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Goodbye Beige, our handsome boy

We had to say goodbye to our beautiful boy at 09:20 on the morning of 19th October 2020. We are devastated.

Early life

Beige had a tough first six or so years. He was born on a farm in August 2003, but then kept with five other cats on the stairs of a terraced house. Beige (and others) was rescued by a wonderful lady who gave him a lovely life.

When his rescuer, a friend of a good friend, had to go into sheltered accommodation, Beige was temporarily fostered by our friend, then came to us, a really happy day, 29th March 2016.

He was 14 years old when he came to live with us, the most laid back yet authoritative cat we’ve ever lived in with!

My drinking companion

Whenever I was boozing of a Friday or Saturday night, I’d warn Beige we were in for a late one. We would stay together, him on my lap, until the early hours, or all night if I fell asleep. Every time I went outside to the loo, Beige would come for a look around or to strop his claws on a pebbledash wall! Irrespective of the weather. He was very interested in everything. Our last beer drinking session was a month ago, and his absence spoiled an intended evening last week, so I gave up on it.

RIP

Beige became increasingly poorly from early October. Unable to make his “internal plumbing” work, extreme anaemia and suspected feline leukaemia. By 19th October he had had enough.

We were privileged to share our lives with Beige and will never forget or stop loving him.

RIP, our handsome boy.

Beige
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Mike's comments

Government uses pandemic as cover for heists!

Should we welcome Boris Johnson’s efforts to relax lockdown and restart the economy?

To be brutally blunt, it does not matter how big or small a recession, or whether it is avoided, to people who are dead.

I am no expert on alternative methods of education, but I do believe other approaches need to be found for now, possibly for a year or longer. Most people can and should work remotely.

But the Conservative Government is determined to open schools so employers can force people back into offices, quite openly for commercial reasons irrespective of the threat of spreading the Covid-19 virus. Their determination to reopen football and other sports grounds and send students back to university are to enable more money making.

Despite the spin, their actions show the Government has always expected no vaccine to be in wide use until next year at the earliest, and no effective treatment. By unlocking the UK early, it is perfectly clear the Government strategy remains “herd immunity”.

A tiny percentage of UK people so far have contracted the virus. You can only achieve herd immunity by forcing huge numbers into exposure to the virus, which in turn means allowing a large number to die or to be permanently disabled by the virus.

Socially, “lockdown” is difficult, but we have shown we can adapt if we have to.

Personally, I love to be able to hop on a train and go to London or Cardiff, or go out for a meal with family or friends, or host a big family Christmas. But I know all those freedoms should not return for some time and, distressingly, may never to the extent we enjoyed them previously. People’s lives are more important.

Economically, there is absolutely no reason we cannot pause the economy for a lot longer or change how we do things permanently. The amounts spent on furlough are dwarfed by other areas of expenditure, and just collecting all the taxes due in a single year would go a long way toward paying for the pandemic. And we have our own central bank, which can issue (“print”) as much money as we need, so we don’t have to borrow to pay for maintaining lockdown.

Yet the £300 billion printed so far (“issued” via “quantitative easing”) during the pandemic has been given to the banks, not used on Covid-19 measures. And the Conservatives are needlessly and criminally killing people by handing “test and trace” to the private sector to make profits, rather than implementing it effectively to save lives.

An effective vaccine may never be found, as in the case of AIDS, for which there is still no vaccine. But there are really, really good treatments, which is possibly what will save us from Covid-19. The Tories are holding out the hope of a vaccine making it all go away just to shut us up, to lull us into believing their narrative, which is quite likely to be reducing the resources available to finding treatments for the virus that actually work.

It is an utter disaster that we find ourselves with a Tory government at this time, but that’s life (and death). Rather than asking ourselves whether they are doing mostly the right thing, but maybe not very well, we should question their true motivation. That is profit.

The Conservative Government’s almost complete inaction, and never ending streams of deceit and lies, on the climate emergency that will end our civilisation, if not worse, is because they care only for profits in the short term (even to the doom of their grandchildren).

Why would capitalists’ motives in a pandemic be any different to their habitual and relentless pursuit of profits? They may hope Covid-19 will fade and disappear, as with SARS, if they actually bother to think that way at all, but why would they care when there is money to be made?

Simply, the Tories have used the pandemic as cover for a series of heists!

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Mike's comments

Save the Planet – Reforest and Phase Out Meat & Dairy

Save the Planet – Reforest and Phase Out Meat And Dairy

To stand any chance of meeting our legal obligations under the Paris Treaty – never minds aspirations of going further – huge and rapid change is needed in the UK. The only realistic options are EITHER reforest most land used for meat and dairy production and move to plant-based diets to provide sufficient, good food OR let our children suffer the consequences of our dancing around what we know to be needed.

