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Post by cernunnos on Feb 10, 2024 9:43:08 GMT 1
Looks like the English farmers have woke up to what can be achieved by blocking the roads? But then .... the UK government didn't know that Dover-Calais was an important route!
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Aardvark
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Living in soggy 22 and still wondering what's going on.
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Post by Aardvark on Feb 10, 2024 12:21:02 GMT 1
The difference is that in UK the cops would start arresting anyone that dumped litter, burned a tyre on a roundabout, or did anything at all to obstruct traffic.
I was once invited to New Scotland Yard to attend a meeting about the "problems" caused by the new monthly Chelsea Cruise night. The cops were being pressurised by local influential residents to do something about the increase in traffic in their neighbourhoods. In typical blinkered police thinking they refused to accept that no single person or entity could be held responsible for organising it. I also hit a brick wall when trying to explain the difference between an organised "rally" and an impromptu gathering. I queried why they were restricting parking in the area. I explained that the reason so many people were in the area was because they wanted to see the cars. If you drove there to show off your work after a couple of circuits you wanted to park and just watch the rest go by. placing cones to stop all the parking the hundreds of cars that turned up had to stay on the road causing unnecessary traffic. Nothing was resolved at the meeting. The "parking restrictions" were extended and more cops were assigned to stop cars for inspections and ticketing in the hopes of discouraging further attendance. Google "Chelsea Cruise" for more info on the decades old monthly event.
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Post by iolar on Feb 19, 2024 12:14:15 GMT 1
Lots of good factual posts. It amazes me that many women of my mother's generation (married pre WW11) didn't know how to boil an egg when she got married. There was an awful lot of brainwashing after the war. People got conned that if it was in a can it was'good for you'. I remember biking off into the countryside in Sussex and bringing home puff balls and field mushrooms which my parents refused to eat.
Like a lot of my friends (birds of a feather) I taught myself how to cook. Even though I worked in construction I still came home at night and cooked from fresh or had old ladies who lived in bedsits like me to come in and put a casserole on for me. I remember when I lived in Rotterdam inviting a Dutch girl to a meal at home. She sniggered with her friends, in those days Dutchmen couldn't wipe their own rear ends. She arrived at the right time (normal in the Netherlands) looked at the mainly cold spread paid out on the table, it was summer and turned around and walked out. She knew she couldn't compete - hilarious.
Farming - is anyone surprised at what has unfolded across the western world. Industrialisation was bound to spread from industry to farming and all other aspects of life. It's a numbers game. UK population 1815 - 11 million / 2020 - 67 million with loss of lots of farmland in between. Surprisingly France in 1815 - 30.3 million /2020 - 67 million. Perhaps part of the reason is that a larger share of the pie is handed out in social payments. Certainly UK pensions are a joke compared to most of those in Europe and UK private pensions are a rip-off (SIPPS excepted). In the Netherlands virtually all Dutch retire on 90% of their final salary.
People have blamed the French s/markets for their profit margins depriving the farmers of a reasonable profit but when you look at their margins compared to the UK they are far less. Certainly the wholesalers make a difference but then I have never understood why farmers don't cut the middleman out altogether - unity is strength - division is weakness.
As to the quality of industrially produced food be it meat or veg, every one knows about the chemicals/anti-biotics used. Having lived in Andalucia and banned chemicals blatantly used in 'plasticland' you buy Spanish produce at your peril.
We are still renting and the garden of our rented house is overrun with bindweed/liseron. Having wasted 3 years trying to eradicate it, which is impossible without a total clear out I have two small patches in which I grow strawberries and raspberries for my wife. They have far better flavour than the commercial ones and are more enjoyable knowing they are grown free of all chemicals.
I don't think you can separate farming from any other aspect of life in the 'modern world'. the mass of people have become consumerised. They have been programmed from an early age, what to think, what to eat etc. etc. I don't think even pure PR would really make any difference in the upcoming election in the UK. Desertification is the reality of climate change for Europeans.Having stopped drinking alcohol for nearly 2 months now I can't even cheer myself up with a glass or three of wine. Neil Young - look at mother nature on the run in the 1970's.
