Up the Gas and back!

Being a fairly recent convert to women’s football and having made my second visit to Lockleaze for the first home game of the season, I really wanted to go to a GasGirls away game, because away games are always more fun. Due to having to take annual leave recently and subsequent costs I wasn’t able to afford the Wales national team games (whilst I was Eisteddfoding my toilet leaked causing my kitchen ceiling to collapse). Maybe I should have gone down to Cardiff for Cardiff City Women v Aberystwyth Town [a hard fought by all accounts 0-0 against the Welsh champions], but no, I’m a complete tart and this one was doable in a day, I could make it to a Bristol Rovers away game! As I live on the Welsh coast, this one didn’t involve a long drive down to the deepest South West of South West England, but a mere 3.5 hour drive to Nailsworth in Gloucestershire, home of Forest Green Rovers; or about the same driving time as a trip to Bristol for me, so doable in a day. This is generally away football for me, going to away games of teams I support that are closer to where I live than home games. Belt up, for seasoned football fans, this was an unusual trip.

The drive down was odd, it looked complicated on the map, so I left it to the SatNav to guide me to the ground. Cutting South East onto main roads, then single track roads, back to main roads, all with the mighty M5 always close at hand, and finally entering Nailsworth from a single track road right next to the football ground.

Entrance was only to Forest Green’s Main Stand and only via the officials entrance, so up a carpeted staircase; for non-football fans this is very bizarre. The entrance to the stand itself was only via the bar, very civilised. So posh and civilised is this stadium that they only serve vegan food in the ground, being owned by the owner of a major renewable energy company. Veggies are generally poorly served at football grounds, the traditional snack being the [some sort of] Meat and Potato Pie. Yet this is wonderful. As regular readers know I do not eat meat outside of the home as I cannot guarantee it’s sustainability and feel when eating out vegan food should be the norm. It means everyone has a choice and you won’t be eating dubious meat from intensive agriculture. However at a football stadium this is still strange indeed.

It’s a pleasant setting, a tier 4 English Mens league ground (EFL League 2) with the rare site of trees swaying behind the terraces. Nailsworth is perhaps a bit small for English Tier 4. Indeed they spent most of the twentieth century playing in the Gloucestershire Leagues, before making it to the League in the 1990s. Incidentally gaining that fame and glory about the same time as my London club, Enfield were pushing for entry to the Conference (tier 5), until disaster struck; the chairman sold the stadium and then ran off with all the money, hence causing the creation of Enfield Town… whose Ladies team have still yet to see, I’ve not had any London trips since Covid and it’s just a bit far at the moment, sorry.

The match commenced with a minute’s clap to mark the tragic death, at just 27, of Sheffield United’s Mandy Cusack.

Anyway to the match. A ‘top of the table clash’ at tier 5 in the English women’s game, with two clubs whose men’s teams have league status (Tiers 3 and 4), in a league with just one promotion spot, despite it not yet being October the result could determine who wins the league this year, one which both teams wanted to prove a point with.

The game started as it would go on, with both teams pressing the other team high up the park, never the prettiest open football, but in football sometimes needs must. Scrappy and very even but the Gas seemed to be just about edging the percentages of winning tackles, passing players and getting the ball back. There was one problem, Forest Green have a very pacy forward, who had already shown she could overtake our dender from 2 yards behind and get in froin with the ball facing goal. This time she got a shot off, excellently blocked by our keeper, but unfortunatly into the path of a Forest player, 1-0 Forest Green.

Second half, as a pressing game, there was a lot of tackles flying in, all good ones for the most part but inevitable one will get mis-times and give way a free-kick. We conceeded a 40 yard one. We’ll be fine I thought, this isn’t the national team with free kick specialists who put these away. Bang into the net just under the crossbar and inches from out keepers outstretched hand 2-0 Forest Green.

