An interesting one from downunder ... an exSpectator Oz online host, with quite a following:
Tell us about it. My feeling is that TR's better off outside the UK just now, not just for his personal safety but also because he can't then be used for groups' agendas, he ceases to be a major factor.
I was going to look at Rupert Lowe turning Restore into a party and how that affects Advance and Reform but, frankly, I've not yet thought it through, nor an article for X on Valentine's Day and ladies I know.
So let's open with getting rid of personal rubbish plus excreting in the street ... which is related to the new Restore Party. This was at the Daily Sceptic today:
"One Times journalist describedlast year how he encountered an Iranian incomer smoking a cigarette. When he had finished, the Iranian then approached a nearby red postal pillar-box, famous in Britain but evidently not in the Middle East, and innocently attempted to use it as a giant municipal metal ash-tray by discarding his smouldering smokes through the letter-slit. Up in flames go all the postal orders, cheque-payments and birthday cards."
Which brings in the issue of hordes waiting to attack us, given the word, plus the baby-eating elite trying to shorten our lives through chemically poisoned food and skies, plus Milliband's, Fink's and Gates' destruction of arable land.
With all that, plus a review of supermarket bread I have here, plus ageing, we then get into Valentine's Day today and different traditions in different western countries ... but that's straying into X territory now.
Looking at all that above and below in this post, plus our wonderful healthcare, we're seriously looking at mental health ... our own. I was always eccentric from roaming the planet and finding solutions on the fly, but what about the normies ... our maiden aunt or clerk in an office with his/her MSM-focussed "reality"? Football lovers, reality shows, gaming?
I'd say finding local butchers and bakers is one aspect, keeping moving and plenty of filtered and boiled water in whatever presentations, plus friends ... always friends.
There are also belief systems but I'll not go into the one which delivers calm. So let's get back to fly tipping and local tips in general ... the difficulties and the westwide phenomenon of primarily leftist local govt ceasing to remove rubbish, making public sanitation a thing of the past, as in blue cities in America. Let alone Lauranorder.
It comes back again, does it not, to our own physical health plus mental health? Maybe we could ask Amelia her advice.
I’m not sure how widely understood the Inquisition’s legacy on the Spanish diet is, but seeing history repeat itself is a sign that the past has not been fully reckoned with. So while I’m not here to stop anyone from enjoying their favourite foods or traditions, I’d like to sound a note of warning. Jamón eating is once again being weaponised online as a means of social exclusion among the young Spanish far right against those from Muslim and north African backgrounds.
OH NOES! The vast right-wing conspiracy has discovered 'food racism'! Weaponising cultural diets!
Last November, a content creator made national news when he shared AI-generated viral posts showing shirts and phone cases made from jamón. The posts even featured a superhero called Ham-Man, who would, he said, protect people from being mugged by illegal immigrants of “Maghrebi and north African origin”. And it risks becoming a wider trend.
Well, good luck expecting the Spanish people to go along with the banning of pork products just to please the Mohammedans and their useful idiots like you, Abbas!
Even before Ham-Man, the comment sections beneath Spanish news articles and videos about crimes committed by young, racialised men elicited dog-whistle phrases such as “¿come jamón?” (does he eat ham?). This meme has been popular for a number of years among the Spanish far right as a way to persecute Muslim immigrants.
Sounds to me as if it’s persecuting Muslim criminals. And who wouldn’t want to see more of that?
Just did a quick check ... 23 topics ready to go, which to run here today, at Orphans? For example, there's our X colleague Deryl:
... or maybe Ed "Post Office" Davey and henchpersons:
There's just so much of it about to comment on ... but I thought (for once) ... why not go obliquely ... current but oblique ... do you know of this lady?
To bring you up to speed, she was the premier female downhill skiier, no question, for many years ... some of you saw her crash out at these winter olympics ... more than ouch ... three operations on her mangled legs and what statement did she make?
She's going to sign up to the paralympics for next time.
Her courage? Astounding. Her fitness? Astounding, given that she crashed out and did her ACL days before these olympics and still competed. The girl who won was apparently also American.