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Post by ajm on Feb 19, 2024 12:18:35 GMT 1
I bet you feel better now!
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Post by cernunnos on Feb 24, 2024 14:59:52 GMT 1
The French farmers havn't stopped yet , major fracas going on at the Agricultural show in Paris . The Coordination Rural trying to get hold of Macron!
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Post by lapourtaider on Feb 24, 2024 15:57:08 GMT 1
The French farmers havn't stopped yet , major fracas going on at the Agricultural show in Paris . The Coordination Rural trying to get hold of Macron! I watched it live on BFMTV. Lots of whistling and a very large CRS presence. Crowds were divided into zones, and a lot of those with animals spent time trying to protect their enclosures from being collapsed.
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Post by cernunnos on Feb 25, 2024 21:15:46 GMT 1
I wonder how long before they collect the tyres that are piled by the side of the road , "leftover from last time" My neighbour has a tyre that he can't get rid of, maybe the next burn against the Ecolo bobos? ![:D](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/grin.png)
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mysty
Member
Posts: 1,728
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Post by mysty on Feb 25, 2024 21:58:21 GMT 1
I wonder how long before they collect the tyres that are piled by the side of the road , "leftover from last time" My neighbour has a tyre that he can't get rid of, maybe the next burn against the Ecolo bobos? ![:D](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/grin.png) Bourges cleared the rubbish and tyres ect left on the roundabouts, Aubusson which is a lot more rural has left the roundabouts with all the straw and burnt tyres they obviously knew it might not be over. 😀
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Nifty
Member
Posts: 5,359
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Post by Nifty on Feb 27, 2024 11:52:16 GMT 1
The thing that put me off NZ lamb is the date it was packaged. The frozen legs in Intermarche were 2 years old. I know there's stuff in my freezer older than that but even so! Anyway..we both went off red meat on a regular basis. OH has it sometimes if we eat out. When you talk about people cooking from scratch and young people prefering fast food, it isn't quite that simple. My niece for example, live in a house share and they don't have an oven or a dining area. Fridge space is very limited and she is out of the house from 7.30 in the morning until 7.30 at night. She eats a lot of pasta and sauces and says she would love to cook something different, but it's challenging to come up with recipes. Interestingly I suggested eggs, but she said at over £2.00 for 6 they were too expensive for her. She doesn't have a bad job, but it is a training position so not high paid, and by the time she has paid all her bills there isn't much left for food. Also, most families have two people in work, so very little time for people to shop and cook by the time you have picked uo the kids from school etc. Enough reasoning. Get back on that treadmill!
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Aardvark
Non-gamer
Living in soggy 22 and still wondering what's going on.
Posts: 2,173
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Post by Aardvark on Feb 27, 2024 15:22:56 GMT 1
The scenario you describe causes more issues than just forcing people to eat processed, pre-prepared, fast food, etc. The only way to get off the treadmill is move away from the high rent districts. Stop trying to live beyond your means. People lived without two or three foreign holidays a year without ill effects. Is having children compulsory? If you can't afford to educate them you are condemning them to a life no better than your own, or worse. Learn how to cook with basic ingredients. Learn how to repair rather than replace (on credit). Don't aspire to have everything you see pushed in front of you on TV. There's not enough money to give everyone an idyllic lifestyle and the "system" ensures what little there is rises to the top 1% of the population. Learn how to be satisfied with what you can easily achieve without getting into the trap of easy credit. The stuff you buy rarely lasts beyond any feeble waranty even if you are still paying off the debt. Fight back. Avoid the trap.