Thes Gas Girls don’t give you know and were sprinting back into position to figth back. Less that a minute later we had our own 40 yard free kick, Bang into the net just under the cross bar… wait what didn’t this just happen at the other end less than a minute ago? Yes 2-1! I suspect I will never see two 40 yard direct free kicks go in at either end within a minute ever again, worth the entrance fee alone.

Now we had one back it was all Rovers (of the Bristol variety), still a pressing game, but winning more and more of the exchanges and finally getting some space to work the ball. We had chance after chance but they wouldn’t go into the net. I was getting deja-vu for last Friday night’s visit of Wales women to Iceland in the Nations League, where Wales dominated possession and just couldn’t score (Iceland 1-0 Wales FT). 90 minutes appeard on the clock and as injury tiem deepened and the Gas Girls thundered the ball forward, it was just not to be, it wasn’t our day. We had out-played the opposition at their home ground, but that’s football, we love it for it’s unpredictability.

So I’ve now seen the Gas Girls three times. I’ve started to know the players, whose good at what and weaker at other things, all the bits that make being a fan interesting.

So I was a bit deflated facing the long drive home. Yes 3.5 hours is a longish drive on Britains, narrow windy up and down roads, endless junctions and roundabouts, constantly changing speed, it is tiring. Especially with the cliche of it starting the rain just after crossing the border back into Wales.

I made it back to Aberystwyth and to a roaring pub in time to catch the second half of Wales v Australia in the Rugby World Cup (or egg-chasing as many football fans call it). Wales were winning! I was still wearting my bright blue Bristol Rovers scarf in a sea of Red Wales rugby tops * but Wales were winning! And not only that but dominating the game and making Australia look like a poor side. Cymru 40-6 Australia 40-6! Incredible stuff. So all my earlier disappointment washed away and I could embrace a pub full of fellow happy Welsh people, supporting sport teams gives you these amazing roller-coasters of emotion sometimes.

*You can do this in Faberystwyth. Unlike when I was returning to Bristol from an away game against Yeovil Town to overnight with Bristol friends in Bedminster. I hadn’t thought and two men approached me ‘That a Gas scarf?’ [Note that Bedminster is generally a Bristol City part of Bristol]. I was really scared as they pulled my scarf off. Then I saw the dumbfounded looks on their faces as they read ‘Enfield FC, Pride of North London’ on the scarf. I’d got away with it and they handed me back my scarf!

All in all a grand day out, seeing the amazing Gas Girls in action and Wales winning in the rugby. Sometimes I think I support too many teams an dlike too many things but on days like that it feels very worth it.

Happy Veganuary/ Regenuary !

I’ve seen some slanging matches going on on Social Media, with Vegans and Livestock farmers spitting acid at each other. It’s so wrong and unnecessary, it really isn’t a black and white issue and in fact diverts energy from finding sustainable solutions. This whole argument of ‘you’re not perfect so why should I change my ways’ thing. None of us are perfect, but we desperately need to tackle climate change and that includes developing sustainable agriculture.

We should all be celebrating Veganuary, so Happy Veganuary folks. There are two main reasons. Firstly that vegans are doing a lot to help make living on this planet more sustainable  and for those thinking about transitioning to a vegan diet a month to try it and for support to be available is great. Secondly,  the vast majority of meat eaters, like 99.9% of people should substantially reduce their meat consumption. To do that people need to learn how to make vegan meals and that isn’t easy. Yes, we also need to cut out flying and using cars so much, but we all have to eat.

If, like me, you grew up in a traditional “meat and two veg'” home it is quite a transition. Most of my meals when growing up where meat based, so removing this central feature of meals is a challenge, it’s about finding combinations of tastes and textures to produce enjoyable vegan meals. From there comes a need to ensure a balanced diet and that involves quite a bit of knowledge about nutrition, that most people don’t have to start with. It takes a lot of effort.