KEY POINTS

  1. The Labour Party 2020 consultation document says, “Tackling the climate and environment emergency is one of the most daunting tasks our country has ever faced. It will require… rethinking the way we use our land and transforming our relationship to food.”
  2. Labour Party policy is to achieve carbon net zero by 2030.
  3. But the UK is not on even track to meet its legally binding commitment to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 80% by 2050 (2)
  4. Ivan Monkton from Unite argued Labour’s policy needs to be aspirational and visionary, we don’t have time to be measured and incremental
  5. Limiting warming to the target 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures requires carbon dioxide removal (CDR) from the atmosphere.
  6. The most readily deployable CDR option at scale in the UK is the restoration of its native forests (1)
  7. To provide sufficient and affordable protein and calories for each person in the UK, reforestation will require all intensively produced meat and dairy to be phased out in favour of plant-based diets. (6)
  8. A move to increased domestic production on smaller farms can provide more and fairer employment and increase food security.

BACKGROUND

A recent study from Harvard University looked at replacing animal agriculture in the UK with a mixture of plant-based farming and forest regeneration. (1) Only by large scale change can the UK reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and enable carbon dioxide removal (CDR) from the atmosphere to meet our commitments under the Paris Agreement.

MEAT AND DAIRY: INEFFICIENT, UNHEALTHY AND DAMAGING

• Meat and dairy production is harmful to the environment and health of people, as well as exceptionally cruel to animals, particularly factory (“intensive”) farming.

• Many animal products have significant negative environmental and social impacts relative to plant-rich foods. (1)

• Feed production has significant negative impacts on forests, water resources and our climate, and contributes to food insecurity where land is used to feed animals instead of feeding people directly.

• Conversion of feed to animal food is largely inefficient. (1) As little as 3% of the plant calories in feed are converted into calories in beef, for example (3)

• Increases in the consumption of animal products, refined grains and sugar have all been linked to the worldwide increase in obesity.13 The rise in the consumption of unhealthy food means that our diets are among the top risk factors for early death and increased risk of illness globally. (4)

• Suboptimal diet (for example, low fruit, low whole grain and low vegetable consumption, and high meat intake) is a leading risk factor for global premature mortality accounting for nearly one in every five deaths (5)

CLIMATE

• Rebecca Long-Bailey MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Energy reminded the Environment, Energy and Culture Policy Commission meeting on 2nd April 2019 of Labour’s conference announcement on achieving net zero by 2050.

• The UK is not on track to meet its legally binding commitment to reducing GHG emissions by 80% by 2050 under the UK Climate Change Act, and even further reductions would be required to align with the 1.5°C aspiration of the Paris Agreement. (1)

• Limiting warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures requires carbon dioxide removal (CDR) from the atmosphere. The most readily deployable CDR option at scale in the UK is the restoration of its native forests. (1)

• Green house gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture alone take nearly the full 1.5ºC target emissions allowance by 2050 for all sectors, including energy, industry, transport and others (6)

• We cannot simply focus on improving the efficiency of food production

• to reduce carbon emissions, a more sustainable, healthy and local food and farming model needs to be incentivised that is largely plant-based. All intensively produced meat and dairy should be phased out. (7)

• Rebecca Long-Bailey MP told the EECPC we must treat the climate crisis as an economic imperative rather than just a social and moral one.

• Ivan Monkton, giving evidence from Unite to the same meeting, said Labour’s policy needs to be aspirational and visionary and that we don’t have time to be measured and incremental!

• Greenpeace suggests we should ratchet up the UK’s international contribution under the Paris Agreement (Nationally Determined Contributions for 2030), to ensure it is in line with containing global warming to 1.5C, and reflective of the need for international leadership from the UK, given its historic emissions (8)

REFORESTATION

The Harvard University study mentioned above (1) argues that extensive reforesting of UK land currently devoted to pasture would result in huge CDR benefits. They outline different scenarios:

(a) maximising CDR by restoring land currently under pasture and cropland used to produce farmed animal feed to forest (offsets 9 years of current UK CO2 emissions).

(b) trade off some CDR in order to keep all current cropland in production, allowing for the repurposing of animal feed cropland for increased and diversified fruit and vegetable production for human consumption, therefore maximising food self-sufficiency for the UK (offsets 12 years of current UK CO2 emissions).

(c) The remaining cropland in both scenarios is sufficient to provide more than the recommended protein and calories for each person in the UK, using a plant-based diet.

EMPLOYMENT

• Ivan Monkton pointed out to the EECPC food workers suffer poor terms and conditions and low pay. The profit motive has driven costs for maximum profit, as food is seen as a commodity, not a fundamental need.

• Jyoti Fernandes of the Landworkers’ Alliance has a vision of food security and meaningful jobs, arguing for mainly domestic food production. Smallholdings can provide this, with an average on community farms of 3.1 workers per hectare compared to 0.26 on larger farms.

