Wednesday 3 January 2018

Dr Taggart on the Halal Trains


We were watching an advert for Taggart on the Drama Channel the other night. Am I right in thinking that Taggart is a bit like The Doctor and regenerates every now and again?


Heard someone saying that the price rises on the trains should be borne by those using the service and not funded from council taxes. What they forget is that people with annual season tickets into, say, London, bring money back into their local communities, which can be recycled within the local economy to support local businesses in those communities, benefiting all within that community. This provides an entirely reasonable argument for local council taxes to subsidise the increases on main line commuter routes, but I've not heard anyone suggesting it.

Halal meat has come back into the news with the government saying it will force butchers to label whether meat is Halal or not after Brexit. A bit of clutching at Brexit straws, methinks - they need something positive to say after all the bad news. The irony is that there's nothing stopping them doing it now, or indeed at any time in the past. Fake news, or at least attributing it to Brexit is fake.

I find it strange that those who voice the loudest concern about halal meat don't heap such opprobrium on kashrut, the Jewish version of halal slaughter. That's quite telling.

What's funny about all this Halal slaughter controversy is that my grandfather slaughtered his own pigs in his back yard in a manner that was indistinguishable from Halal, with the exception of him not uttering an incantation. A profanity, perhaps, but not an incantation. I thought Brexiteers wanted to go back to the good old ways...


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