Food prices

[Tubetec]

I'm not sure the stats on Irish beef exports lately.
I know that now many English made meat products were banned from the market here due to differing animal welfare standards . recently Iceland , the UK frozen food chain was ordered to take all its meat products off the shelf , their entire Irish opperation was crippled before folding around a month ago .
I do know Irish beef is held in high regard for flavour as well a being mainly grass fed .
Typical super market beef in Belgium when I lived there was somewhat paler. more lean and perhaps not with quite the same flavour .
Its a bit similar if you buy Tesco steak here these days , a more intensive farming methodology is used , most likely the feeds are made up of soya , which in its basic form has no real flavour , so you get bland tasting meat .

Irelands other great export ,Whiskey is enjoying a revival ,
production at the local Jameson distillery has just been boosted with the addition of four new fermentation tanks , each one holding hundreds of thousands of liters of a very strong black beer made from malted(sprouted) and roasted barley grains .

Surpluses from drinks production are sent to the refinery for mixing into the E10 petrol , at the expence of the tax payers ,who fund the expansion of the drinks industry ,
Theres nothing green about petrol /ethanol mix , it can kill older car engines and if used in say a two stroke chainsaw will certainly cause catstrophic failure .
What we should be doing is modifying our vehicles to run on nearly pure ethanol , just like the Brazilians do and telling the petrochemical companies to take a long walk off a short pier .

 

[living sounds]

No, I am irritated by your poorly informed criticism of not just policy, but people (what you want to call "influence groups" to make it acceptable). I'll continue to reflect on the importance of standing up for what I believe in and not letting false narratives go unopposed.

Yea, in your own world where you can make up all the rules as you like them... I don't have time for this...

 

[crazydoc]

Yea, in your own world where you can make up all the rules as you like them... I don't have time for this...

Yeah, when it's "my way or the highway," it's time to move on down the road to more meaningful viewpoints.

 

[fazer]

Seems like we all make up are own rules and then watch and find content to support them. The news these days are mostly opinion pieces with no news bureau actually investigating anything. It’s released as news and then the next piece is an opinion on that opinion piece. I’m fine with the constitution. It’s amendable with the right number of votes. Work on getting votes and change it if you don’t like it. Throwing it out is not alright. Politics is and will always be a team sport. It’s going to be an interesting 2024.

 

[AnalogPackrat]

Meanwhile rice (in 20-25lb bags) is up 20% in the two years since we moved. Bread closer to 25% and peanut butter at least 15%. I have a few laying hens, so we rarely have to buy eggs, but they were way up earlier this year. Not sure about now. No doubt this hurts lower income people more than others. Thankfully in this area it is relatively easy for people to supplement groceries with a small garden and many do.

 

[sodderboy]

I'm not advocating Communism. It just may sound like that to ideologically tilted ears. It all happened before. From the 1930s on the American people collectively decided (or rather, to prevent a Communist revolution, the elites found it the lesser evil and went along) to rebalance the share of working people vs the elite in reaping the fruits of the economic engine. It brought about a golden age of technological discoveries, broadly shared prosperity, shrinking debt, raised living standards.

It was called the Second World War, and there's some books you can read about that.
What a load of rubbish, "the collective". The US depression was exacerbated by "collective" policy from FDR, and the economy would have limped another decade or more if Shicklgruber had stuck with art and paperhanging.

You might not be advocating communism, but you are absolutely advocating totalitarianism. For the good of "the collective", of course! Just look at all the totalitarianism around the world involving Covi. It brought about a dark age of technological stagnation, narrowly shared prosperity, increasing debt, and lowered living standards.

The problem with advancing "the collective" is that in reality, it involves government bringing change by force. In the US the force, the barrel of a federal gun, has been enhanced with financial transactions, either punitive taxes for some people, places, things, or cash payments to "collectivists" whomever, wherever. The Red New Deal is not something that the people want, but "the collective" is implementing it anyway in the form of John Podesta running a $370 Billion hedge fund out of the White House.

"The collective" is not a straw man, it is IRONMAN. Tens of millions of lives destroyed in the 20th Century in the name of "the collective". You cannot have "the collective" without paying the high price of totalitarianism.