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Post by lindalovely on Mar 7, 2024 15:01:18 GMT 1
The scenario you describe causes more issues than just forcing people to eat processed, pre-prepared, fast food, etc. The only way to get off the treadmill is move away from the high rent districts. Stop trying to live beyond your means. People lived without two or three foreign holidays a year without ill effects. Is having children compulsory? If you can't afford to educate them you are condemning them to a life no better than your own, or worse. Learn how to cook with basic ingredients. Learn how to repair rather than replace (on credit). Don't aspire to have everything you see pushed in front of you on TV. There's not enough money to give everyone an idyllic lifestyle and the "system" ensures what little there is rises to the top 1% of the population. Learn how to be satisfied with what you can easily achieve without getting into the trap of easy credit. The stuff you buy rarely lasts beyond any feeble waranty even if you are still paying off the debt. Fight back. Avoid the trap. Not sure who you were replying to here, but my Niece doesn't live in a high rent district at all. However her job is, and so she has a 1.5 hour commute and train fares to pay out of her salary. She is training to be a solicitor. There is absolutely no question of children in the near or distant future. In fact 3 out of my 4 nieces and nephews have decided against having children as they can't afford it. (One is an architect married to a junior doctor). They only go on holiday if it is with (and paid for ) by parents. None of them can afford to own their own homes at the moment. Maybe when the doctor finishes her training (which means until then they have to stay in London) she might be able to find a job somewhere less expensive to live.
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Aardvark
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Living in soggy 22 and still wondering what's going on.
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Post by Aardvark on Mar 7, 2024 18:01:46 GMT 1
I certainly wan't replying to you. You haven't posted in the ten posts above. My comments only refer to the general essence of the recent posts.
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Post by iolar on Mar 10, 2024 15:54:21 GMT 1
In the Netherlands they are drowning in cow/pig/sheep and chicken shit. They not only have way too many 'meat' farms but also far too many people. My first Dutch girlfriend,Sylvie took me to scheveningen which is the beach resort for Den Haag, the capital of the Netherlands. I knew I was getting to grips with Dutch when I could pronounce this word correctly. The German fifth column couldn't and the Dutch soldiers killed them.
There is a house in Den Haag's beach resort that has become a museum because on the top floor is a 360% painting of how Scheveningen used to look about 1880. It was then an exhilarating place and easy to see why the Dutch got the travel bug to go see the world.You can feel the wind and smell the sea and there was real space. That's all gone and my abiding view of the Netherlands is - huizen,huizen, mensen,mensen/houses,houses,people,people. I simply couldn't take the almost total lack of 'free space'- you have to be a 'city person' to live there and I'm not.
The Dutch government wants to drastically reduce the amount of animal husbandry and the framers are resisting. In France a lot of farms simply cannot exist if they don't use lots of nitrogen fertiliser and use chemical pest control. Almost all rivers in the UK are horribly polluted by farm run-off of nitrogen and by vast amounts of chicken and pork shit produced in the huge production sheds. These sentient beings are abused in a way that even the death camps of the Austrian and German Nazis didn't use. The reason for all this is very simple - too many people that have to be catered for.
The same old argument get's trotted out by the same political scum everywhere.Whose going to pay the pensions, maybe an incurable virus will save the day and take out 90% of the population.
The farmers aren't the villains, in fact the only villains are those resisting meaningful change in societies structure - a bit too deep for the knuckledraggers.
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Aardvark
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Living in soggy 22 and still wondering what's going on.
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Post by Aardvark on Mar 10, 2024 16:08:58 GMT 1
The same old argument get's trotted out by the same political scum everywhere.Whose going to pay the pensions, maybe an incurable virus will save the day and take out 90% of the population. Or maybe another world war. The "powers that be" seem incapable of preventing wars anywhere these days. The arms industry is one that seems to maintain the growth that the economists lust after.
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Post by cernunnos on Mar 10, 2024 17:19:07 GMT 1
Old Dutch saying " wie niet luisteren wil moet maar voelen" and I think that not only the Nederlanders will have to come to terms with the reality. The farmers in Europe were all misled by their governments and the bankers , that is why they are protesting , but they havn't all got that figured out yet. More is not always better , in fact in this context , less is better
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