A nation of animal lovers?

“Animal-loving” Brits are happy that their government – and, for that matter, the European Government – condones cruel slaughter of animals for human consumption.

Ritual slaughter for Jews and Muslims satisfies no actual need, just a whim. It’s called religion.

A “leading vet” has, according to the BBC, “criticised the ‘unacceptable’ rise in the number of animals killed in ritual slaughter”. I’d have thought the criticism would be of any ritual slaughter, given that the animal’s throat is slit while the creature is alive to witness its own final moments as it exsanguinates into a trough below its dangling body.

The criticism comes from Prof. Bill Reilly, former president of the British Veterinary Association, who said estimates suggested more animals were slaughtered than was necessary.

Than “was necessary”?

Sorry, but I fail to see how the fact that 99 animals were stunned before slitting can improve the experience of the one animal that has to witness its own painful demise.

Give the prof his due: he does say: “In my view, the current situation is not acceptable and, if we cannot eliminate non-stunning, we need to keep it to the minimum.

“This means restricting the use of halal and kosher meat to those communities that require it for their religious beliefs and, where possible, convincing them of the acceptability of the stunned alternatives.”

So at least he sees prestunning as a desired goal – but perhaps he and his colleagues should be shouting louder for ritual slaughter’s abolition.

Why, indeed, isn’t there a much bigger, widespread outcry about this? While some campaigners work assiduously to bring this horror to an end, most Brits are happy to tuck into their hamburgers, sausages and Sunday joints of meat – not to mention the growing range of chicken-based food items available on supermarket shelves – without asking whether the animal was prestunned.

And that calls for labelling of which foods have been killed ritually, which, as far as I am able to tell, stores are not legally bound to provide.

So, failing that, folks, go organic, because organic standards call for minimum welfare during an animal’s lifetime and deathtime. It costs a bit more, so eat less. Which is more important: the right of the animal to die more peacefully and pain-free or your desire to pile your plate with bigger burgers, more sausages and more slices of beef or lamb?

You can rule out pork from ritual slaughter, of course – so maybe go for that instead.

Wait for the rumpus to begin as we move towards gay partnership ceremonies in churches

Looks like we’re in for a bit of a rumpus in religious circles from next month, then, as it becomes law for same-sex partnership ceremonies to be held in religious premises.

Putting aside why people would want to do it in church, we have to accept that a lot of people do, and it’s been unfair hitherto that they can’t.

Liberal religious groups such as Quakers and some Jews are cool with this; the Church of England, though, is likely to get vapours about it and go into a screaming, hissy fit.

The fact is, no church organisation will be forced to host gay ceremonies. But you can bet your bottom that this won’t stop all the kicking and shouting and throwing of toys out of the pram.

Should be fun.

Are you getting cruelly killed meat? Perhaps you won’t be told!

“Britain goes halal . . . but no-one tells the public: How famous institutions serve ritually slaughtered meat with no warning”, says a Mail headline.

Yes, it’s really quite disgusting. It’s a longish piece, but interesting. And it’s also rather disturbing that some places that sell halal and kosher (i.e. cruelly killed) meat as a matter of course don’t see the need to tell their customers.

Let them eat hake

“Muslims wishing to eat halal would go to a restaurant and it was fish or nothing. Now we have a choice,” boasts a Muslim in France in a Guardian article that seems to celebrate the fact that middle-class Muslims have ensured that many hundreds of thousands more animals are slaughtered inhumanely to satisfy superstition.

Supermarkets are now heaving with halal food, says the article, and much of it is meat.

Nowhere does the article even hint at the methods of slaughter. I don’t know what French conventional slaughter methods are, but we all know what ritual slaughter means: slitting the throat of an animal hauled up by its hind legs while the animal sees its own blood painfully drip away.

And religion is driving this. And this will happen in the UK, where conventional slaughter regulations do require prestunning, but, as a sop to the superstitious and for the sake of appeasing Jews and Muslims, the law allows special dispensations to the religious to kill their animals in a barbaric manner.

In spite of recommendations by the Farm Animal Welfare Council, the British government continues to permit this barbarism, and there’s no indication that any other party with a chance of winning the next general election would do otherwise.