Mike

 

[cyrano]

Solidarity has nothing to do with totalitarianism, on the contrary...

Thanks for demonstrating the effect of a century of propaganda and a failing school system.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Thanks for demonstrating the effect of a century of propaganda and a failing school system.

please avoid ad hominem which is against the rules. (#4).

JR

 

[AnalogPackrat]

Solidarity has nothing to do with totalitarianism, on the contrary...

I didn't see anyone mention the Solidarity movement, so I'll assume you were responding to negative comments regarding collectivism. Voluntary and temporary collectivism, as in members of a community working together after a disaster or in difficult times is fine, but that isn't what we're talking about. Big C collectivism is anti-individualism and leads to and becomes a pillar of totalitarianism.

Thanks for demonstrating the effect of a century of propaganda and a failing school system.

In Belgium?

 

[fazer]

Solidarity has nothing to do with totalitarianism,

I didn’t read anything about Solidarity in the previous page and a half. It was collectivism and communism as a solution(sucks). I remember the solidarity movement from Poland which I thought was a workers union which I compare to the farmers in Nederland protesting heads of state climate change garbage. People need food and a living. God help the Nederlands.

 

[sodderboy]

I think the translator apps are having some fun with our collectivist bredren.
I did find another instance where DIY food was the wrong choice, mass quantity. 150 wings for a fishing trip, $170 from the corner pizza place, $110 for me to DIY. No brainer. Wash and prep 150 wings? Ain’t nobody got time fa dat! (translate that, folks)
Mike

 

[Matador]

I can do things you cannot. You can do things I cannot. Together, we can do even less, because fuck collectivism.

 

[living sounds]

please avoid ad hominem which is against the rules. (#4).

JR

Selectively applied on an ideological basis. Great.

 

[living sounds]

And the right wing straw man train rolls on. I am out of here.

 

[sahib]

And the right wing straw man train rolls on. I am out of here.

Living sounds, I think you are being very unfair here. As I mentioned before I consider myself neither a right wing nor left, and I do not have a partisan politics. However, assume that those who disagree with you are right wing, does this make their argument of lesser importance than your left wing views?

Take multiculturalism. As I mentioned before I am an immigrant in this country, and surely I can not be racist. So, what do we mean by multiculturalism? Opening the gates to everybody to walk in and continue with their local habits and traditions without integration? In my view this is exactly what is happening.

I do not know you or your family in person but I felt (really) proud that your mum was looking after a refugee family. But that still does not represent the overall picture. I am not sure, may be things are all milk and honey in Germany but I am of Turkish origin and well aware of the type of problems Germany had with Turkish immigration. You may say that there is a generation of Turks who integrated well, but are you able to say the dust is now settled down and you've all been living happily after? I don't think so. Even though the Turkish immigration was well regulated.

The problem we are having at the moment, and nobody wants to admit, is that ordinary people are not able to voice their concerns on this issue as they are automatically labelled with being right wing. This is because this topic has been hijacked by right-wing groups of, say, skinhead Nazis in Germany or KKK in the US. This is very unfair. I do not see an indication of any forum member, who disagrees with your views, being what you would call a right wing.

 

[Tubetec]

Its easy to end up argueing from opposite sides of the fence ,
the facts of the matter are Northern Europeans decided to take over the planet a longtime before the USA was even established ,
America eventually broke away from its former colonial backers , tried to set a new benchmark ,

I think both sides of the Atlantic we need to come to terms with the fact that western democracy is failing people just like every political system that came before it ,

 

[sahib]

......I think both sides of the Atlantic we need to come to terms with the fact that western democracy is failing people just like every political system that came before it ,

Well, that is still better than the non existent democracy in the east.

 

[AnalogPackrat]

Its easy to end up argueing from opposite sides of the fence ,
the facts of the matter are Northern Europeans decided to take over the planet a longtime before the USA was even established ,
America eventually broke away from its former colonial backers , tried to set a new benchmark ,

I think both sides of the Atlantic we need to come to terms with the fact that western democracy is failing people just like every political system that came before it ,

In my view it isn't that our system has failed so much as that it has been allowed to mutate into something very different (and not good), mostly over the past century. Note that I am not saying that everything that has changed in this time period has been detrimental, but that several important features of functional free societies have been degraded or disappeared. Mass apathy has replaced self-initiated civic responsibility.