Beyond that there is the social elements, where people disrespect your dietary choice and the fact that eating out with friends is always a pain in the arse, though it is a lot easier these days. People should not be attacking vegans for being pioneers in food sustainability as vegans do a lot more ethical shopping than most people do, even if occasionally the world isn’t perfect and they need to import soya beans from some rather unsustainable sources.

On the other hand, there are some from a more extremist angle who are activists who protest at farms and hassle farmers, but they are a minority and actually are symptoms of the main problem. The main problem being that since probably the Second World War, there has been a growing disconnect between food producers and consumers. Agriculture rapidly industrialised, without social consent for some of the developed practices  and we now live in world where the majority of people buy almost all their food pre-packaged in the supermarket, often with little idea about how that food got to be there.

Yet, these farm-gate protesters are also at fault. Farmers are not to blame for this whole mess. Most farmers care about the land they farm and want to farm in as sustainable way as possible. However they need to earn a living and to do that they have to do whatever the broken food market tells them to do, which has been to intensify, despite all the environmental damage that causes. Farmers, Vegans and the rest of us shouldn’t be fighting each other but instead work together to sort out the broken food market and support anyone who is taking things forward in a positive direction.

Recently, finally, at long last, we are starting to see some promotion of sustainable meat production. The problem is sustainable meat production has been neglected for so long and is so far behind the vegan movement, which has it’s own labelling systems, supply chains and support groups, which sustainable meat lacks.

I grew up in rural Wales, surrounded by upland sheep farms and yet became vegetarian at the age of 15, not because I thought the farmers who were my classmates were terrible people, they are certainly not. It was my discovery of factory farming and a realisation that this was simply wrong in animal welfare terms and sustainability and finding a way of only eating local sustainable meat seemed far to challenging to me at 15, so I went Veggie. I’ve never been vegan for more than a few days at a time (I just have a serious blue cheese fetish), but about fifteen years ago I decided to eat meat again, as I felt educated enough to make informed decisions about sustainable, ethical meat sourcing and it’s been incredibly hard work. I should point out that I’ve never thought that rearing animals for food is morally wrong, though I respect people who have that view. It may be that a lot of people are tempted to veganism because of concerns about animal welfare, health or sustainability and there is a sensible compromise to consider for these people who don’;t have the moral imperative to go 100% vegan, but it needs better support.

Yet with no ready made framework, no labelling system and no-where to go to for support. Purely to make my life easier, my initial rule was organic meat only as it was and regrettably still is the only reliable labelling system for ethical meat consumption. It means meat is very expensive, so you can’t eat much of it and really the price makes it a genuine sustainable market, rather than the generally broken food market.

From there I worked out when I could eat locally produced reasonably sustainable lamb and beef from butchers and very very occasionally get hold of a chicken. Why is eating sustainable meat important? Because if we want to maximise sustainability and look after the soil, which is degrading horribly in almost all agricultural systems, some livestock farming is sustainable and supports soil sustainability and low consumption of meat may actually be healthier. Recently there has been a growing awareness of how bad processed food is for us, yet fresh meat doesn’t seem to have such issues with it from a health point of view.

We are blessed in Wales with land that isn’t great for arable farming, but is great for ruminants, cows and sheep and to move to a fully sustainable system I don’t think there is a necessity for a single farmer to stop lamb or beef production or for such radical change that is needed elsewhere on the planet. However flocks may need to be a little smaller and the land managed in new ways (or a rediscovery of old ways). The food market is broken in much the same way the housing market is, we need to pay more for our food and less for our housing and in that way create a real food market and a real housing market, which maintains farming traditions, rural incomes and gets Wales to be sustainable.

It is crazy for people who eat meat every day to complain about vegans as that diet choice of everyday meat (and often processed meat at that) is far less sustainable. As I’ve said to get to sustainability, as a species we need to eat a lot more local, seasonal, sustainably produced food. Some have suggested having “Reganuary”, where sustainable regenerative agricultural practises are supported. Why not combine the two, start making vegan meals and then reward yourself with some local sustainably produced meat, that will actually taste a lot better and have more nutrients in it!