If we had strict laws, Muslims would be forced to eat fish or nothing. Or they could get on with sensible life and, if they have to eat meat at all, eat extensively reared organic meat that’s prestunned before the fatal cut is administered.

As a French princess is supposed to have said (in a saying widely attributed to Marie Antoinette), “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” (let them eat cake). Let’s rephrase it, then, to “Qu’ils mangent du poisson.” Or, you could say, “Let them eat hake.”

And, if you thought I led this entire post to that conclusion just to get a good headline, you’re dead right!

Let’s hear it for the animals!

Where is the animal-rights lobby when you need it?

It’s sure needed at the moment, because there’s a huge rise in the popularity of, and therefore the demand for, barbarically slaughtered food, which some deluded people seem to think they have to eat because a sky fairy told them to.

Many animal-rights activists – those, anyway, who object to our eating animals, no matter how humanely they’re slaughtered, as opposed objecting to testing cosmetics on animals, which is the real evil – are a tad touchy-feely in other respects too.

They’re therefore more likely to tread lightly with their convictions on ritual slaughter if the alternative is to upset religionists, particularly those of a religion practised chiefly by members of other ethnic groups.

So, when I see marches of animal-rights protestors objecting to halal and kosher slaughter, I’ll begin to eat the above words, which will first be humanely slaughtered, of course.

The lunatics have taken over the skies

This really is a hoot. We can all feel safer now that we know a bunch of raving, swivel-eyed religious lunatics – sorry, a group of rabbis and Jewish mystics – have taken to the skies over Israel, praying and blowing ceremonial trumpets to ward off swine flu.

Take a look at the YouTube video below. You’ll wet your knickers.

God exists?

He asks the question and they give their answer, in the UK Channel 4 television programme Revelations: How Do You Know God Exists?, next Sunday at 7 p.m.

According to the BBC publication Radio Times, Antony Thomas went straight to the top to find out the answer. He asked the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols, Muslim theologian Tariq Ramadan, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks and Hindu Swami Pramtattva.

The magazine asked Antony Thomas, “How many of them gave you a clear answer?”

They all said the same thing – God’s existence is evidenced by the goodness they see in people,” he replied, and “all of them, with the exception of Tariq Ramadan, wanted to see the questions in advance. I thought this was a bit strange – I’ve never been asked to do this before. And some of them refused to answer certain questions.

There could hardly be a more weird answer than the one they all gave. It seems that God implants a little goodness in people and stops at that. So much for an all-powerful, all-loving god!

Animal rites

“This regulation protects the fundamental rights of Europe’s religious minorities.”

Hang on, hang on, hang on! We’re talking here of the rights of religious lunatics to kill animals in a barbaric manner. Those rights?

Yes, it would seem so.

The quote we open with comes from Dr Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, quoted in a story on the politics.co.uk website.

Animal-rights campaigners are rightly miffed at the fact that, because of these primitive God botherers, meat slaughtered cruelly will now have to be sold throughout the European Union.

This is because – as we reported recently – MEPs ruled that Muslims and Jews should be allowed, without prior stunning, to slit the conscious animals’ throats so that the creatures can witness their own lives dripping out of their necks while, we are told, in pain and anguish.

The story says:

The new EU rules require all slaughter techniques to make sure animals do not suffer “any avoidable distress or pain”, but they make an explicit exception for “cultural traditions and religious rites” [. . .]

Conference of European Rabbis executive director Aba Dunner added: “The regulation specifically makes provision for the killing of animals for food by religious communities to be exempted from the requirement for pre-stunning, and it contains no discriminatory labelling requirements for meat slaughtered using the shechita [the Jewish kosher] method nor for post-cut stunning to be enforced.

Does this mean that you and I could buy meat anywhere – a local butcher, a supermarket – and have no right whatever to know how it’s been slaughtered? In the name of your damned religion, you primitive barbaric bastard?

Then we get another idiot:

Fhuja Shafi, chair of the food standards committee at the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) said: “This is a human rights issue in terms of our ability to practise our religion. It’s a very humane method of slaughter. The incision with a very sharp knife produces a fast death and we see no problem with it.”

No, you wouldn’t see the problem with it, you thick moron, because you are not the animal (even if you have the brain of one).

