Bishop Hill Peter Melchett's potty time
Jan 9, 2017 Greens This is a guest post by Charlie Flindt.
I can’t see what all the fuss is about; I loved 2016. The Left spent much of the year deafening us with its whining, and flooding us with its bitter tears, the Brexit vote has done marvels for my farm's bank balance after a mediocre but easy harvest, and, best of all, the Soil Association has gone completely potty.
We conventional farmers have always loved our organic brethren. We love anyone who deliberately grows less than they could be growing – it’s good for the wheat supply-and-demand, even if it is slightly morally questionable when much of the world is still hungry. We marvel at their carefully cultivated image of ‘pesticide-free’, when the truth is not quite as clear-cut as that. So when the leading lights of the Soil Association start sounding a bit bonkers in front of the media – well, it’s time to get the popcorn and enjoy the show.
Back in May, yet another report came out stating that GM food was safe. After a brief chat with a world-weary-looking pro-GM scientist, the BBC interviewed Lord Peter Melchett, the Soil Association’s policy director, who, not surprisingly, took a different view on GM’s dangers. “Just because there’s no evidence,” he said solemnly, “doesn’t mean that nothing’s happening. Now, in the country where most GM food has been eaten, there is a huge developing diet-related health crisis – in North America. I’m not saying that’s because of GM food – but you can’t tell me it’s not.”
This is remarkable and (I would suggest) somewhat contradictory logic from a man who read Law at Cambridge. I would refer M’Lud to some of the finest cover stories of the Sunday Sport in its 80s heyday: ‘B-52 Bomber Found on Moon!’ ‘Lord Lucan Seen on Shergar!’ ‘I was a nine-inch sex slave!’ ‘B-52 Bomber Now GONE From Moon!’ All must be true, according to the Soil Association’s finest legal mind, because of a lack of evidence that they’re not. I rest my case.
In July, the herbicide glyphosate (Roundup) came under attack again, and this time it was the Soil Association’s Helen Browning’s turn to be given the kid-glove treatment by the BBC. Countryfile allowed her free rein to demand that this vital herbicide should be banned simply because there are suggestions that it might be carcinogenic, and that the public would be happy to pay more to compensate the farmer for drying costs if pre-harvest desiccation were banned. The hilarity (and hypocrisy) of this interview stemmed from the fact that much of it was carried out over the bonnet of an aged diesel-powered Land Rover Defender. When it comes to carcinogenic emissions, there’s only one way to beat a diesel-fuelled grain dryer: you drive one of Solihull’s finest.
And then, late in the year, we had SA's astonishing Tweet. ‘Millions of farm animals are abused in the pursuit of cheap food, but there is another way...’ said the Soil Association on its Twitter feed. The resulting (and perfectly justified) outrage from non-organic livestock boys and girls was enough to prompt a letter of apology. But even that seemed to stop being an apology halfway through, and drifted off into the realms of comedic praise for Greenpeace’s intimidation of companies by staking out their HQs dressed as gorillas. Really, Ms Browning? I mean – really?
Yup, it has been a vintage year for entertainment, courtesy of the Soil Association. It’s the organic gift that goes on giving. Let’s hope they keep it up for 2017.
Reader Comments (103)
Jaysus yee are in for some shock....
Oh I can see it now , the British Free State where you are allowed to maintain the tradition of red post office boxes.......
On the + side a minor literary revival might happen where your version of Flan o Brien can make caustic remarks on the nature of poverty in the "free state"
A wonderful sort of variation on the African democratic republic theme.
Dork, you're just jealous. We've had our revolution and didn't have to channel ancient Irish seers once.
@ TDoC - "The German retail monopolists (ALDI &Lidl) catering for the segment of the population with perhaps some cashflow and little savings. The quality of the produce is very low"
Absolute bunk! Both brands regularly win awards for their produce, and the smaller suppliers they use (particularly for items like biscuits) do a much better job than the big name supermarkets. And by not entertaining loyalty cards, and money off coupons, waiting times at the checkouts are much shorter than those big names (particularly my local Sainsbury's).