• But the trend is concentration of production in the hands of fewer and larger players, so small farms are disappearing, and with them a more sustainable farming model rooted in diversity (9)

• In the EU as a whole, 82% of livestock comes from specialised (10) large farms and only 16% from mixed farming systems. (11)

  1. Harvard University study by Helen Harwatt, PHd and Matthew N Hayek, PHd [looks at replacing animal agriculture in the UK with a mixture of plant-based farming and forest regeneration], page 1: http://animal.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/Eating-Away-at-Climate-Change-with-Negative-Emissions––Harwatt-Hayek.pdf
  2. Greenpeace, page 8: https://storage.googleapis.com/planet4-international-stateless/2018/03/698c4c4a-summary_greenpeace-livestock-vision-towards-2050.pdf)
  3. (Shepon, A., et al. 2016. Energy and protein feed-to-food conversion efficiencies in the US and potential food security gains from dietary changes. Environmental Research Letters, 11:105002)
  4. (Malik, V. S., Willett, W. C. & Hu, F. B. 2012. Global obesity: trends, risk factors and policy implications. Nature Reviews Endocrinology, 9: 13.)
  5. (Gakidou, E., et al. 2017. Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 84 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks, 1990-2013; 2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016. The Lancet, 390: 1345-1422.)
  6. (Bajželj, B., et al. 2014. Importance of food-demand management for climate mitigation. Nature Climate Change, 4: 924-929. This analysis is for limits between 1.5º and 2º C.)
  7. Greenpeace, page 16: https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/0861_GP_ClimateEmergency_Report_Pages.pdf
  8. Greenpeace, page 23: https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/0861_GP_ClimateEmergency_Report_Pages.pdf
  9. Greenpeace, page 10: https://storage.googleapis.com/planet4-eu-unit-stateless/2019/02/83254ee1-190212-feeding-the-problem-dangerous-intensification-of-animal-farming-in-europe.pdf
  10. Farm specialisation describes the trend towards a single dominant activity in farm income: an agricultural holding is said to be specialised when a particular activity provides at least two thirds of the production or the business size of an agricultural holding. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Glossary:Farm_specialisation
  11. Eurostat. Agri-environmental indicator – Specialisation, data from June 2016. Available at https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Agri-environmental_indicator_-_specialisation

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Mike's comments

Will we be just a smear on the lens of time?

Before the film Jurassic Park generated interest and funding for digs, we only had two fragments of Tyranausaurus Rex, 4.5 million years apart. Without that popular and intense focus, we might almost have missed T Rex.

Our “modern” ancestors have been around no more than 0.2 million years. A speck on the geological timeline.

Those in the far future – assuming there is one for sentient life forms on Earth – will be hard pressed to discern our presence. There will be another extinction event for them to see in the geological record – the sixth and by far the fastest – but it will be nigh on impossible for them to accurately see the cause. Us.

We could have been so much more than an almost invisible event. We should have aspired to a completely attainable socialist future.

As a civilisation, perhaps a collection of civilisations, we do not take the climate emergency seriously. Future generations might burn, which is apparently OK, as long as we make it out dead first.

With our rush to emerge from “lockdown”, in the certain knowledge that more will die as a result of our desire to go shopping or go to the pub, we again demonstrate we will be little more than a smear on the lens of time.

Which, I suppose, is OK. But it doesn’t make me proud.

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Mike's comments

VE Day veterans abandoned to die of Covid-19

It feels as if VE Day veterans have been abandoned to die in care homes, because of 10 years of austerity cuts and privatisation.

They should be cared for in Rainbow/Nightingale or established hospitals. But they’re not because some temporary hospitals are still not ready and there are not the staff needed anyway.

We were totally unprepared because of a decade of profiteering and cuts.

A political choice.

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Mike's comments

Jennie Formby – Please take further, immediate action against hate speech and potential fraud

Dear Jennie
I have had many conversations with a lot of members, who are supportive of my personal decision to write to you as a matter of urgency, since I believe steps taken to date in respect of serious allegations are not sufficient.

Election of a Labour Government in 2017 would have saved and improved lives, now and in the future. Among many other things, a Labour Government would have:
 ended austerity policies, that particularly attack low income and vulnerable people;
 set about rebuilding our public services, such as the NHS, weakened by a decade of underfunding and privatisation, which would have made the UK far better prepared for the current pandemic; and,
 taken real and meaningful action on the climate emergency.

Notwithstanding, and irrespective of, how “the Report” on “The work of the Labour
Party’s Governance and Legal Unit in relation to antisemitism, 2014 – 2019″ was put into the public domain, it is there now; it is a matter of profound regret that no action
appears to have been taken against Labour Party members and employees who are credibly alleged to have actively worked against the election of a Labour Government – against saving lives – or to have made sexist, racist, misogynistic, disablist or other hate statements.