Again, where is the “right”? Oh, yes, you have a right in law, it seems, but that doesn’t make it a moral right.

Stephen Evans of Britain’s National Secular Society (NSS) is quoted as saying, “This is further evidence of the grip that religion increasingly holds over our decision makers.

“Here we have a non-negotiable religious opt-out for a piece of legislation aimed at avoiding unnecessary suffering. The ruling is basically saying that it’s okay to cause animals to suffer, as long as you’re religiously motivated.”

The NSS tried to get a meeting with Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, but he wouldn’t meet them. However, having had some kind of irony bypass, his department said it would be continuing to monitor slaughterhouses and – get this! – the efficiency of stunning techniques would be regularly monitored.

Think about that for a moment. The efficiency of stunning techniques? What about the lack of stunning techniques? Those stunning techniques are pretty damned inefficient, in that, for halal and kosher slaughter, they don’t damned well exist.

Oh, but you don’t consider the lack of stunning as a deficiency in stunning. No, of course not. How silly of me even to consider that, for once, our politicians might put decency before primitive superstition.
__________
Related links:
In favour of animal suffering
It’s still OK to be barbaric to animals

It’s still OK to be barbaric to animals

“Religious slaughter techniques practised by Jews and Muslims are cruel and should be ended, says a scientific assessment from the Government’s animal welfare advisers.” So writes Martin Hickman in today’s Independent.

But will our government do anything? It looks unlikely. Cuddly, cruelty-free, can’t-put-a-foot-wrong religion will trump being kinder to our fellow creatures any day.

Back in May, you may remember, Euro MPs voted that it was OK to be cruel to animals.

We reported then that the TotallyJewish.com website was gloating that “Attempts to ban the production of kosher meat in the UK were dealt a major blow this week after the European Parliament voted in favour of declaring shechita a legitimate form of animal slaughter.”

The Indie tells us:

The Farm Animal Welfare Council [FAWC] says that slitting the throats of the animals most commonly used for meat, chickens, without stunning, results in “significant pain and distress”. The committee, which includes scientific, agricultural and veterinary experts, is calling for the Government to launch a debate with Muslim and Jewish communities to end the practice.

It was FAWC that brought out a report in 2003 (the Independent story makes reference to it). It declared that this type of ritual slaughter was unacceptable. To please the superstition lobby, our politically correct bunch of toadying NuLabour appeasers decided to ignore FAWC’s recommendations in favour of more suffering for the animal.

Even if our government – or the next one when the Tories get into power – decides to “launch a debate”, it will do no good: the Independent says the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has said the cruelty will not be ended, and it will put religion first.

Rituals, tradition and desiccated old scriptures are more important to the practitioners than suffering by sentient creatures, and our politicians don’t give a monkey’s arsehole.

One bit of good news that the Indie reports is:

One Muslim organisation, the Halal Food Authority, already insists on the slaughterhouses it regulates stunning animals first on welfare grounds, as long as they are still alive when their throats are slit.

But there’s always a “but”:

But in other halal and almost all kosher slaughterhouses, animals have their throats slit without prior stunning which would render them insensible to the pain. Religious groups say that doing so would be against their interpretation of religious texts.

These barbarians can claim legitimacy for their brutality from exemptions they’ve been granted to the Welfare of Animals (Slaughter or Killing) Regulations 1995, which says creatures such as cows, goats and chickens be stunned first.

It’s thought that about 114 million animals are killed under halal and 2.1 million under kosher methods each year in Britain. That’s a lot of suffering – for the sake of superstition.

And there was light

Religion does get ridiculous at times. Oops! did I say “does get”? I mean it gets even more ridiculous.

A Jewish couple in Bournemouth, UK, are suing their neighbours because said neighbours are “forcing” said Jewish couple to “work” on their sabbath.

It’s all to do with “motion sensors that turn on the lights in their communal stairwell, which they claim make it impossible for them to leave their flat during the sabbath”, says WorldWide Religious News, quoting The Times.

Like many Orthodox Jews, Dena and Gordon Coleman will not use electricity between sundown on Friday and Saturday night, which they regard as a day of rest. But since the sensors were installed at Embassy Court in Bournemouth, the lights come on as soon as the Colemans set foot outside their front door – which they say makes them responsible for switching them on and therefore prohibits them from leaving the building.

