National Trade Conversation: what are your priorities?

I am not saying that we should continue eating meat in order to protect animals, but it must be the case that if the population switches from eating animal meat to a non-animal diet there will be far fewer animals on the land. It would not be economical to rear animals just for the leather, wool and bristles that we get from cattle, sheep and pigs and there would be major implications for the landscape as small fields and hilly countryside were turned over from grazing to arable, vegetables or forestry.

I totally agree with Marion’s sentiments. I think if the general public was aware of how most pork and chicken is produced, they might consider paying a little more for higher welfare. A Which? report earlier this year did mention stocking rates on intensive animal units but with a fairly impassive view. It takes undercover investigations from the like of Viva!, Peta and Compassion in World Farming to reveal the horrors going on in UK farms and around the world. Food should be affordable but not cheap – cheap food costs the earth.

And if we don’t use leather, wool and bristles we’ll have to use man-made plastics to do the job.

How about scaling back the provision of drugs and medicines for people with long-term illnesses? There are deep ethical questions to be explored here.

Already the NHS is prioritising Covid-19 cases over other pre-existing conditions and suspending or postponing surgery, presumably on the principle that people who could be saved and restored to health should take precedence over those who might not recover. There has been no debate on this unofficial triage but the waiting times for ‘non-urgent surgery’ have now probably gone past the point where the backlog can ever be recovered, and many cancer patients and others who are seriously ill are dying while they wait indefinitely for their treatments and procedures. What factors are informing the opinions of those taking these decisions? Are they clinicians, or administrators, or politicians? Should those consequential deaths be added to the Covid-19 death statistics in order to show the full picture?

The NHS deals with this all the time in a sense through its normal waiting lists. So it seems do GPs and consultants who give long waits for appointments unless you have persistence. When supply of a service cannot match demand it is hard to see a fair way of dealing with it. Each of us will probably think we should be a priority – I don’t want to die if it can be prevented.

The ability to prolong life has increased continually. Logically that is a bad thing – it is costly in, say, pension and other benefits, it places extra demands on the planet’s resources such as food and water, and it places a huge load on health and social care services that could be used to maintain health in the younger members. But I am not arguing for one minute that we should deal with this logically or disadvantage the older members. We need to provide the resources to back up the advances we have made No one should have any right to decide whether or not someone should be deliberately caused to die through a refusal to help except in very extreme circumstances.

Has anyone data on the use of the Nightingale “emergency hospitals”. Why is it that the Corvid-cases are still delivered to the normal hospitals, and block any other clinical proceedings?

The next whim is clearly 5G and 6G in therm of materials, BUT no one has mentioned the increase of needed energy to keep those x-more needed transponders running. This at a time, when REDUCTION OF ENERGY CONSUMPTION IS PRIORITY.
It also is strange, that the government is backing the demand of the gambler-of-economy in their greed to have more ^possibilities per second^ to “earn” from fluctuations of the stock market, which are more emotionally triggered, than by real facts.