Dave.
Me thinks the motto of those awards is "incest is best"
Again the destruction of civilization did not happen overnight.
In the 80s old Cork city lost almost all of its sole trader butchers and bakeries.
Retail has become car dependent , which means of course gigantic waste .
The usury black hole has been clearly visible for 500~ years at the very least.
Bits of civilization has survived the carnage and rebuilt something of human character and scale but post 2008 we have all entered the anti-universe with no information possible to pass from the other side , resulting in total loss.
This new universe remains superfically the same but is not.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pB4ZcrATAPg
TinyCO2 on Jan 12, 2017 at 2:07 PM
The linked daily Mail article has:
"Dr Peter Fletcher, who was Chief Scientific Officer at the Department of Health, said if it is proven that the jab causes autism, "the refusal by governments to evaluate the risks properly will make this one of the greatest scandals in medical history"."
It is not that there is or is not a risk, it is that Government REFUSED to properly evaluate the risks involved. If there was a proper evaluation, I would have thought that the CSO would have said so.
Until it is evaluated properly, this statement can be repeated and it will be correct.
The leaks keep coming:
Whistleblower Says CDC Knew in 2003 of Higher Autism Rate Among African-American Boys Receiving MMR Shot Earlier Than 36 Months
It doesn't look so simple after all:
Rats’ intestines destroyed just 90 days after being fed Monsanto GMO corn
'Tis a mystery, Robert C., what with all the toxic stuff that we farmers are using and growing, how everyone lives so long - longer than ever before!
Charlie Flindt on Jan 13, 2017 at 8:23 AM
Much of the discussion revolves around what might be fed to us, in the future, so it hasn't happened yet.
Most of us have survived the 2008 Climate Change Act, but we still want it repealed.
We live longer mainly because we have proper sanitation. Life also involves less wear and tear, like farmers have tractors instead of horses, cooks have food mixers instead of just wooden spoons and we have all those gadgets in the kitchen to make life less physical - so we end up at the gym, apparently.
We've been munching away on glyphosate-treated stuff for the best part of half a century.
Robert Christopher
After reading some of the other articles on that GMO Corn/Rats web page my scepticism meter went positive.
What, Roger, you mean you're not rushing out to buy your "The Echo® Elemonics™ Hydrogen Infusion Machine", which "filters, infuses and elementally balances your drinking water"?
I knew I'd regret it ...
Budgie. So did we.
Anyone else spot the Greens 'proving' the dangers of GMO (in Robert Christopher's link)....using live animal experimentation. Now, THAT, Steve Ta, is irony.
Charlie Flindt, I can't even see a link in the article to the original research. I'm not going to click every one of the many links to see if they actually accidentally linked to it.
Far be it for me to doubt the competence of research conducted by two researchers at the Faculty of Medicine at Tanta University, Egypt, but the tone of the article bears the usual hallmarks of green "research" into the supposed evils of GM crops. All too often such research can be immediately disregarded due to small sample size and the lack of appropriate positive and/or negative controls. Of course, this happens in much other biomedical research, but seems far more frequent when there are "green" issues at stake.
Jeremy Poynton
There is a clear anti human agenda here. Eco fascists despise the concept of 'human centrality' as found in Judaic Christian philosophy. They despise cheap food because cheap food has lead to the expansion of the great unwashed.
In particular, they hate
Genesis 1:28
And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Preferring
"We recognize that separating humanity from nature, from the whole of life, leads to humankind’s own destruction and to the death of nations. Only through a re-integration of humanity into the whole of nature can our people be made stronger. That is the fundamental point of the biological tasks of our age. Humankind alone is no longer the focus of thought, but rather life as a whole . . . This striving toward connectedness with the totality of life, with nature itself, a nature into which we are born, this is the deepest meaning and the true essence of National Socialist thought."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofascism
No one has addressed the legal problem of being sued for something that the environment does (the wind blowing) nor the lack of an exit strategy for GMO development if problems appear after several generations. We get reports of how diet and environment (like Lead in petrol) can affect later generations, but this does not appear to be of any concern to GMO advocates. And if one GM has been accepted as probably safe, does that mean a whole family of GM can be waived through (or is it waved through :) ) and for different organisms?