You’ve gotta laugh. But here’s a solution. All you have to do is imagine the lights are on by default (so you won’t have switched them on as such), but that their “offness” is caused by the absence of movement. So it’s the absence of movement that has done the “work” of switching them off.

You are doing the “work”, therefore, by remaining in your flat, and causing them to be off. So you can go out on the sabbath totally free of guilt.

Er, well, it sounded OK when I first thought of it!

Lambs to the slaughter – it's not over yet

Something I hadn’t appreciated when I wrote recently about ritual slaughter on religious grounds was that all is not lost. Well, not necessarily.

We reported that the European Parliament had voted to allow shechita ritual slaughter (that’s without prestunning) – and, I daresay we can assume that this would further legitimise the Muslim halal, too, which amounts to the same thing – and we quoted the gloats of the TotallyJewish.com website on the issue.

But Israel National News reported some days ago that fans of cruel methods of slaughtering animals – against, as far as the UK is concerned, the advice of its Farm Animal Welfare Council – may be celebrating too soon.

Even after EU vote, European shechita still in danger, says the headline. The story reports:

It was reported [. . .] that the European Jewish Community “hailed” the European Parliament’s vote to legalize the traditional Jewish method of slaughter into European law. However, it was later clarified that in fact, the Parliament only has consultative status in this case, and that the European Union’s Council of Agricultural Ministers will have the final say when it convenes next month.

[. . .]

Though the EU Parliament vote represents a significant victory for the coalition of the European Jewish Congress, as well the Conference of European Rabbis and Shechita EU, the fight is far from over. The Parliament resolved only to “introduce laws” that would be binding across Europe to allow animal slaughter “in accordance with religious rites.”

However, the final text of the proposed amendment to EU law will be brought before the above-mentioned Council in June – but not necessarily in a manner favorable to Jewish interests. The Council, which will convene on June 22–23 in Brno, Czech Republic, will vote on a proposal to require that all animals be pre-stunned before slaughter.

And, if that vote is passed, member states would ban shechita, which is at the moment not permitted in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, although Switzerland permits the practice for poultry only.

Rabbi Michael Melchior, former Chief Rabbi of Norway and a former Knesset Member, is quoted as saying, “I won’t say this is the only motivation, but it’s certainly no coincidence that one of the first things Nazi Germany forbade was kosher slaughter.”

Non sequitur. This suggests that the banning of shechita was some kind of prerequisite to all the shit that happened to the Jews after that. But that just ain’t necessarily so, and is clearly being used by Melchior to stir up emotion.

It will be interesting to see what happens in June.

In favour of animal suffering

Europe’s food animals are going to have to continue to suffer because of religion, thanks to MEPs.

“Attempts to ban the production of kosher meat in the UK were dealt a major blow this week after the European Parliament voted in favour of declaring shechita a legitimate form of animal slaughter,” gloats the TotallyJewish.com website.

Shechita, like Muslims’ halal, is a means of killing by hauling the terrified animal up and slitting its throat while it is conscious and can see its life literally flowing away; under conventional slaughter arrangements, the animal has to be stunned before the throat is cut, thus rendering it insensible.

In 2003, Britain’s Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC) decided this type of slaughter was unacceptable. To please the superstition lobby, our politically correct bunch of toadying NuLabour appeasers decided to ignore FAWC’s recommendations in favour of more suffering for the animal. (I suspect a Tory or other hue of government would do the same, since they’re politicians, after all.)

The TotallyJewish.com story says that, “in the wake of scientific evidence from lobby group Shechita in March 2005, the government acknowledged the method of slaughter was humane”.

This evidence was impartial? It was from a lobby group, for goodness’ sake! A lobby group called Shechita!

That makes it highly suspicious from the start, since, whoever actually carried out whatever investigation was done, Shechita was never going to submit a report that would suggest animal suffering actually existed in this brutal method of slaughter, was it?

Can you imagine religionists such as crazy Orthodox Jews or “devout” Muslims actually admitting they’re wrong about something, and changing their practices?

No? Didn’t think so.

FAWC, on the other hand, has no religious affiliation. It conducted a scientific investigation, paid for by taxpayers, which the government ignored. No doubt ministers had their eyes on votes and political correctness, as usual.