Immediate action needs to be taken to restore faith of members and the public that the Party:
 takes seriously hate speech;
 will not tolerate the gross misconduct of people acting against the goals of our elected officials and members, in which they invest money and huge amounts of effort; and,
 is committed to fairness and even handedness.

I am quite certain that, if similarly credible allegations were made against any of our members, they would be immediately suspended by the Party, pending investigation.

I therefore call upon the Labour Party to:
 immediately now suspend from membership and /or employment by the Party the tiny proportion of staffers and members identified in the Report as behaving in this way pending investigation;
 inclusion of the Report, suitably redacted, in the Party’s evidence to the EHRC;
 ensure the investigation into the contents of the unredacted Report is
independent and rapid;
 ensure the investigation into the contents of the unredacted Report includes
examination of hate speech, acts of hate, gross misconduct and potential
financial fraud;
 that the findings of the investigation into the contents of the unredacted
Report are acted upon promptly and decisively.

I very much support the Statement issued by the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs.

In closing, I want to make clear I fully support you, personally. As line manager you were perfectly entitled to access, or authorise access, to emails and any other information you thought pertinent. You have been, and are being, treated abominably when all you have done is to seek to protect and advance the interests of the Labour Party and the people it represents.

In solidarity.

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Mike's comments

Is money worth more than lives?

Only 14% of people have so far had Covid-19 in a hard hit German town, when expectations are 60% – 80% will get the disease. That means we are in for a long haul.

The scientists seem most concerned our herd immunity is a long way off. So we should worry that Ministers look to be suggesting some people (young?) could be “released” early – the true reason presumably to expose them faster than in a lockdown, to speed us towards that herd immunity.

So are we being softened up to an acceptance of more deaths than necessary so the economy can be helped? Money over lives?

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/04/09/999015/blood-tests-show-15-of-people-are-now-immune-to-covid-19-in-one-town-in-germany/

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Mike's comments

Vultures circling the NHS?

“Britain is paying the price for an overly centralised system that is reluctant to work with the private sector.”

At first I thought it just stupid, but it’s actually really quite threatening, heard on 3rd April’s R4 Today programme. The commentator is advocating the system so badly failing the American people, now the Covid-19 epicentre of the world! So why say something so transparently idiotic? Clearly, the ability to procure centrally at scale, and to impose uniform standards and policies, is saving lives.

So this could well be a toe in the water, to see whether the public will swallow the idea that the problem is somehow the fault of our creaking and chronically under resource health and social services.

Keep an eye out for more.

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Mike's comments

No equality on a dying planet

While we are striving to settle the most contraversial issues just now, maybe worth considering the words of Sisie Orbach, by way of context?

“With a broken planet, we will have no gay rights, no feminism, no respect for trans people, no attempt at fairness and justice for people of colour.
Brutality is only kept at bay by the rule of law and by there being a critical number of educated people, in work, healthy and worth enough money and food to keep them invested in society. (The Climate Emergency and the End of Diversity, Matthew Todd)
Law and order only holds as long as it serves people, as long as they can feed themselves and their families. All consideration of equality and decency disappears in the face of desperation.

We participate in activities that are often against our self interest. We are seduced into thinking that uncomfortable things will go away or that “science” will solve the problems. But it’s not accurate and the urgency upon us means we need to engage with our own denial.
(Climate Sorrow, Sisie Orbach)

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Mike's comments

Exasperated trans Labour supporter

I listened yesterday to a radio debate between an AllianceLGB ‬spokesperson and a journalist applauding some Labour Leadership candidates for signing a pledge calling on the Party to expel “transphobic” members.

A trans caller made an interesting contribution, saying that women are women, an immutable biological fact, and trans women are trans women, not women. It reminded me of interviews with Sharon Davies early last year, in the context of discussions on transgender athletes, where she said allowing transgender athletes to enter female competitions “has the potential to ruin women’s sport”. She argued that transgender athletes who were born male have a physical advantage over cisgendered women, presumably concerned at the possibility Martina Navratilova had raised, where ”…someone cynically changes gender, perhaps temporarily, to gain a competitive advantage”. There were also echoes there of worries about male-bodied people entering women’s spaces. I suppose that might be a problem, in rare cases, but there is also a danger of assuming the worst of all trans people, and that is clearly absolutely wrong.

I heard Sharon explain she was referring to the XX and XY sex chromosomes, that determine things like relative bone density and ability to recover from injury. The science escapes me now, but I think I may also have heard that XX/XY does not invariably set a hard and fast division between sexes.

This all goes to show there are immense difficulties in classifying by gender (however identified) or by sex. I hope that our Leadership candidates have considered all this; and I hope someone can explain it to me dispassionately. It is surely an issue (range of issues?) that deserves cool discussion, without presupposition of the motives of participants in that discussion?