I suppose the GMO 'Scientists' know best :) , but 'having dominion' means taking responsibility as well as having power over what is present. Exit strategies are often only thought about when it is too late.
The issues of glyphosate and neonics were discussed on the BBC Radio 4 programme "Farming Today" this week.
What was their verdict, PB? (Like most farmers, I can only listen to the first ten seconds before having to turn it off).
@e smiff
Cheaper food but not cheap food, at least relative to cashflow.
Equity is extracted from the population and concentrated within the Industrial combines.
(this is the real reason why the stock market is doing so well)
Stuff gets cheaper but incomes fall faster.
Typically you witness massive energy expenditure on national energy balance sheets and pitiful end use human energy consumption.
Again to repeat a lack of cashflow amongst the general population forces consumers into the arms of the favoured combines who for example also receive the cheapest credit.
This observation cannot be rationally refuted
It is manifest reality.
For example if household incomes did not fall faster then energy prices then domestic energy consumption would rise.
It's really that simple baby.
When you start reading assertive, discussion-stopping statements like "This observation cannot be rationally refuted", "It is manifest reality" and "It's really that simple baby", you know the writers are losing, having run out of rational argument. Unfortunately not so with the Dork.
The OED requires a new entry under the word "drone"
It's the internet version of being trapped on the bus sitting next to the nutter....."I've got a UFO in my pocket..."
Ha ha ha.
The guild navigators reintroduce wood burning into the electrical production system and you still refuse to understand the basic operating principles of monopoly capitalism.
It's sort of in your face...
Only when they will ask you to break rocks into smaller rocks for no particular reason will you understand.
Then again maybe not
Dork is actually Roger Irrelevant from Viz magazine. Look it up.
Finally, I've perfect Dork Bingo!
Draw yourself a four by four grid, and write in, at random, the following sixteen words:
Yee
Monopoly
Tokens
Capitalistic
Monetary
Rationing
Energy
Usury
Exchange
Peasantry
Consumerism
Enforcement
Car
Equity
Credit
Consumption
Cross these words off as they appear, and shout 'BINGO!' when you've completed a line - vertical, horizontal or diagonal. Note that you can also win by spotting three schoolboy spelling howlers (e.g., 'insure' for 'ensure').
Enjoy!!
@Shindig
They actually make fantastic bulletin points.
I might indeed make some sort of star of David like diagram out of those.
Their interlocking mechanisms of our destruction and all that.
PS
I am a peasant so me spelling was never good.
Sorry but when a Baldric character has a better understanding of the current entropy the wise guy always suggests his superior Seaseme street pedigree.
In reality its a signal that I have won the exchange and it makes me happy.
"Independence" or no independence from the EU -- the guild navigators will always strive to raise prices higher then income.
I hold no hope for these Isles.
They have gone too far down the rabbit hole.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RSOu5C55kUA
Yup, you've won the exchange. No, I'm not just saying that. We're all amazed and thrilled at your knowledge and wisdom, and are all completely convinced by your lucid and erudite answers. You are indeed the Baldrick whose earthy wisdom has prevailed. In fact, we're all baffled as to why you keep on coming back here - there's nothing more for you to say; no more points to prove, no more arguments to win. Really, you are no longer needed here. How about setting up your own blog - it's dead easy - where you can reach a whole new unconverted wave of readers. Really. Please. You've won. We give up. Really.
I'm happy to have helped.
Be careful of wiki! It is heavily adjusted by activists in ongoing attempts to beef up their claims.
That particular falsehood has been claimed for over two decades and has never been proven.
