Don’t We Have A Word For When Some-one Tries To ‘Explain What Others Are Angry About’..?

I'm sure we do, something to do with 'gas', I think...

This may have been an unwanted problem for Keir Starmer and the home secretary, who took the brunt of the unedifying shitshow, but for every other minister it came as something of a relief. They could all ease themselves back into the new year, secure in the knowledge that for once no one was paying them any attention. Their screw-ups and local difficulties could slide under the radar. In government, that is known as living the dream.

Maybe that attitude is why governments everywhere are failing? 

Steve Reed is almost certainly wishing that Muskmania could have gone on for just one more day. Why hadn’t the world’s weirdest SpaceX cadet gone one further than threatening to invade the UK and launch one of his rockets against us?

Musk man bad! appears to have overtaken Orange man bad! as a rallying cry amongst the progressives, doesn't it?

Which meant that Steve was in the spotlight as he faced one of his toughest gigs of the year: a keynote speech at the Oxford Farming Conference. What a difference a year makes. This time last year, Reed had gone down a storm at the conference. They couldn’t get enough of him. They didn’t even mind that he so clearly wasn’t one of them. Not even when he put on wellies. Steve is a city boy through and through. The closest he comes to the great outdoors is a half-hour walk in Crystal Palace Park – stick to the paths, the grass is rather muddy – before nipping in to Gail’s for a croissant and cortado. No, the farmers forgave all that because they were as fed up with the Tories as he was. So when he had spent the entire speech trashing the Conservatives, they lapped it up.

And now reality has entered the chat, and they aren't so enamoured. They've realised something their livestock probably already knew, that sometimes the grass isn't always greener. 

Now … not so much. In just six months as environment secretary, Steve has sped through the first four stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression: he’s been there and got the T-shirt. Tried explaining that none of this has been his fault with the farmers. He only got to find out about the changes to inheritance tax the night before the budget. No one had consulted him. He was just the sucker who had to deal with the fallout.

And yet somehow, you think their ire should be directed at the guy who's pointing out his boss's deficiencies?  

The Same Way All Other Big Charities Do, George…

How does it happen? How does an organisation end up doing the opposite of what it was established to do? This month marks the 200th anniversary of the foundation of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals: the world’s oldest animal welfare organisation. I wonder what there is to celebrate.

Me too, albeit I suspect for vastly different reasons... 

If you mistreat your dog or cat or horse or rabbit, you can expect an investigation by the RSPCA. If the case is serious enough, it could lead to prosecution.

But run over an escaped calf with your police car and claim it was 'for the protection of the public' and you'll probably get away with it. 

If you abuse animals on an industrial scale, you might face not investigation and prosecution, but active support and a public relations campaign to help you sell your products.

Oh, he's going for the farming angle, isn't he? 

This is the conclusion of the deepest and most wide-ranging report yet conducted into something called RSPCA Assured. When you see meat or fish or eggs in the supermarket, you might find the RSPCA’s stamp of approval on the packaging, telling you that the animals they came from benefited from “high welfare” farming. It might seem odd that an organisation devoted to animals is promoting their exploitation and killing. It seems odder still when you discover that this “high welfare” farming includes massive factory farms, indistinguishable from the norm, in which animals live short, distressing lives before being trucked away to be stunned and slaughtered.

And that's without considering the halal angle, noticably missing from your screed, George... 

The new report, by the organisation Animal Rising...

Ah. Those nutcases. 

Expert assessors concluded that in many cases the farms not only failed to meet the RSPCA criteria, but didn’t even achieve the legal standard for animal welfare. Altogether, they alleged 280 legal breaches.

Then perhaps this is one we can leave to the ASA, George?  

It gets worse. Until the new report was published at the weekend, at which point it deleted them, the RSPCA’s website carried recipes for meat and fish, showing how you could cook cuts of the animals that receive its stamp of approval. Of 159 recipes on its site, only four were plant-based. Stand back and marvel at the perversity. It’s as if a children’s welfare charity had published a directory showing where you can hire child labour.

We're not going to go vegan anymore than we are going to eat the bugs, George. Give it a rest! 

When I asked the RSPCA about the new report, it told me it is looking into the allegations. It claimed that: “If we stepped back from RSPCA Assured, we risk leaving millions of farmed animals with even less protection.” I believe that’s the opposite of the truth.

Well, as a famous fictional lawyer once said, 'It doesn't matter what I believe, what matters is what I can prove!'