A spokesman for Shechita UK, Shimon Cohen, is quoted as having told Jewish News, “This is a helpful reinforcement. It won’t stop other groups from putting forward their views, but we’re used to that.

“But the British government, which has always been so helpful in protecting these rights [my emphasis] in the past, will be bound by this decision in the future to continue that protection.”

And for halal slaughter, too, of course.

But “rights”? When did you get the “right” to kill an animal in an unnacceptable and cruel manner, you religion-soaked nutcase? It’s a privilege – a privilege granted at the cost of better care of the animal.

You ought to be ashamed of yourself.
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Related link:
Animals suffer to appease Muslim prisoners

How to cure the heinous sin of homosexuality

Here’s one to picket, if you’re in London this coming weekend. Here’s the description of a conference called “Sex and the City”, subtitled “A Judaeo-Christian conference for all”. The venue was being kept a secret, but read on.

Ideal for clergy, rabbis, psychologists, therapists, educators and others concerned about the plethora of sexual issues confronting us in today’s society, including mentoring the sexually broken, the sexualization of culture, pornography, the Bible and sex, and marriage, the family and sex. There will be a special focus on how religious professionals and friends/relatives can respond biblically and pastorally to those struggling with unwanted SSA (same-sex attraction).

So the “conference for all” crap is just a blatant lie. It’s clearly for a twisted minority who think being gay is such a shitty thing to be that gay people should be forced to change.

Impossible, anyway: all they can do is suppress their desires – with all the shit that can bring into their lives. Lives that are already overflowing with guilt if they even consider that they need to subject themselves to the ministrations of monsters who believe in “ex-gay”.

One of the speakers is Joseph Nicolosi, whom Wikipedia describes thus:

Nicolosi has advocated and practiced reparative therapy, which claims to help people overcome or reduce unwanted homosexual feelings – the therapy is highly controversial as the American Psychiatric Association wrote in a 1998 position statement that it “opposes any psychiatric treatment, such as “reparative” or “conversion” therapy, which is based upon the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder, or based upon a prior assumption that the patient should change his/her homosexual orientation.”

Another speaker is Jeffrey Satinover. This is what Wiki says of him:

Copies of his best-selling 1996 Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth were distributed to all bishops attending the 1998 Lambeth Anglican Communion Conference and his work is widely used and cited, and equally widely criticized, as one of the main modern sources supporting the view that homosexuality is a changeable, non-innate condition, though not a matter of choice.

A third speaker is Arthur Goldberg, whom the website announcement of the conference by a group called Anglican Mainstream describes as “author of the just-released Light in the Closet: Torah, Homosexuality, and the Power to Change”.

No balance, then? And this is a “conference”? Nope, it’s just a lot of people reinforcing each other’s idea that sexuality is fluid and can be tortured from one orientation to another. The website continues:

We are very worried about the continued progress of the gay – and in fact, the LGBT – agenda across the board in the UK. Social, cultural, political and religious sectors are all being targeted and most of them are capitulating. The ramifications for gay living are not confined to even these realms, however. As various gay commentators observe, gays have been the pioneers for new models of doing relationships and sex for the rest of us, especially among the young. Did you know? Though slightly optimistic, Channel 4’s 2007 How Gay Sex Changed the World is essentially correct. The LGBT contingent is but the first manifestation of a profound sexual sea change occurring today which will make the 1960s sexual revolution look tame. Given the present cultural endorsement and legal protection of these “orientations”, we will soon be in a situation where there is no turning back: the damage will be complete.

What “damage”? Where is the “damage”? Why are these debased, poisonous, vile people worried? Is it going to affect their lives? Are they going to find they’re forced into shagging others of the same sex? Are they going to be turned into paedophiles (something that so many raving idiots conflate with homosexuals)?

Are gays and lesbians going to take over the world and banish heterosexuality, just as these pernicious, malicious freaks want to banish homosexuality?

Just what is it to these grotesque individuals what others do with their choice portions and dangly bits? What they do with their relationships? How they conduct their lives?

In case you wish to spread the word and organise a picket, it’s on Friday and Saturday, 24 and 25 April, from 9.30 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. The website says it’s at a “central London venue”, but we now know it’s at the Emmanuel Centre in Marsham Street, London SW1P 3DW.