All attempts to find loose DNA getting absorbed into other plants have returned zero. Some of the alarmist claims were subsequently proven to have included pollen or GMO modified plant material; making the results as coming from contaminated samples.
Nor have any any of your links provided any substance.
You could not name a substantial list of foods that are without DNA tinkering.
Cattle have been tinkered with. Most milk cows must be artificially inseminated.
Chicken are descendents of a jungle fowl in India. They no longer represent jungle fowl in anything but a bird with feathers.
Pigs, goats, ducks, shrimp, geese, turkeys, trout, salmon and many other have been genetically bred for specific traits. Many would no longer survive without man's direct support.
Beans, peas, squash, potatoes, squash, tomatoes, amaranth, broccoli, asparagus, turnips, beets etc. are genetic manipulations of mutantations into mankind advantages.
Consider Tomatoes, potatoes, chile peppers; all are descendents of a close deadly nightshade relative.
People, in the deep past, geneticall selected and bred plants to produce edible healthy foodstuffs from a normally poisonous plant. technically, if you any part of the plant but the fruit or tuber, it is still poisonous.
Why choose a deadly nightshade relative? Unknown, but deadly nightshade's weedy abundance of growth in poor cold soils might be partial reason.
Corn, wheat, rye, barley, rice, amaranth, even American wild rice are all bred from wild ancestors into mankind friendly extremely abundant seed producers.
Consider also broccoli; broccoli originated somewhere near the coast in northwest Europe from a brassica weed.
Technically the actual plant name for "cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, savoy, kohlrabi and kai-lan" is "Brassica oleracea". So when the lady demands broccoli for dinner, remind her that substituting with caulflower or collard greens is using the same plant.
Personally, I dislike broccoli as it is definitely favored by aphids and the little buggers not only blend into the florets, they are throughout the inside of the flowers. I much prefer almost aany other of the brassicas.
Your claim that genetic tinkering is nothing like current plant or animal breeding today is another of your misconceptions.
Genetic manipulation occurs at the cell level. When a cell replicates and splits into two cells, the DNA is replicated; often introducing an error.
As in normal evolution, if an error is not supporting that mutation quickly dies out.
With mankind watching the plants and animals, mutations are spotted, often coddled along until man understands the benefits or disadvantages.
e.g. chickens.
White chickens are not normal coloration. They are a captured mutation.
Large breasted meat chickens are not normal either. Those huge breast muscles actually prevent flying; also large breasted meat chickens are suspectable to breast bone infections from landing and hitting their breast too many times. The solution here is not allow the large breasted meat chickens or similar turkeys height they can use to fly.
How many peas are in a pod? Three to five or seven peas in a pod is a captured mutation. The same goes for beans and other legumes. Even peanuts have been bred into five peanuts in a pod.
No matter the crop, no matter the animal there are genetic manipulations in their background.
Thalidomide? In a plants genetic discussion?
Why!?
I would also like to see this official declaration that Thalidomide was safe. Thalidomide was released for use with adults. Use on pregnant women was unfortunately unexpected and poorly handled; especially the many months of pregnancies before thalidomide was proven.
As for your specious whistleblower claim, also false: http://www.snopes.com/medical/disease/cdcwhistleblower.asp
And you have raised crops on a farm for how long!?
Armchair or backyard tiny garden plot do not equal eighty acres in corn, alfalfa, soybeans, melons, squash and just plain fallow plantings.
When you have actually earned a living working a real farm, let us know. Plus, it would help if you actually research food histories before hand waving with spurious claims and already disproven alarmist claims and apocalyptic nonsense.
Pointing to one field of corn and calling it a mono-culture is similar to pointing to someone's cold sore and claiming they are pestilential. It is an absurd over reaction.
Corn is raised worldwide right now. Worldwide growth gives corn an incredibly large diverse genetic base. It is also the reason so much research is performed trying to fully determine corn's initial ancestors.
