

Being able to see pluses and minuses in something does not mean I supported Brexit.

In fact, had the EU remained as a Northern European block of like-minded and broadly economically aligned countries, i would have been a very enthusiastic remainer.

But, we are where we are, and dishonestly claiming that trying to integrate new migrants from poor nations accounting, at its peak, to 5-10% of the population had zero negative effects or that some of them leaving will not, over time, have some positive effects, is just ignoring data and basic economic theory.

The demographic here enjoyed cheap cleaners, builders , waiters etc, but, for the cleaners, builders, waiters (and lorry drivers, fruit pickers, abattoir workers etc), it meant zero bargaining power and little chance of dignified work for a dignified wage.

As Blair (and others) have argued, it would have made little difference had we applied the 7 year rule, with freedom of movement they would have come anyway and worked on the black (as many do, anyway, here and in Germany, where the rule was applied)

Again, below is an interesting (albeit long) article from an extremely pro EU source (the FT) which examines both the benefits and dis benefits of EU freedom of movement and labour.

www.ft.com/content/de721f35-d228-48de-bd9f-d2168b16aba6

@TheReluctantPhoenix How you personally voted in the referendum, and your justification for whichever that was, is irrelevant.

Of course a steam of cheap labour has affected wages in certain sectors as its affected the supply and demand balance, we are now seeing it swing the other way and the issues that brings. We have all benefitted from cheap labour even if we don't want to admit it.

It has been said many times though that the areas which strongly voted for Leave had very little immigration. One exception is the Boston area in Lincolnshire.

This link is old, but then the vote was more than 5 years ago now. My area, a Remain one, has significantly more non UK born people than a Leave voting area like Sunderland - where the BBC showed jubilant people when the result was announced. I would love to see the BBC go back and ask those people "Is this the Brexit you so joyfully celebrated?"

Yes, That Vote was 5 years ago, and there has been a great deal of water under the bridge since then.

The important thing is what’s happening NOW, the root causes for that, and how the Gvmnt tackles the problems. That needs to be looked at very carefully.

For me, the Gvmnt seem to have come up with a new slogan to deflect from the current shortages in personnel in a number of key sectors - "Upskiil, Higher wages”. While there is great merit in that ambition, the lack of this approach has not led to where we are and is not the solution. But those that want to support the Gvmnt will latch onto it for dear life, as though the issues we are currently facing were part of a Grand Plan, all along, and anecessary part of that Plan.. Fairly exasperating.

Apologies for repeating myself there - in a rush

I can also state that some of the difficulty we’re facing currently can be laid at the feet of a managerial vacuum over the last 5 years, while the Conservative Party were focussed on trying to make something - anything - workable out of Brexit, and the damage raged within itself.

Hence we have BoJo. Most of the decent, experienced Conservatives were kicked out. The Party seems to be an ugly shell of it’s former self. which is a great shame.

@Peregrina,

‘ I would love to see the BBC go back and ask those people "Is this the Brexit you so joyfully celebrated?"’

Why, other than schadenfreude?

And, if they said yes, you would view them as idiots….

@DoubleTweenQueen,

My views and rationales are no more irrelevant than any post on this social media forum. We are all just shooting the breeze.

Why we are where we are is massively due to globalisation, of which the EU is a tiny part, and the technological revolution (plus a pandemic).

Tech plus globalisation has delivered fantastic rewards for the richest, whilst meaning supply chains are highly vulnerable to any form of transportation issues.

Most of what is happening here either has or will happen elsewhere too. Brexit is a very small factor really.

[quote TheReluctantPhoenix]**@Peregrina,

‘ I would love to see the BBC go back and ask those people "Is this the Brexit you so joyfully celebrated?"’

Why, other than schadenfreude?

And, if they said yes, you would view them as idiots….[/quote]
I don't imagine @Peregrina would. Not at all.

And I consider it would be interesting to monitor how people feel about what they voted for five years ago, and whether it's working out, in their view.
Brexit was a bit of a loosely defined target, and if nothing else the current Gvnmt should be in touch with whether they are effectively addressing people's real-life concerns that were considered to have informed their vote at the time.

@DoubleTweenQueen,

Surely that is the opposition’s role, and to formulate a policy that will get them voted in?

The government should lead opinion, as well as being informed by it. It is ‘focus group’ politics inter alia that ‘got Brexit done’.

@TheReluctantPhoenix

You only seen to deal in generalities, and not detail. You are blaming Global issues, but how we fair within that structure is very much down to the focuss and actions of our own Gvmnt

Phoenix right now I'd quite like it if the government actually did something to address the problems we are having instead of just saying 'not me, Guv, business needs to sort it', having said 'Fuck business'. If it isn't a government's job to see to it that people have access to food, heating, clean water as well as safety, what the hell are they actually for? Might as well abolish them and let business run the country. The ultimate free market economy. No, I do not think this is a good idea, BTW.