It’s just been so challenging over the years to be ‘holding the fence up’ with one wellie in a muddy field and a sandal in a vegan shop. I get so frustrated with vegans and farmers attacking each other when we need come together and share ideas to find solutions to create sustainable communities and ways of living that don’t wreck the one planet we live on.

Like so many arguments these days, we only hear from the people at the extremes, the livestock farmers and the rearing animals is wrong vegans, whilst the majority of people with no axe to grind struggle to get listened to ast all. This happens with the Brexit debate too.

Until the cows come home

Greta Thunberg set off this week to sail to New York to deliver a speech about climate change at the United Nations. People have attacked her for this. Not attacking why she is doing it or issues of climate change. They are attacking her for being a sixteen year old girl. Mature adults criticising a sixteen year old girl for being a young girl. What on Earth is going on here?

I remember being sixteen. I was utterly confused by the world. The crazy way society is organised, the sheer amount of plastic starting to appear in the supermarkets and simply how inefficiently the world was organised. This had already led to huge losses of forests and space for wildlife in the world. Surely, this is crazy, I thought, how is the world in general not aware of this and why aren’t things being done to sort these things out.

I could have devoted my life to raising awareness and getting these things sorted out. I didn’t because the messages as I was getting was that I was too young to understand and in any case my peer group in the farming community I grew up in thought my views were weird. I was the exception, I was the minority. I was also suffering from social anxiety, partly because I was different. However I can completely understand Greta’s position and thoroughly admire it. We really do live in a world where sixteen year olds can be right and fully educated adults can be wrong.

Nonetheless I became vegetarian and tried not to produce too much waste and kept voting for politicians who expressed a commitment to sorting out the environment and making society a little less crazy and kept talking about the issues. This isn’t enough, it’s a drop in the ocean, the actions of one strange person are not enough. To make big societal changes you have to grow a movement, find a way to get your message across clearly and fight and fight and fight until the cows come home.

One problem is that I grew up in a society that encouraged compromise: You have to behave a certain way to fit in, you have to dress a certain way, you need to do certain activities and not do others, you need to get a well-paying job and then if you do all these things you may be in a position of authority and then you can do something about it.

To get there or even just to get any job, you have to compromise for example by commuting, wasting the resources of 2 hours of car travel everyday or helping an organisation you don’t like. You have to buy plastic wrapped bananas, because you can’t afford the unwrapped bananas in the posh shop.

However this doesn’t work, it took me a long time to realise this. Firstly you end up twisting your personality into knots to try and act the “right” way, you can’t trust what you think and thus lose access to your natural abilities and do some very strange things. All these compromises stack up, you try to justify them all and and up with some very strange positions and being objective about any issue becomes more difficult. Secondly, all the authority figures aren’t doing anything useful and their ability to change things, even they really want to, is minimal.

There has been a growing awareness of these perils of conformity. Society in Wales and across Europe has become much more accepting of difference, whether it be sexuality, mental illness, race, religion, language &c. Fortunately it is now much easier to be a minority and be accepted. When I was young people people hid themselves so much more for fear of being “found out” and probably beaten up for it. BAME families had to be constantly demonstrating exceeding the highest moral standards to be accepted in society, whereas any lapses from white people were quickly ignored and forgotten about. To get to this better position took a lot of fighting, campaigning organisations, pride festivals and so on. We have started to live in a world where being in the privileged class is no longer a pass ob to a position of authority. It’s a lot less likely that by sheer luck you happen to be someone who matches the prevailing conventional personality and attitude traits so have some authority. People who cared about the environment were sidelined, fortunately that is becoming less the case.