“We are not publicizing this [venue] because we have no desire to have the conference ruined by unhappy gay activists etc.,” a conference coordinator, Lisa Nolland, said in an email to a UK Gay News reader, who passed it on to the online outlet.

The Probability of Jonathan Sacks

Probability theory is the mathematical study of relative probabilities in processes involving uncertainty. However, Jonathan Sacks (pictured), the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, writing the weekly religious propaganda article “Credo” in the London Times, claims on the basis of dubious new books that mathematics can be used to prove the existence of God.

That Jonathan Sacks exists has nothing to do with probability. He is the result of chance, necessity and choice, like everything else. Probability can say nothing about the existence of only one god.

The God of the Hebrews can no more exist than can a square circle. Such a Being is not possible. Who does the Rabbi think he’s kidding?

We the undersigned are being bullshitted

I do wonder about the efficacy or otherwise of these Downing Street petitions. I occasionally sign one, knowing full well that the eventual response from the Prime Minister’s office will be a load of bullshit. I guess I do it because someone has asked me to, and I don’t see the harm in it – except for the time it seems to waste.

The latest – for me, anyway – is the excuse for a response that has come from a petition about sharia law.

The petition reads, “We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to stop Islamic Sharia Law being used in Great Britain.” The details are then given thus:

“The most senior judge in England and Wales has said that aspects of Islamic sharia law could be used in the UK, provided they don’t conflict with existing laws. I say that Islamic sharia law should not be used in the United Kingdom and the Prime Minister should do everything within his power to stop it being introduced.”

Completely ignoring the fact that Muslim women – probably the greatest victims of this Dark Ages system – can feel coerced into having something dealt with under this religious excuse for a legal system and then come off the worse for it, the Prime Minister’s office fobs us off with this:

Shari’a law is the code of personal religious law governing the conduct of Muslims. It can extend into all aspects of people’s lives – personal, religious, family, civil and criminal.

Shari’a law is not part of the law of England and Wales. The Government does not intend to change this position in relation to the whole or part of the United Kingdom. However, provided an activity prescribed by Shari’a law does not contravene the law of England and Wales, there is nothing to prohibit it. Muslims can, for example, wear traditional dress and follow dietary rules. They are completely free to worship in the way that they want.

There can never be reliance on the fact that an act is permitted under Shari’a law as a justification for committing what is, under the law of England and Wales, a criminal act. Nor, for example, could someone expect a civil court, in reaching a decision on a contractual case under English or Scottish law, to apply the principles of Shari’a law.

Criminal matters, both small and serious, will always be heard in a Crown or Magistrate’s Court in England and Wales, and in Sheriff’s Courts in Scotland. The decisions made in an alternative court will not be recognised.

Yes, we know everything has to comply with British secular law, but we also know that the Arbitration Act allows sharia decisions to be considered and that subsequent courts – i.e. proper courts – are likely then to rubberstamp them.

We saw just after Christmas how one of Britain’s most senior legal figures, Baroness Butler-Sloss, reckons sharia divorces should be recognised by courts and the government.

But we’ve also seen examples of how sharia law can disadvantage women, and not just in marital disputes, but also when a criminal act has been committed, e.g., in this case, assault.

Nothing less than a firm statement saying no to sharia law, and affirming that matters of divorce will go through the British civil courts and antisocial behaviour will go through the criminal courts, will do.

Enough appeasement to religion goes on in our legal system as it is, with Jews and Muslims allowed to slaughter animals in ways that are deemed barbaric by the Farm Animal Welfare Council (see the third paragraph of this post from last November) and unacceptable to most caring people and Sikhs allowed to do away with the motorbike crash helmet everyone else has to wear.

If we keep giving way, we’ll keep giving way.

Animals suffer to appease Muslim prisoners

News of yet more creeping Islamisation and kowtowing to unreasonable religious demands comes to us from Scotland, where it’s reported that the entire population of a young offenders’ institution have to eat cruelly slaughtered meat because there are some among them with religious sensitivities.

Yes, it’s Muslims again. The institution concerned is Polmont, whose managers have been told not to source all their meat from halal butchers, but have continued to do so, according to the Daily Express, “to avoid ‘prejudicing the position’ of the handful of religious inmates”.

