The key statistic in this article and the paper it refers to are sobering. “Animal farming takes up 83% of the world’s agricultural land, but delivers only 18% of our calories.”
The Guardian
If that’s not evidence enough to convince you, think about this as a comparison. A “plant-based diet cuts the use of land by 76% and halves the greenhouse gases” caused by food production.
I think current farming practices are unsustainable and foods they produce are making us unhealthy. If you don’t believe me watch What the Health on Netflix to understand what I mean. It’s not a perfect documentary, it has its critics, but even if only half the things claimed are true, it’s still a good argument for adopting a plant-based diet.
I’m really interested to see comparative costs with traditional construction methods. Could it be one part of the solution to the housing crisis in the UK. At the very least it’s another square on the Grand Designs bingo card.
The collapse of Carillion exposes the “recklessness, hubris and greed” at the core of a system that has one goal, syphon public money in to private pockets.
This is a really disturbing report. We are sleepwalking into the digital panopticon. As the panopticon gains strength our behaviour will be streamlined to fit the algorithm of efficiency, obedience and subordination. Descent will be excised, creating a society of compliant drones. This is the workforce being automated.
This article in The Guardian asserts that “Knife and gun crime has surged in England and Wales, but the causes and solutions are unclear”. I don’t think the causes are unclear. The blame rests firmly at the feet of the Conservative Party and their policy of austerity.
Austerity has meant local authority budgets have been slashed, cutting support for all kinds of social programmes, there to help “at risk” kids stay out of trouble. Even something as simple as a youth club can provide early interventions, offering support to young people, and stop them getting involved in crime.
Those who think the causes are unclear should look at the work of Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner in their 2005 book Freakonomics. They argue access to abortions in the USA in the 1970’s reduced the crime rates in the 1990’s.
Crime rates in the 1990s came down because there were fewer unwanted pregnancies in the seventies and eighties. Women who felt they were not ready to care for a child, were able to terminate the pregnancy.
Apply that same logic to the rise in instances of gun and knife crime in the UK. The Home Office blames “changes in the nature of drug sales and use, highlighting crack cocaine, social media and music glamorising violence as among the issues fuelling the problem”.
I’m going to say that drug sales, social media, and music, are not the cause of the problem but a consequence. Austerity is the cause.
Ten years ago austerity started to remove support for youth programmes.
Interesting to see in Anthony Gunter’s article the argument that “serious violence is a public health issue”.
FABIAN Society
The same argument could be made against prohibition. The “war on drugs” should be seen not as a policing problem but instead framed as a public health issue. But harm reduction runs counter to the paternalistic tone that underscores the bias that blames degenerate youth.
The “determined effort in both the British media and the wider political elite to delegitimise the Labour leadership in particular and the broader left as a whole” is a strategy that I hope most people can see through.
Medium
Aggressively attacking someone while simultaneously framing themselves as the victims of an attack is a sign of desperation. It frames a reasonable point of view into an act of mindless aggression. We should stop engaging in these tactics. We need to find ways to reframe the issues. What the right manages to do is turn reasonable intelligent debate into emotional outpourings. They appeal to the gut not to the head. They appeal to emotion and not intellect. The left has to find ways to engage with the wider world on an emotional level without sinking into the spite of the right. If they don’t the conversation will end up being something akin to the vitriolic exchanges of an acrimonious divorce.
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