 

[AnalogPackrat]

It was called the Second World War, and there's some books you can read about that.
What a load of rubbish, "the collective". The US depression was exacerbated by "collective" policy from FDR, and the economy would have limped another decade or more if Shicklgruber had stuck with art and paperhanging.

Agree. See post #107 and follow-ups.

 

[living sounds]

Living sounds, I think you are being very unfair here. As I mentioned before I consider myself neither a right wing nor left, and I do not have a partisan politics. However, assume that those who disagree with you are right wing, does this make their argument of lesser importance than your left wing views?

Where exactly have I been unfair? In negotiations "unfair" is an emotional term used for leverage, without any actual intrinsic meaning, so it's best to be very vary of it...

I do not care for ideology. My focus is on what is objectively working the best with the least harm to anyone. You could call this left wing, because in psychological science harm reduction is a trait emphasized by left-leaning individuals, while being lower on purity and group loyalty than those leaning right.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.579908/full
I frequently make suggestions for books that present a scientifically informed outlook on things, rather than ideologically charged texts or videos. And get hit with straw men in return (I have never advocated Communism, but am frequently labelled as one). It's a waste of my precious time.

Take multiculturalism. As I mentioned before I am an immigrant in this country, and surely I can not be racist. So, what do we mean by multiculturalism? Opening the gates to everybody to walk in and continue with their local habits and traditions without integration? In my view this is exactly what is happening.

I do not know you or your family in person but I felt (really) proud that your mum was looking after a refugee family. But that still does not represent the overall picture. I am not sure, may be things are all milk and honey in Germany but I am of Turkish origin and well aware of the type of problems Germany had with Turkish immigration. You may say that there is a generation of Turks who integrated well, but are you able to say the dust is now settled down and you've all been living happily after? I don't think so. Even though the Turkish immigration was well regulated.

Now, regarding immigration: It obviously presents huge challenges. I cited Peter Turchin's unideological findings more than once, that immigration has always been used by the elite to lower the average wage vs. GDP and thus transfer wealth from the bottom and middle to the top. But people on the right prefer to scapegoat groups of "others" rather than adressing this very real problem (after all purity and group loyalty are core emotional drivers). Well, they sort of get it sometimes, AnalogPackrat did mention corporations, but it's mostly kind of jumbled and unclear. The moment you actually adress the elephant in the room the well-learned ideological teachings kick in and phrases like "class warfare" are uttered.

As for Germany, a lot of mistakes were made wrt to immigration in the postwar era. Ours is a class-less society only on paper, too, and a lot was done in a million small ways, rather than by any offcial means, to keep immigrants down for a long time. Laws have been passed to adress discrimination and many improvements were made more recently, I do think.

Integration of a wave of immigrants is never easy, it's hard to imagine today how much - for instance - Irish immigrants in 19th century United States were resented. There was a time, not long ago, when an Irish or Jewish US President or even Supreme Court Judge would have been unthinkable to a majority. But as you wrote, the dust eventually settles.

The problem we are having at the moment, and nobody wants to admit, is that ordinary people are not able to voice their concerns on this issue as they are automatically labelled with being right wing. This is because this topic has been hijacked by right-wing groups of, say, skinhead Nazis in Germany or KKK in the US. This is very unfair. I do not see an indication of any forum member, who disagrees with your views, being what you would call a right wing.

The problem is a general state of discord. At the heart is inequality and alienation within societal stratas. The left wing elite often projects the problems onto right wingers, and right wingers project the problems onto left wingers as well as groups like immigrants, ethnic minorities, the poor etc.

So yes, opening the gates won't work in the long time. It's a hard pill to swallow for the left. But then the western countries are often responsible for people coming to their country in one way or another, so what is needed there is, as Matator said, is solidarity. In our current framework we don't seem to be capable of doing any of that.