Corn's DNA has been tinkered with for over three thousand years. Corn went from rather common grassy plants bearing normal seed heads to a four to twelve foot stalk bearing several very large ears with more kernels than any of it's so far discovered progenitors.
Such a wide range of corn DNA in use allows corn to be raised in dry, warm, hot, cool, low altitude, high altitude and even desert conditions.
The Pueblo, back in the 700-1300s developed, or utilized, a corn mutation where the kernel drives a tap root twelve plus inches into the ground, reaching damper conditions. Otherwise, corn did not grow in their dry environment.
You don't like it!? Grow your own.
That is, raise enough food for you and your family throughout the year.
And given your alarmist couch potato dream view of farming and husbandry; I suggest you start with wild originators of plants and animals.
You can still collect wild squash, plum trees, blueberries, asparagus, weeds and whatnot.
I'd love to see you working with wild bovines, though the original European ancestor the wild aurochs, is extinct, or goats and sheep. Be aware, you will be required obtain permits for raising wild animals. Hint, quail are easy and cooperative and quite clean birds.
ATheoK. Thanks for the advice about Wiki, but I have long known its perils. I only used it as an entre into "colchicine" a word of which I had no knowledge whatsoever. And found whole worlds of new knowledge - like its use to treat gout and (already mentioned) the origin of pipless watermelon.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NdcVuf8ajxc
Social credit philosophy for dummies...
Well done then!
I raise orchids as one of my hobbies. Treating plants with colchicine often causes the DNA to double, e.g. making a diploid into a polyploid.
It is similar to hybridizing where the new plants are identical to their parents, but larger stronger and healthier. That the flowers are often fleshier and last longer is also a bonus.
I buy small seedlings from high quality breeders in a sealed flask. The colchicine treated plants grow quickly, easily outstripping untreated plants.
Many of those 'exotic and special' extremely powerful marijuana varieties sold by the medical marijuana sellers, stem from colchicine treated plants back in the seventies and eighties.
Along with many different garden and flower plants.
Anti-gmo folks have zero clue about the topic. What they're rabid about is Monsanto and other seed companies using a finer gene targeting targeting system than just drenching them in a solution; or planting ten thousand of the same seed while looking for 'sports'.
Old Burpee and orchard company advertising material made much of their purchasing the right to various 'sports' where the plant grows differently than all of it's brethren.
Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, granny smith, many of the popular nuts are sports where a plant or even just a branch grew a different fruit/nut.
The difference is due to some genetic change courtesy our environment.
One of the most popular avocadoes is either a unique hybrid cross or a sport. Air cuttings or wet cuttings are sprouted in order to spread the variety.
Mankind has taken advantage of and utilized plant and animal mutations for millennia. Modern man whining and kicking about genetic manipulation have between 3,000 to 10,000 years of man's agriculture and farming to revoke.
Keep well!
ATheoK.
I wonder how many anti-GMO people have pedigree dogs?
But they're natural, right?
Who are you to call them sports?
Dork has ruined Dork Bingo by resorting to (mercifully) short posts. (Long may it continue!)
So, the alternative game is: 'What's the DQ?', where 'DQ' is the Dork Quotient. You analyse his post, and work out what proportion of the words are on the now-doomed Bingo post.
So: 'Social credit philosophy for dummies...' scores............20%. Hurrah!
Enjoy.
Shindig. Why doesn't Dork Bingo™ have a "Mornington Crescent" component. Drinking shots of Jamiesons when you spot the "magic" words greatly enhances enjoyment, but it's difficult to determine a winner.
Your aged Joan of Arc like figure spoke of that loaded word again.
Competiveness.
Which means we will endeavour to lower our living & wellbeing standards so as to compete with other banking jurisdictions.
Nationalism at least defined by the banking elite is so sad.
The really sad part is that people still fall for the old collective shoulder to the wheel trick.
Again and again and again...
Bloody hell! We're off! With a dismal 0% DQ
Anyone know what 'competiveness' is?
Shindig
Perhaps Mrs May wants the islands to engage in a mercantile trade war with Germany and/or China.