As a person who skied myself, high-intermediate, no more, plus I was right beside the Hahnenkamm Streif course decades back and skied on a bit of the course straight after the event ... it's certainly not for the faint of heart.
Which raises the question ... is it for the foolhardy? And getting more specific ... is it for a 41 year old woman with a leg injury? Is it for any 41 year old woman? There's certainly a thing called The Wall in babymaking ... I'd suggest it's also in sport.
For example, I was building a boat until my heart attack in the last decade. Could I do it now? Nope. It's the balance thing in the ears ... unsafe on a sailing craft now. Men, e.g. football players? Late 30s in rugby, into the 40s in association. There really are limits.
Who decides? Well, in Lindsey's case, she obviously did, based on her star status. Mental ability to handle the end? Who knows? Should the officials have shut her down? Phew! Who knows? Not easy, is it? Most people want to go out on a high, doing something worthwhile.
Men are covertly filming women on nights out, then making money by posting the videos online, a BBC investigation has found.
The videos, often described as "walking tours" or "nightlife content", are published on YouTube, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram. They focus almost entirely on women in dresses and skirts, many filmed from behind or at low angles, sometimes revealing intimate parts of the body.
Hmm, is this illegal? Upskirting is but this doesn't seem to be that....
We tracked down nearly 50 women who had been filmed and found that many were unaware of what had happened. They expressed feelings of fear and humiliation.
So the exposing of it by the BBC caused this? That makes them an acceessory, surely?
Our team went undercover in the city, filming men as they covertly recorded women on a night out, exposing some of the most prolific operators, linked to 12 accounts. This included a local taxi driver and two men who had travelled from Sweden to film in the UK. Two other men, whose channels claim they are based in Norway and Monaco, were spotted filming but we were not able to confirm their identities.
Thank you! So why is the BBC focussed on something that isn't a crime? Aren't there real crimes deserving of investigation?
...but a lawyer specialising in image-based abuse said these types of videos fall into a legally "grey area" and could break harassment and voyeurism laws.
Well, yes, no doubt. That's what you pay a lawyer for, after all. To tell you what you want to hear.
A separate BBC investigation last month exposed how male influencers claiming to offer pick-up advice use smart glasses to record conversations with women and then post the footage online. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said in response that the government wouldn't tolerate new technology being used to create more violence and harassment against women and girls.
The issue with the BBC and other MSM is that they do not cover the major issues, only that which is either compatible with or which pushes the Woke agenda. But various online sources have been infiltrated as well, e.g. TikTok, FB, Instagram and so many more.
A second issue is the word "libertarian", which was the pool from which Orphans emerged long ago. To those who want zero restrictions on their behaviour, e.g. the Hamas and Climate activists, those throwing paint st old portraits in galleries etc., a classical liberal would say that that's not liberty, that's licentiousness. Care nothing for anyone but me-me-me.
Classical liberalism says maximum freedom to live life to the best of our capacity, in an atmosphere of encouragement for initiative. That WEF clown who said it's the end of "rugged individualism" and now is the time for diverse, all in this together compliance in finding a new world of peace, harmony blah blah blah was quoting from the marxist playbook ... a classical liberal will be dead against that guff.
But a WEFer would counter ... do you classical liberals not agree there must be constraints on human behaviour, e.g. the loud neighbour at night, those blocking roads etc? The answer is ... it depends what is being restricted. Murdering full term babies in the womb? Mutilated men in women's sport? Who decides what is "for our good"? The lovable WEF and EU politburos? Aunty Von Leyen? Aunty BBC?
You do see the issue. And the porn and other perversions taught in schools? That's ok, is it?
Lastly, there are two screenshots here ready to go ... one is Massie, Boebert, Luna, speaking of the names they saw on the "Epstein list" ... plus one lady writing of the NHS cancelled appointments. I used neither, mainly as I've run out of column space here now. That was an editing decision by me, Julia decides hers too.