Now that we live in a world where difference is much more in the open and that is much healthier. However  it has created a opposing reactionary force. A force that seems largely composed of those that were able to conform, that being in the privileged group no longer makes things easier for them and they don’t like it. This has created division and turned things into black and white issues. It seems that it’s no longer a question of how much of an issue climate change is, but rather that people that advocate much more needing to be done as the goodies/baddies and those that advocate not doing anything about it as baddies/goodies. The skill of being able to view arguments form the other side seems to be being lost. This ignores all the complexity inherent in the issue.

There just seems to be so much ignorance of the advantages privilege confers. Perhaps largely because if you are lucky enough to be privilege you don’t notice the advantages you have. In Wales, we are fortunate in that our history gives us an insight into both sided. Wales benefited hugely from being a part of the UK, as a country close to the heart of the British empire. Conversely Wales has also suffered from being a “England’s last colony”. Arguably the Welsh suffer both from the guilt of imperialism and the exploitation of a subjected people. As a Welsh white male I have benefited from being regarded as a member of the dominant group and suffered from being an outsider at the same time. Yet there must be a lot of people who don’t have this dichotomy or are even aware of it.

My social media feeds have almost been flooded by posts like the above about agriculture being unfairly attacked for the contribution of methane from ruminants to climate change [I don’t know how they got to these figures, would question them, I’ve included them for illustrative purposes]. This is largely because I know a number of small family farmers who are worried about their future. Methane is ‘bad’ as it’s a terrible greenhouse gas, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have any, we all fart. There is evidence that suggests than grass fed cows produce a lot less methane than grain fed cows, which small farms specialise in. So the ‘all the cows are bad’ rhetoric is overly simplistic. It’s getting worse as small farms are going to the wall as they can’t compete on price with cross-subsided big [unsustainable] ag’.

On the other hand I also see the posts of the type ‘Everyone should go vegan’. Again this is overly simplistic. Maximum sustainability includes some farm animals. Also in sustainability terms having meat from a local animal is better sustainability wise than shipping something from the other side of the world where it’s grown with stupid amounts of fertiliser on heavily degraded soil.

The sustainability answer lies somewhere in the middle, where nothing gets banned, there is just some things humanity needs to do a lot less of. The problem is that measured arguments don’t get a full hearing and drowned out by the simple messages that resonate with people: ‘Eating animals is natural’ ‘Veganism will save the planet’ ‘Welsh is a dead language’ ‘Let’s take back control’.

Such easy slogans are easily debunked and have long been debunked, yet still they somehow persist. Humans eating animals is natural and has been done since pre-history, but modern intensive agriculture of the last hundred years is not ‘natural’ by any definition. Reducing land devoted to growing food will help the environment and will probably improve many people’s diets, but won’t by itself save the planet. I think reducing average meat consumption in the Western world to something like 10% of current consumption is something like this part of the answer, but it’s how we do it that matters, not the headline figure.  Os mae’r iaith cymraeg wedi marw sut medra i sgwennu hwn [If the Welsh language is dead how am i able to write this?]. Greater localised democratic control to reduce negative impacts of large scale global solutions is a way forward, this was the phrase that arguably won the Brexit referendum in the UK. Yet no-one has yet suggested any democratic or constitutional reforms for after the UK leaving the EU that will achieve this.

I’ve written before about how Brexit is divisive and lumped people into being Leavers or Remainers. The ‘Take Back Control’ phrase was more about a general despair with the crazy world we live in  (remember my second paragraph), for traditional values and communities where everyone could relate to each other (apart from the outsiders who know how to keep quiet) because the actual Brexiteers are against electoral reform (perversely in my view). I think there is also an element of wanting life to be simpler, more traditional and this view is most heavily supported by those losing privilege; the white, heterosexual, conservative older generations who did what they were told.