@TheReluctantPhoenix I consider it is the Gvmnts role, of whichever flavour, to run the country. This party have been in power for 11yrs?

It's the opposition's role to hold the Gvmnt to account, and formulate their next manifesto

@pointythings To me, it seems the focus of the current Gvmnt is primarily to keep hold of their position.

@DoubleTweenQueen,

‘You only seen to deal in generalities, and not detail’

I find it much easier to understand economic and political events via generalities.

I cannot get my mind around a system with literally millions of interconnected variables (nor can economists, which is why economics is worthless for making predictions (see Black Swan by Naseem Taleb)).

It is also incredibly easy to focus on one tiny detail (like £10mio of wasted pig meat) and overinflate it’s importance, or wrongly generalise from it to the entire economy.

@TheReluctantPhoenix If you don't understand the issues then I wonder why you posted on this subject.

@DoubleTweenQueen,

What an unnecessarily rude and aggressive post.

People who think they understand but actually don’t are the most dangerous (financial collapse in 2008 ring a bell?).

I just know the limits of my understanding, unlike certain others who vastly overestimate their abilities and are happy to post on all manner of subjects.

@Upsielazy

It is wasteful, but animals being killed so their flesh can be wrapped in plastic packaging and sold to humans is pretty gross anyway. I'm sure the poor pigs being slaughtered aren't overly arsed about whether it's to be eaten or because there is no one to rip the flesh from their bones and chop it up.

You're completely missing the point, as did the prime minister. I found his wilful refusal to see the big picture quite abhorent - all he wanted was a cheap laugh about whether or not the journalist had ever enjoyed a bacon sandwich. It not that pigs are dying - they die anyway. It's that they're dying in vain, to be incinerated rather than eaten. All the hours of farmer input that they represent being thrown away and the environmental cost / waste which is so deeply abhorrent.

Even if you are in favour of the argument that cheap foreign labour perpetuates wage depression, then surely it is obvious that the answer is a long, slow transition to training up people in this country to do the relevant jobs (eg butchery) but still having workers from outside come in to do the job while there is a need.

I was listening to someone from the NFU talk about this on the radio a couple of weeks ago. Butchery is a skilled trade. There are not enough trained butchers in the UK and like other industries training has been slowed down during the pandemic. They said they have skilled butchers lines up from South America who can't come over here because of the language requirements of the new immigration process. They said that as an industry that has long been lacking in domestic butchers they are well used to dealing with the language barrier and it isn't an issue.

The spokesperson also said that culling UK stocks while filling the supply gap with cheaper imported pork which is often not raised to the same welfare standards will decimate the UK pork industry. I suppose then there won't be a problem with not being able to get butchers. That's probably the government's end goal anyway. It was always argued before Brexit that the end result would be the increase in food imports and the destruction of UK farming. Some farmers listened, some didn't.

@Sarah2384,

You are making exactly the same point as OP, with the same weird defence. The PM was, in many ways, right. The waste is monetary, and not of lives, which were doomed anyway. They weren’t pets.

‘It not that pigs are dying - they die anyway. It's that they're dying in vain, to be incinerated rather than eaten’

‘Dying in vain’ implies that dying to feed us is not ‘in vain’. It is very emotive language and is redolent of the battle field and dying for a noble cause. Pigs are dying to be slaughtered cruelly (wish I had not read up on the aversive effects of high concentration carbon dioxide) and then eaten, not to fulfill some kind of noble destiny. They will actually have far better ends if slaughtered by farmers.

It is, as I have said, if it happens (and , by the way, this 100,000 slaughter has not happened yet, and probably won’t be on anything like that scale) a tremendous waste of money (circa £10 million) and farmers’ work. That is a crying shame.

And, if they said yes, you would view them as idiots….

Five and a half years ago, there was all to play for, with Daniel Hannan's No one is talking of leaving the Single Market (a commitment to which was a Tory Manifesto), and Farage's Norway is doing all right.

Once Johnson got his majority in December 2019 with Get Brexit Done, it would be good to ask those who voted for a party led by a man who lies to his employers and cheats on his wives, why on earth would they expect him to treat their concerns favourably when he hasn't a clue who they are.

I do feel a certain amount of Schadenfreude when Lord Wolfson and Tim Martin are concerned, but for everyday people no.

Businesses are taking a hit because of choices made by the Government. There were warnings regarding drivers, abattoir staff, vets and CO2. The Government - the party of business - chose to do nothing.

And if there are shortages we will no doubt import our pork (from the EU?).

At the same time we were supposed to be taking advantage of new opportunities now that we can export pork to Mexico. Global exports of UK pork are worth significant sums.

It makes little sense to me.