Are we wicked censors? I mean, where is that middling position where clearly some things are vile, some things we have no time to do today? The potential for political confluct, even over this, is high.
...the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent wage stagnation and the cost of living crisis ended that semi-contented apathy. The public appetite for frank politicians, which had never completely gone away – as was shown in Britain by the enduring popularity of vivid communicators such as Tony Benn – started to grow again, until it became a hunger so powerful that politics changed to sate it.
Changed for the better, or worse, Andy?
Wider social, cultural and technological shifts have added to the value of clear political communication. The decline of deference and formal manners, and the creation of uninhibited digital spaces and networks, have given us a world of outrageous YouTubers and indiscreet voice notes, unbuttoned podcasts and confessional pop songs with the vocals mixed so high that you can hear the singer breathing.
And how does that translate to the buyer’s remorse of all those Labour voters realising they’ve ended up with a very unwanted pig in a poke in Starmer?
Against the backdrop of all this intimate – or intimate-seeming – public communication, a typically formal Keir Starmer speech or statement, while appropriate for delicate foreign policy work such as his trip to China, in a domestic context sounds almost as out of date and incomprehensible to many voters as a politician from the 1950s.
It’s time for the government to speak differently. That won’t necessarily save it, so numerous are its enemies and problems. But at least Labour will be back in the conversation.
But it’s plain now - to anyone with two brain cells, anyway - that the problem isn't with what Starmer says or how he says it. It's that whatever it is, it's invariably a lie.
This is from IYE at Unherdables and is interesting advice for the phone: "“The 3 second silent call: why you should never speak first.”
It's American and might apply only there but maybe it applies in general ... video, then I've some thoughts on't.
Whether you buy that that's how they operate or not, it's not bad advice in general and along with today's hackers and censors, a cautious approach to any communication, even emails, net search or VPN, surely seems wise, esp. if you're sitting on a nestegg accumulated over time.
In my case, last evening came changed banking terms and conditions ... if I agree, I can still use online banking. At the same time, Apple are trying to get my financial and other details and are hammering me to take this intrusive update. They're all at this constant, inexorable, ratcheting encroachment on privacy.
For a start, I do not use landline, though I still have one in case there's some technical verification demand down the track. I have no smartphone, just a dumbphone, no data, hardly use the phone, though it's on, except when on a long task or project. That messes them up something awful.
I never answer anyway, unless the person is in my address book.I take no callbacks. Major institutions though whom I've given it to can text me, anyone else is blocked. I use no voicemail or answering service. With texts, I usually phone back ... but never take phoneback from them.
Turning to online things and our devices ... if any panel appears with no way out, no x in the corner, I exit or if it freezes the exit, just shut down. I generally keep the downstairs buzzer off ... those I wish to speak to have my number.
Looking at that "x in the corner" thing, I just exit a different way and swap ipads ... never click on it, no matter what. The exception is cookies, then every so often ... clear all cookies. The golden rule is: "If they want you to do something ... don't do it, however attractive it might seem"
There's something I posted on X recently, picked up by a few people: "Being pushed into doing things we do not wish to, in fact being rushed into it, sign here, is not on my list of "to dos", no way, Jose. Cattle herding us ... I automatically go the other way, even if it's to my advantage to comply."
Naturally, it comes down to temperament and long, bitter experience. As a child on a bike, I avoided places the other kids and trusted adults warned of ... it's still the same way.
For those wishing to insta-pooh-pooh that one, quoting the False Memory Syndrome panel which itself was packed with those later found out, I have a year's investigation on it on 2 gig usb stick somewhere ... long time since I looked at it and as some will say ... it was 80s America, wonn it, nothing to do with us? Ditto with the Belgian case. After all, who wants to investigate Solvay snd Bertelsmann anyway?
There is, however, the little matter of the Cambridge Five ... that's closer to home, yes? Christine Keeler, Mandy Rice-Davies?
A former learning mentor who sexually abused five vulnerable teenage girls who came to him for support at school has been jailed for eight years.