Maybe there is simply a frustration as people who have sacrificed parts of themselves to conform, put up with plastic and long commutes to try to get some control over their lives. Was all this personal sacrifice for nothing? I share this feeling as someone who overly tried to conform and still do to some extent to stay in employment. It could simply be that this young girl comes along who isn’t compromising. She’s travelling the world without using an aeroplane and has become an authority and has helped raise awareness and put pressure on those with power, by not compromising. This kind of breaks the conformist contract, many Western cultures have, that the feeling is she doesn’t deserve influence as she hasn’t done all the horrible compromising, so shouldn’t have a voice. The ability to conform is highly valued and gives people solace. However, she is right in my view, as I was at 16 and we all need to get over ourselves and not criticise people for being right, but instead support them and help build momentum behind sorting out the horrible mess our economy and society is in. We need to unshackle ourselves from our personal hangups to enable humanity to make it to the next century until the cows come home.

Proper Milk and Happy Farmers!

At last, an opportunity to celebrate and promote good news! I may come across as some weirdo milk obsessive (not that this isn’t entirely untrue), my grandfather did grow up on a dairy farm in Carmarthenshire, so I have a connection to dairy farming, (milk is in my blood <sic>).  I have despaired about modern society rejecting the value of good quality produce. A new dairy initiative has been set up to promote and distribute traditionally produced milk from cows that graze on grass (as indeed they should), check out  and look out for freerangedairy.org.

So, why am I so excited about this? I have been saddened as small dairy producers have fallen by the wayside as the supermarkets demand lower and lower unsustainable farm gate prices for milk. The mega-dairies have arose with cows never seeing the light of day in giant factory farms. I have found this particularly annoying, as such production methods are not as sustainable, or even efficient as pasture based systems. Basically more labour is involved in looking after the cows and harvesting grasses (or worse grain) to bring in to feed the cows, this system is really inefficient though economically cheaper only because of a distorted market.

I only buy organic milk. Well almost… not all of the cheese I buy contains organic milk, I love cheese and I wish I had better access to decent cheese made with sustainable milk,  cheese it the one compromise I make in ethically sourcing food. I digress, like intensive chicken meat, organic milk makes up 2-3% of the market in the UK currently. It has always puzzled me why free-range eggs make up >50% of the market and not chicken. I remember seeing in the supermarket a ready meal containing intensive chicken, and the label was promoting the fact that the sauce contained free-range eggs, did no-one else see the irony?

Perhaps the reason for this is simply price. People will happily pay a few pennies more for ethically sourced eggs, but not a few pounds more for a free-range chicken. Conscience, it seems, does have a price for the majority of people. So, I’m excited by this new scheme as without having to jump through the expensive hoops to certify as organic, free-range milk will only be a few pennies more than intensive milk, it can win, our environment need not be blighted by ugly smelly mega dairies.

Another thing that has frustrated me is that the family farms of upland Wales, the area where I grew up and the area I call home, are relatively poorer than farmers elsewhere in the UK. Basically because the land is less productive, however they produce a superior product in free range lamb, yet have often been unable to command a superior price for their superior product. I may be bias but i think it is true that Welsh lamb is sweeter and more flavoursome than lowland English or New Zealand lamb. Actually, the best lamb I have ever tasted came from Scotland (and it does pain my Welsh heart to say that).

Also recently, I’ve discovered a way to describe my food requirements in a way that doesn’t offend people but makes clear what to offer me. I am ‘mostly vegetarian’. The phrase is apparently widely used in India to describe Hindus who aren’t entirely strict with their vegetarian diet, yet haven’t entirely abandoned the traditional Hindu diet. The phrase ‘mostly vegetarian’ works to describe people like me who only eat free-range, traditionally produced meat products as an occasional treat (due to pricing). No longer will I have to explain myself in restaurants for taking the veggie option, then chomping through a rare steak of lovely Welsh beef at home. Basically I have often had a hard time explaining to people that I don’t eat intensive meat and some homes I’ve visited have been offended by this, so I’ve longed for a way to describe it.

I wish this scheme every success, and hopefully someone will read this and buy a pint of proper free-range milk?