Good luck with that........
It's better to absorb the goods produced by their Fugger like foolishness
'It's better to absorb the goods produced by their Fugger like foolishness'
Do you mean 'to absorb the goods (produced by their Fugger) like foolishness'?
Or do you mean 'produced by their Fugger-like foolishness'?
A little bit of punctuation would go a long way to helping us get whatever message you're trying to get across. At the moment, it's bollocks.
Quote "at the moment it's bollocks"
I think you'll find, Shindig, that even WITH punctuation - it's still bollocks.
SimonJ
Shindig
You are engaged in sophistry and/ or linguistic distraction so as to avoid important observations and discussion.
You are either a very limited individual unable to engage in conversation or yet another cheap propagandist for the scarcity merchants.
You simply cannot return my serve and is now shouting at the umpire: claiming my foot has crossed the serve line.
I admit it makes for a very poor game for the spectator.
It is indeed better for me to play handball against a wall.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mICw74OCfIs
David Quinn making some important legal observations.
The economic scarcity policy is perhaps the most important but not only arm of monopoly capitalism.
Another is the state itself violating church / state neutrality.
We are witnessing the replacement of religion by another pseudo religion and the coding of this new morality into law.
Not the disappearance of religion as is commonly thought.
If short of time go to 28.30 and continue.
Oh my God.
I have made a cardinal error
"commonly taught" I should say.
Will he again claim a technicality so as to avoid playing a rally.
I think so as anything else would expose his piss poor ability and understanding of the game.
Shindig cannot play a decent backhand topspin.
It's simply beyond him.
I think that your next move Shindig should definitely be to call Mornington Crescent. Alternatively you should take a dive and convince the ref it deserves a red card.
Blimey, I can't keep up.
Dork has now moved on from being an expert in economics, past being an expert in Oirish agriculture, and now, astonishingly, out of nowhere, he's a tennis pro.
I'll try to explain the situation to you, Dork, using your somewhat tortured analogy. Your 'serves' are undetectable, we can't see the balls you claim are coming our way, and the rules of the game you reckon you're playing are indecipherable.
We love to come here and indulge in debate, but debate involves putting your case clearly and lucidly, using the simplest of language, so that the other 'player' can understand the point you're making, before 'returning the serve'. Don't blame us for not engaging with your stream of nonsense - it makes no sense. Wibble.
http://www.irisheconomy.ie/index.php/2017/01/16/celtic-phoenix-or-leprechaun-economics/
The Irish economy blog is a cipher.
It is run by the local Masonary.
Quite possibly these little minions are in a panic.
If the UK exist is hard ( involving a large curtailment of wage slave movement)
Then Ireland will be the only and final destination for skilled euro youth drones as they seek to get a piece of the pie owned by the connected corporate sector.
I do not think this likely as Ireland is merely the euro using section of the British Isles and not a separate entity to any substantial degree but.....
The more Dublin Castle panics the more likely the UK decision is real and not contrived.
A little bit of truth has leaked from this still flawed report.
They do not quite admit it but the costs exceed the income for most.
Sadly they do not seek to stop this implosion of society.
Merely to manage the entropy in a direction favourable to their narrow interests and the broad interests of the guild.
@Shindig
You operate out of a intellectual vacuum.
It is very difficult to talk to a nothing
You have no basic principles from which you can expand your thoughts, no foundation whether solid or liquid.
For me to engage with you would mean me lost in a pit of quicksand.
My basic understanding of things is actually quite clear.
Capitalism is not a natural progression of feudalism as Marx falsely states
It is something very different.
Although it was perhaps born in modern times when landed feudal lords engaged in a pact with scarcity managers to control the peasant revolts of the late feudal period.
Capitalism is a absurdity.
You cannot be a conservative and be in favour of its contradictions.
It's a anti freedom mechanism.
As seen in the above critical Dominican video it offers freedom but also forces you through just one door.
It provides even more contradictions then Christianity (which has many!)