Predators go where the prey gathers and is vulnerable, and this school in particular seems to have been a whaterhole teeming with vulnerable and wounded prey.
And it seems the culture he was raised in was a large part of the issue:
At the same court on Thursday, as Udaw was surrounded by almost 20 family and friends, Judge Giles Curtis-Raleigh told him: "Your actions were predatory, directed against girls who had been referred or come directly to you because they were having problems in their lives and/or in the school where you were working as a learning mentor
"In each case it was a flagrant, gross breach of trust."
Came to support him by intimidating the witnesses:
After her statement, prosecutor Catherine Donnelly flagged that one of the defendant's family members was making a "rude gesture" towards the woman while she was speaking, and the judge ordered him to leave court and not come back.
Why wasn't he arrested and charged?
Catherine Purnell, defending, said her client's crimes were followed by a "very long period of not offending".
Fred West must have been busy laying the odd patio in between, Catherine. Is that the best you can do?
"During that time, he grew up properly in a way that young men have to when they create and nurture a nuclear family who are everything to him," she said, adding the proceedings have been "devastating" for his loved ones.
Just a short topic (for me) today ... one screenshot which sums up the criminal ridiculousness of Britain right now ... plus the west.
Added to this is this ridiculous proof of eighteen or over. Andy at our place:
How am I going to stay in touch with truth and suchlike when I’ve got to prove I’m over sixteen?
To which DAD replied:
The other day I bought a bottle of wine – a rarety for me, but I had a visitor.
I had to prove that I was over 16. I shall be 90 at the end of the year. The cashier was a young lass from my village whom I have known for at least 10 years. We both thought that it was humorous, but ‘Rules are Rules'.
Yes, well I have one coming up myself with the NHS, pre any treatment they deem necessary ... except I'm not complying ... therefore, I might just have no health service access at all thereafter ... and I do plan to do that ... just try to stay healthy.
Everything going on is iniquitous right now and no one is marching on n10 or Whitehall.
Have they really? No, of course not. It comes out of the taxpayer's pocket as always, when it really should come out of the pockets of the idiots in blue. And idiots they once again proved themselves:
Armed police smashed into the home of Roy Morton, who has a pacemaker, fired the stun gun, pinned him down and handcuffed him after a call handler provided the wrong address for a firearms incident.
The terrified father-of-two was then arrested for affray and detained for 11 hours after the raid at 7.13am on December 28, 2021, despite his heart condition and the case being a clear instance of mistaken identity.
How clear a case? Well, Reader, the suspect they were looking for was a young black man in his 20s. Mr Morton is white and 80 years old.
An internal investigation conducted by the Met found the call handler missed multiple opportunities to spot that the address was incorrect.
You don't say..?
Despite this, the force denied full liability and a five-day trial was listed for next month.
The claims were settled on January 22, however.
Understandably, who wouldn't? So it must have been decided faily quickly?
Mr Morton's lawyer, Rachel Harger, an associate at Bindmans, slammed the force for pursuing years of litigation to settle the case.
Oh. Well, why not, since it doesn't cost them anything...
'There was an early public acknowledgement that a serious error had occurred, yet Mr Morton was forced to pursue proceedings to the brink of trial to achieve any finality,' she added.
And what do the Met have to say for themselves? The usual platitudes:
Detective Chief Superintendent Neil Smithson said: 'We wholeheartedly apologise to Mr Morton and understand the impact this incident has had, while also recognising the amount of time it's taken to reach a conclusion in this case.
'We hope Mr Morton is able to move forward and thank him for his patience during this process.
Did he really hsve a choice?
'We have reviewed the circumstances of this incident to identify any learnings and implemented specific training procedures to avoid similar instances in the future. This includes delivering training to each and every call handler within the Met.'
You mean they weren't already trained to ensure they got the right address? Well, why would they be, when they've got no skin in the game?
There's Wokery plus its nasty, loony, Fabian narrative, yes ... and then there is Globo-psycho-devilry ... the latter I don't post against here, preferring to address it at UHC where readers have been following the occasional snippets getting out, over a period nearing two decades. With the Epstein flood in the past few days, finally people can see we were not quite the whack jobs we were dismissed as.
