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Ethical eating

I don't consider myself a vegetarian. I prefer to think of myself as an ethical eater.

   I eat meat, more regularly so now that I live in the north of Finland where reindeer and elk are the order of the day. I feel confortable in the knowledge that these animals lived semi-wild in their natural environment eating what they eat and doing what they do without stress or unnecessary suffering until the day they were killed. I don''t eat meat every day either because it's not necessary and doing so has negative repercussions to the world.

   I eat fish but I make an effort to avoid over-fished species. Again, I feel comfortable that the fish lived a fairly natural life until the end. I never eat canned fish because they stink of huge trawlers devastating the oceans. Part of my job right now is to take clients ice-fishing. Personally I put back all the fish I catch. 

   I will also eat meat if somebody has gone to the effort (without knowing of my eating preferences) to prepare a meal for me. 

  I eat eggs and consume dairy products but not excessively and I always buy free-range and organic products in the hope that the animals concerned are treated well. 

   The point is, whether you agree with my decisions or not, that I have thought about these decisions and that is why I feel comfortable with them. I have spent time and taken decisions to get to a compromise which I feel comfortable with and feel I can justify. 

   But it really gets my organic goat when meat-eaters, presumably feeling threatened by anyone who might dare to question the acceptability of their diet, attack me for not joining them 

   Their argument seems to be, you eat fish, that's an animal. Reindeer too. You drink milk, that comes from an animal. Aside from the fact that this ignores the fact that we all have different reasons for our choice of diet 

   

 

Chelsea v Arsenal

Diego Costa

Football is supposed to be an escape, just like going to the movies. A few hours away from the toil and struggle of daily life.

However, unlike movies like Rocky or The Karate Kid where naive but upstanding underdogs triumph against adversity, football, despite occasional anomalies, mostly serves to hammer home the crushing reality of life; The inevitable slow march of the psychopathically ruthless smashing their way to victory unencumbered by trivialities such as the loyalties or principles that weigh down the rest of us.

This is reality. Though we may tell tales of great warriors who once took the monster to task, football, like life, is mostly the great viking dragon thirty times our size wreaking havoc with its talons and fire whilst we do our best with two-pronged pitchforks. Leaving us broken and bloodied in its wake the monster then returns to its cave full of shiny trophies and we sit licking our wounds in our crappy houses with holes in the roof.

And these days it’s even worse. At least in the past a dragon was something to be slain, nowadays it has followers, gangs of wannabes squeezing into the replica shirt as they climb upon the bandwagon ready to blissfully ignore all arguments of decency, batting away any gripes with the trophies that their Boycott-style football has won.   

Society‘s values are formed by the winners and today those winners are largely the ruthless, the monsters, those for whom the end justifies the means, the asshole at work who you know will slime his way to the top, the psychopaths, the Thatchers and the Mourinhos.

I’m sure there was a moment at school when we were told that winning wasn’t everything, it’s how you play the game. Horse. Shit. Have a good look at those who played the game with an ounce of decency and you’ll see how quickly they were smashed down by the bastards of the world. That’s the reality of life.

The Cobra Kai (whose evil owner John Kreese might as well be Diego Costa) would have cynically targeted Daniel San’s knacked knee again and again until his cries could be heard all over the Tri-Valley area before, indifferent to the boos and hisses, they’d be off in their shiny pickups, honking their horns all the way back to their dojo full of prizes.

That’s the reality of the world and there’s nothing that hammers it home quite like Chelsea v Arsenal.