Meaty Intolerance

Sometimes, I find it a challenge to be tolerant of people who are intolerant of vegetarians. Particularly such arguments as: Humans are omnivores, it’s ‘natural’ to eat meat. These arguments smack of the highest hypocrisy as the implication is that industrial intensive farming, rearing animals in cages on high growth diets is somehow ‘natural’, it isn’t, To many it’s intolerable. Yet veggies are labeled as being awkward people.

I grew up in rural Wales, in a community of small family farms, rearing animals in a traditional free range way. When I was fifteen I discovered that much of the meat I was eating was from intensive factory farming. I found this intolerable and became a vegetarian. Many years later I felt able to ethically source free range meat. This means I now eat meat once, maybe twice a week. Actually the traditional pre-industrial diet.

It annoys me sometimes that people still regard me as ‘awkward squad’ as I don’t eat meat at restaurants. when I first meet people I identify as practically vegetarian to not cause offense, until people get to know me better. The thing is that when I explain my food preferences to people, or expose urban people to the reality of food production, they tend to agree with me, but don’t act. Two reasons are often given:

1/ It’s too expensive. Well yes, but you don’t have to eat meat in every meal, meat should be a treat, not an everyday thing. It seems people are not prepared to make the changes in how they shop or cook.

2/ It’s too difficult to ethically source meat. This is true for the majority of places in the U.K. But if no-one doers this, there is no market pressure put on food production systems, so abuses of animals welfare perpetuate.

Really, it comes across to me, that people are intolerant of vegetarians yet when forced to think about it  they agree, but are simply not prepared to follow through on these convictions. I appreciate how how odd it is to go to a supermarket and ignore the vast majority of the meat section and all the products containing meat, to be lumbered with feeling an irritating sense of superiority in such stores, to feel like an outsider. But really, there is nothing wrong with being right, honest with yourself and true to your convictions. Being not true to yourself to support industries you find intolerable, is to me one of worst ways of living.

Alternative Industry

There is a common theme to all my talk of being an outsider and in minorities. Viewing the world from the outside kind of predisposes one to analyse, for one can perhaps see the wood for the trees. Where I have made commitments, in a sense it is to circumvent the machinations of industry.

I’ve never really liked the concept of ‘alternative’ yet that is how my choices are labelled. Two examples:

‘Alternative music’

As a child I loved dancing around my bedroom listening to the latest pop music from the charts. As a teenager I discovered that there was a whole world of much more interesting music than the generally bland indentikit music of the charts, music with more soul, music with the ability to touch me inside and that I could relate closely with. this wasn’t just the ‘alternative’ scene of ‘indie’ music, but reggae, folk, country, metal, world music etc. In those pre-internet days, this ‘alternative’ music was rare on the radio, not in the local shops and harder to access. Harder, because the music industry manipulated the market to make more money for itself, to lead people into commercial music rather than provide access to all music.

‘Vegetarianism’

I became vegetarian when I realised how much intensive production of meat was going on. Where there seemed a lack of respect for the sentient nature of animals, that the welfare of animals is of less importance that commercial success. In the food industry I am always shocked to discover how little many consumers understand of how their food is produced. Seeking alternatives to intensively  produced meat, again requires finding ways around industry and closer links with the producers of food.

It’s not just these two examples (see my ramblings on fashion in earlier posts), but really getting to the best products at the best price is how free markets should work, requires people to spend time knowing how the industry works and how to access the ‘alternatives’. I view this as the root of many of the troubles and sheer bonkers arrangements for human life in the 21st century.

I’m a Social Democrat. I have the fundamental belief that commerce should serve society, rather than the other way around. I suppose this is partly why I have an aversion to the mainstream. The mainstream isn’t this well thought through popular consensus, but rather this system imposed by small groups of ‘captains of industry’. There is no sense in supporting the mainstream from an economic perspective, it’s seemed geared towards inefficiency