The source of both the Wokery and anti-human devilry is the same ... and it does come from high up, as the Queen made reference to. This post is about the latest Wokery. If I could have written it better than Jim C, I would have but as he did a fine job, then here it is below, followed by Lucy Connolly.
Jala Debella, 24, attacked medical secretary Anita Mukhey, 66, in front of shocked passers-by in north London at about 11.50am on May 9 2024.
He stabbed her 18 times before he 'casually' walked away while people rushed to help the victim.
Why did no-one rush to apprehend the suspect? Because once again it was a young, fit armed black man who targetted the defenceless elderly woman. Funny how they are never too mad to not pick easy prey, isn't it?
Ms Mukhey's husband Hari criticised the NHS handling of Debella, who was not considered to pose a risk to the community.
By which the staff in charge meant 'not a threat to our probably-gated community in a nice area of London' no doubt.
At a hearing at the Old Bailey on Friday, Debella was sentenced to a hospital order under Section 37 of the Mental Health Act and a restriction order under Section 41 – meaning he can be detained indefinitely.
Or until some other trick cyclist declares him 'cured' and the Home Office fails to deport him back to whichever third world shithole he truly belongs in...
Addressing his remarks to an empty dock as Debella was not in court, Judge Philip Katz KC said: 'Anita Mukhey was the heart of the family. She was a wife, mother and grandmother, aged 66 when she was stabbed to death by a complete stranger on a busy main road in north London.'
As always, a stranger with a lengthy criminal history:
Dr Melanie Higgins, Debella's medical consultant, confirmed he had been detained under the Mental Health Act on at least three occasions before he attacked Ms Mukhey.
She said he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and arrangements had been made for his continued admission at Ashworth High Secure Hospital in Merseyside.
This was from a Jacqui Devoy post on Jung. Neither Freud nor Jung are on my faves list, neither is Piaget nor Bloom ... but Jung at least makes sense below in listing traits of people who have suffered much over a long period of time. I don't mean half the newly invented conditions labelled to permit lingering and hypochondria but more where there is real trauma, as in shellshocked veterans.
Moving on ... not pushing this as a checklist, just mentioning it in passing, by all means argue with it:
Greetings all. This post is also at UHC, on substack and linked on X.
There’s most certainly mischief afoot online
… which was always odds on. The two latest in my sphere are Toodles and Moosh. Toodles attempted to write a reply to Steve, about family and friends I presume … just disappeared it did. Sometimes it can be intended by the good side, not just the mischievous techie goblins, elves and gremlins. Thing is, it could be absolutely anything, from the provider to the platform to the device to the person using it … we’re all of us under the hammer right now.
There are some golden rules. One is not to click on anything which just appears, however innocuous it seems … I was nearly tricked last night into installing something here. I suppose I’m mid tech savvy, very much front end, knowing some things about backend … knowing what not to touch is one step on that journey.
Looking at Moosh … a new account just appeared, using her images but I’m not sure it’s her, there was no indication from her own site, plus she has enemies, as many of us do. I’ll check that out a bit later. Latest for me is one of Elon’s developers, so he says.
I found this too … interesting, suspected as much:
Combining something my techie mate said about the evolution of devices … with a Happy Days observation about “jumping the shark” … the driving force behind any new “thang” is the creator, the innovator, those about him too, decades ago.
Gradually, it becomes apparent that nothing much has really changed … and why should it? Why fix that which ain’t broke? But the tech company mindset is “change for change’s sake”, staying “relevant”, unlike MTV, also a payroll of developers, all wishing to show off, earning brownie points.
So, inevitably, lesser techies are in there and the company fears losing market share. It becomes about profit … just that. Meanwhile, technically, they just have to “jump the shark”. It’s not unlike the imperative an addict feels.