The point is that animal suffering should not be condoned, no matter how many Muslim prisoners there are. If they don’t like non-halal meat, let them take the veggie alternatives. It’s bad enough that our supine, kowtowing government has allowed ritual slaughter at all, in spite of a damning report from the Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC) in June 2003, which said ritual slaughter should be banned forthwith.

“FAWC said it wanted an end to the exemption currently allowed for Kosher and Halal meat from the legal requirement to stun animals first,” says the BBC report linked to above, which continues:

It says cattle can take up to two minutes to bleed to death – amounting to an abuse of the animals.

“This is a major incision into the animal and to say that it doesn’t suffer is quite ridiculous,” said FAWC chairwoman, Dr Judy MacArthur Clark.

Compassion in World Farming backed the call, saying: “We believe that the law must be changed to require all animals to be stunned before slaughter.”

But oh, no: that would hurt the itty-bitty sensitivities of cuddly-wuddly Jews and Muslims, wouldn’t it, and we wouldn’t want to hurt their special ickle sensitivities, would we? It’s religion, after all, cuddly, lovable religion, and that trumps everything – even ending barbaric cruelty to animals.

Anyway, these inmates wouldn’t know if the meat were not halal, would they? They could just take their choice and hope that it is. If they suspect that it’s not, tough. There are alternatives.

And this is nothing to do with prisoners’ rights. We acknowledge those. It’s to do with a society’s right to ensure that the animals it uses for food are treated as humanely as possible, and to demand that its government act with compassion, instead of bowing to religious pressure. The meat industry is bad enough in its conventional dealings with the domestic animal kingdom. Adding the stress of allowing an animal to watch itself bleed to death is something else.

Freedom Fry

Yesterday evening (on BBC1 in the UK) saw the start of a six-part documentary series, Stephen Fry in America, in which Fry tours all 50 states (plus Washington, DC) of the land of the free in a London black cab!

Fry’s love of America (and – according to an interview he’s given to the Radio Times – shame at the “exultant and ignorant arrogance [too often believed by the British] that Americans are ignorant, irony-free and vulgar”) is nevertheless tempered by his dismay on the growing “insistence [there] on equal validity between ‘revealed’ truth and evidence-based truth”:

[This] has meant that evolution is now pitted against so-called “intelligent design”, a barbarously irrational mixture of pseudo-science and fallacious argument that poses itself “innocently” as a credible alternative.

Philosophy and empiricism got America where it is today – it’s incredible to me that there are those who would turn their backs on the spiritual beauties, wonders and truths of the world and face instead the false promises of a preposterous text and even more preposterous commands. Jefferson,
Washington, Franklin, Madison, Adams and Lincoln would all be turning in their graves.

In this blog entry on Fry’s own website, he talks in some detail about his exploits, including an interesting encounter with semi-naked young men from the Church of Latter Day Saints.

I do not find [the Mormon] faith particularly absurd, in the way many mainstream Christians do [. . .] because I find all pretend invisible friends, Special Books and their rules equally ridiculous. Mormon ideas about realms of crystal rebirthing and special underpants are no weirder than the enforcing of wigs and woollen tights on orthodox Jewish women or laws and dogmas about burkhas and Virgin Births. The religion of the Latter Day Saints is not deserving of especial contempt simply because it is newer. It is as barmy as the rest and I cheerfully treat it as such. It has the same impertinent views concerning women and gays, of course, but [nineteen-year-old Mormon] Cody is clearly embarrassed about this and says with a touch of defensiveness, “We aren’t as bigoted as some fundamental Christians.”

Taking the mickey. Why not?

Why the hell can’t we take the piss out of Muslims? We take the piss out of Christians and Jews. We take the piss out of Jedi Knights and Scientology. Why do we have to treat Muslims with kid gloves?

After all, they can be hilarious. Just draw a cartoon of their marauding prophet, and the world is set alight. Sometimes literally, in parts.

Threaten to publish a book, and publishers shy away from it, having taken advice from “scholars”.

Print a picture of a little doggy on a postcard that’s meant to help the police, and Muslims are up in arms.

Make a film about their “holy book” and they threaten consequences if it’s not taken off YouTube.