Back to these two ladies … yes, easy meat for those wishing to stop them. Plus Roob, and to an extent Julia. Me? Semi-easy meat, obviously there are ways around me too. Having access to backenders does alter the equation, plus a cautious mindset helps, learnt over time. Plus a partly detached attitude, realising that anything potentially worthwhile will always bring out the stoppers.
Tomorrow’s post at OoL will be about something which was on X about health … thought it might be of interest. Have a good weekend, chaps and chapesses.
.o0o.
To all our readers ... Moosh has been hacked ... please instead use the attached handle for her and operate from there, ok?
When Leigh White remembers her brother Ryan, she thinks of a boy of extraordinary ability who “won five scholarships at 11” including a coveted place at Bancroft’s, a private school in London. He was, she said, “super bright, witty, personable, generous and kind”.
Ryan killed himself on 12 May 2024. A report written after his death acknowledged significant shortcomings in the support he received while seeking help for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Like many people the Guardian spoke to, he followed the “right to choose” pathway, whereby patients can pick a private provider anywhere in England for assessment, diagnosis and initial treatment. They then ask their GP to enter a shared-care agreement for prescriptions and monitoring.
Sounds great, right? It isn't of course.
However, Ryan struggled to get the two services to link up.The problem lies in the fact that shared care is voluntary and not all GPs agree to it.
Once again, these overpaid bureacrats are the sand in the gears. Because they don't agree with the policy, presumably.
Some patients told the Guardian their doctor had rejected their private diagnosis on the grounds that it did not meet their standards.
And no, it's - for once - not down to money.
This was even after the NHS had paid for it – and despite there being no official rules for private providers to follow.
*sighs*
...he was referred by his GP for an ADHD assessment with Psychiatry UK, a private provider, in September 2022. It took five months for him to be assessed and diagnosed, but because of his bipolar history a community mental health review was needed before medication could begin. “Nobody chased anything, or took responsibility,” Leigh said.
Welvome to the NHS - in fact, welcome to every government run service in the world, it seems.
He was deregistered by his GP practice after he expressed frustration at the delay in getting him help.
And because they can and will do this to those who complain without suffering any consequence, it will never improve.
Right to choose was “poorly regulated, poorly managed and some people are making lots of money out of it”, Adamou said, adding: “If you don’t have regulation for that you are inviting a wild west.”
Regulation isn't going to solve this - consequences for failure will.
The acronym above stands for Do Not Attempt Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation
It is indeed strange how circumstances so remote as to virtually be impossible come together in life. I commenced watching ‘Everwood’ on Netflix, and posted upon X (twitter) about being gripped by a gentle drama. And then, the one thing which had impacted my life so appallingly, came on in that drama without any warning whatsoever.
If I can explain. Readers may remember that I wrote of my wife’s hospital treatment and death. My wife of some 53 years of marriage was stricken with schizophrenia many years ago. You don’t “get over” a mental illness, you treat it with medication, with love and with understanding. I had to have my beloved committed to a Mental Hospital in Cape Town, and then had to figure out how to look after two very small boys and a six-month old daughter. It wasn’t easy, but we got through it together, and after a time in hospital, my love was returned to my care.
For many years, she was almost back to normal, but about fifteen years ago, she commenced a slow decline, ending up Bed- or Wheelchair-bound, and quite frail. She fell from her bedside, fracturing her hip, and, after a stay in the hospital’s A&E for X-rays and diagnosis, I was told that she had fractured her hip and needed an operation the next day. I was contacted by the hospital, and told that my wife had come through the operation successfully, had a drink of tea, and was resting. I was called in the evening, and bluntly told that my wife had suffered a heart attack, and was dead.
I was literally grief-stricken at the loss of my Jacqueline, but I ploughed on with all the digital ephemera which surrounds a family death, concentrating to clear everything away, inclusive of arranging a cremation, and after about four-odd weeks, I was almost back to normal. The Coroner had to be involved, because Jacqueline’s death was unexpected, and, during the conversation with the Coroner’s Clerk, I was offered a full copy of the hospital’s documentation concerning my wife’s treatment and death.
It was then I discovered that a Committee of Vultures, masquerading as Hospital Consultants, had reviewed my wife’s file, physical and mental states, and decided that, in the event of a heart attack, she was to be denied resuscitation: and so a DNACPR note was laid upon my wife’s bedside notes. To say that I, with all that grief suddenly resurrected, was almost beside myself with anger is, perhaps, an understatement. I tried all avenues to get some form of contrition from the hospital; but after many weeks, I had to be satisfied with making a video on the hospital’s channel, and letters of condolence which were VERY carefully worded.
So, as I stated at the beginning of this polemic, I was binge-watching Everwood on Netflix, and, in this episode; the storyline was discussing how cast members were greeting the news of the sudden death of a young man who had been revived after a catastrophic accident. The doctor/surgeon who had treated the young man was reviewing his own notes, and suddenly, a page appeared which was a signed DNACPR document: but signed by the patient himself. He stated that he did not wish to live the half-life which he had inherited after the accident.
I accept that just about all television is scripted, laced with propaganda of one sort or another, and carefully directed, including most news channels, but I do believe that the wider public should be aware that, certainly in GB&NI, those Consultants who are supposed to carefully review the files of all patients who are to undergo surgical intervention have, indeed, the very power of LIFE AND/OR DEATH within that carefully worded documentation. The patient, and any family members, are not normally advised when the DNAR is signed.
I need retail therapy, because Veganuary has become quite muted and that’s part of a wider inflection point in vegan eating that I’m sad about. “Where have all the vegans gone?” Dazed asked in November (Ed: Admit it Reader, you sang that in your head, didn't you?), and now New York Magazine has investigated, with the tagline: “Plant-based eating was supposed to be the future. Then meat came roaring back.” It details a wave of vegan restaurant closures (plus the high-profile reverse ferret performed by formerly vegan Michelin-three-starred Eleven Madison Park to serving “animal products for certain dishes”), declining sales of meat substitutes and a stubbornly static percentage of people identifying as vegan (around 1%). It’s not new (rumours of veganism’s demise have been swirling around since at least 2024) and it’s not just a US phenomenon; many UK vegan restaurants have closed this year, including my lovely local.
The world is healing! What could possibly account for this? It can't just be people coming to their senses and rejecting a fad, can it?
What’s going on? For a start, the Trump 2.0 “roaring” meat revival. As the New York Times reported last year, meat sales are up and fewer Americans are interested in curbing their intake. That movement feels partly provocative – an in-your-face rejection of woke orthodoxies around cutting your carbon footprint, consuming mindfully, or, generally, caring.
Yes, Emma, Chad and Martha from Stallion's Tackle, Arkansas aren't chowing down on a juicy steak at their local diner because they want to, they are doing it purely to stick a thumb in the eye of progressive loons like you. They'd rather be having a mushroom cassarolr instead.
Is there some pychiatric term for people who think this way?
Oh, yes - narcissists.
I wonder, though, if other things are happening. I’m concerned that we have reached the “shrug and give up” stage of trying to combat climate breakdown and that’s also why fewer people are vegan. People are starting to think it’s too late, so why bother – they might as well be hung for a lamb chop. Plus, on climate, there’s a good argument that what individuals can achieve is exceptionally limited and that making us feel responsible is a cynical trick. Why am I diligently washing out coconut kefir bottles to recycle, when half the world’s climate-heating emissions come from the products of 36 fossil fuel companies?
And that big glowing ball in the sky? You don't think that might have a bigger effect on our planet's temperature and climate?
More broadly, I don’t think I’ll surprise anyone by venturing that the world feels tremendously, terrifyingly bad right now. People need the odd little treat to face – and keep facing – the horrors. Is it so wrong, relatively speaking, to carpe diem and butter yourself a crumpet now and then? Of course not.
All I can say to that, really, is if you’re interested in feeling good – and who isn’t? – it feels good to actually do something. My veganism is basically self-interest, by which I mean, I do it for my health: not physical, but mental.
It doesn't seem to be working, so maybe you should try a beefburger, Emma.