Try venturing into a “Muslim area” in Birmingham, and you could just have a hilarious time being beaten up – or at least being told to get lost by a policeman wannabe who, in this case, happens to be Muslim.

There are Muslim comedians who take the piss out of all sorts of things – including Muslims. It’s called comedy. There’s this thing called irony. There’s satire. Only a bone-headed primitive religion would object.

Often, Muslims – the more enlightened ones, and there are many – don’t object. Often, it’s left to the indigenous politicians and civil servants and assorted do-gooders to prevent you from “going there”.

Well, there’s an interesting piece in the Independent on Sunday about it, which is worth reading. In it, David Lister argues, “The irony is that in [making Muslims a comedy no-go area], they really are insulting Muslims, the hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Britain who are perfectly capable of laughing at themselves, and would resent the patronising protection supposedly offered them by the comedy police.”

He was commenting on the fact that the comedian Harry Enfield had been told to leave alone a Muslim hoody character he had developed.

The production company Tiger Aspect, which makes Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse’s show Harry and Paul, confirmed that, “Obviously, it is a sensitive area. It [Enfield’s character] never made it further than the page. This was a decision taken collectively by key members of the production team.”

Back in April, I seem to remember, another comedian and writer, Ben Elton, was complaining of how Islam has become a no-go zone for comedians.

Quite simply, no religion should be exempt. The more they complain about it, the more the urine should be extracted, in huge quantities. If they shut up, they’ll take their share of piss-take with the rest – and not just religions, but politicians, celebs and just about anyone or anything in the public eye.

Good comedy helps us to see things in a different light. That makes it an art form. Anything that takes the piss for the sake of being cruel is not really comedy. Our laughter, if indeed it’s generated from such material, is not healthy laughter. It’s smutty laughter.

However, it shouldn’t be censored. In the marketplace of public performance, there is a mechanism. Crap comedy can be ridiculed by those whose job it is to do that: critics and other commentators.

Anyway, if thine eye offend thee, pluck at the off switch.

365¼

Question:

How long does it take the earth to travel around the sun?

Answer:

Approximately, 365 and a quarter days.

Or, to be more precise:

365.2422

Of course, for three out of every four years, we live through 365 days a year, and 366 in the fourth – this leap year enabling us to “catch up”.

As a kid, thinking of all the birthday presents I’d go without (I was a materialist heathen from an early age!), I felt lucky not to have been born on 29 February – the extra day in a leap year – whereas, today, what I wouldn’t give to be only one year older every four years! How ridiculous, eh?

Talking of the ridiculous, did you know that there are 365 negative commandments in the Jewish faith? Or that, in Gnosticism, in Greek notation, the letters of the deity Abraxas make up the number 365? Or that, 365 signifies the levels of heaven? No, me neither.

A Canadian friend once told me that a provisional driving licence there was known as a “365” because it was valid for 365 days, which doesn’t seem ridiculous at all.

Google “365 and a quarter turns” (not days, but, hey, what’s in a word?) and you’ll find this reference at Feast of Fools to a sexual act between Clay Aiken (pictured) – the US singer, and 2007 American Idol finalist – and a former Green Beret turned real-estate agent, John Paulus! I won’t go into the details here but, suffice to say, at the time, Aiken denied he was gay though, interestingly, he didn’t sue because, as the lovely boys at Feast of Fools revealed:

[Paulus] had accidentally pulled a “Lewinsky” and had DNA evidence of his love affair with Mr. Aiken.

Nice!

In September, however – and better late than never – on the cover of People magazine, Aiken finally came out as gay.

Well, Daniel and I are off to try out some 365 quarter turning. It is a leap year, after all!

Jews and Sikhs are cross with Auntie

We hellspawn secularists aren't the only ones who think the world's gone mad in kowtowing to Islam, it seems.

Now Jews and Sikhs are joining the bandwagon. They're accusing the BBC of making a disproportionate number of programmes about Muslims compared with those about their own religions.

I suppose they'd like the number of programmes increased to the Muslim number. I have a better idea: bring the Muslim-inspired programmes – indeed, all religious programmes – down to the Jew and Sikh levels. Then we might find useful, stimulating, informative and interesting programmes about religion instead of those that merely showcase it.