iRant: Voluntary ignorance

The human condition is a pungent discharge.

We have a near mortal dependance to knowledge or the appearance of. Being 'wrong' or 'not knowing' has become the epitome of human fear.

We've attacked the offending idea with fervent fervor (a keen strategic positioning we think), because we can't admit that we don't know what we are doing.

Evidence of this can be found in the observation of the religious texts.

At some point in history our ego must have decided it didn't ever want to not know and so it created a story that would explain all that we marvel at in the world. Some might say thats also a good argument that the stories form some part of a true account as why would they continue to be told? Who knows...

What I know for sure is that when people lose sight of how something works, we conveniently make some unobtainable body responsible for it. Some cosmic ambiance, an almighty omnipresence, a complex contradiction of concepts designed purposely to make it hard to define or decipher. A body so powerful it could explain everything you recently realized you don't know. We cement the relationship by praising our creation instead of praising creation.

Our ability to consider our species as the centre of existence is exceptional.

So it really comes as no surprise that we could be caught in the following characteristic entanglement:

Certain members of the human species have developed an intense love of/for animals...they express this love by culturally assassinating their chosen animal of love. A curious contradiction.

If you asked "whats the culture of a dog", I consider the culture of a thing to be what that thing does with inherent perpetuance. It is therefore the culture of a dog to be a dog and a human to be human etc.

By loving a dog to the point that it is considered a member of your family you are culturally assassinating the dog, because you are by your actions completely ignoring what it is to be a dog and considering/treating a dog humanely. Dogs should be treated dogly.

When the dog does what we want it to, we consider it really clever and sometimes if the dog saves our life we might consider it an emotionally intelligent animal (not saying animals lack emotional intelligence...I really don't know).

I find it funny that if that same animal 'runs away from home' the 'owner' will put up posters imploring you, the 'conscious citizen', to help the vulnerable dog come home. Why is it never suggested that the emotionally intelligent animal is fed up of being treated like a human and so left home to go do some stuff it has been thinking about doing for a while? Why does the dogs intelligence suddenly vanish?

As if the dog example wasn't bad enough there are people that will debate about the relative intelligence between a dog and a cat. Cat lovers tend to consider cats smarter than dogs. So why in the molly frock would a cat owner ever put up posters for the missing cats return? I mean most cat owners know that cats need the ability to come and go as and when they want, so if the cat leaves and doesn't bother to come back, how comes the cat didn't just decide to leave and go live the cat life properly?

I'll be honest, I saw a 'missing cat' poster today and it just pissed me off.

iRant: It should have been different..pt2

The purpose of this 'iRantiMoan' blog, was to provide a means by which I could vent my grievances about things in the world that irk me. I trust most may come to that conclusion based on the name of this blog, or upon reading the intro or something...right?

I guess that is what makes this next posting kinda strange... its less of a 'rant' and more of an observation.

Right, firstly let me apologise to YOU the reader, I'm gathering if you live in the UK and haven't been in a coma or some crazy drug induced stoop-er for the last 2 months, you'd have heard about the 'London riots/uprising/looting/criminality'. Unfortunately for YOU, this 'observation' is about that I'm afraid (though I do suspect it'll turn into a rant too).

So...amidst all this media frenzy, political spin, purposeful mis-information, racial profiling, shifting and appointing of blame and selective degrees of repair action by demographic. I came to notice a few patterns, these patterns were both active and passive, but more than anything 'interesting'.

I guess the easiest way for me the break down these observations will be for me to isolate and catergorise the active members of the action of the last few days. I will do so as follows:

Destruction and theft squad

Rioters - Individuals that threw projectiles towards authority figures, kicked in shop fronts and set fire to things.

Looters - Individuals that only destroyed businesses they had the intention of 'destocking'

Opportunists - Individuals that were neither 'Rioters' nor 'Looters' but just so happened to be walking by 30mins after all the 'action' had moved to another area and felt it harmless to relieve establishments of some stock. (I know what you are thinking, but I see a slight difference between them and the 'Looters'.)

The Media

The reporters - Mainly news reporters, the ones who were supposed to be impartially handing out the facts as they unfold.

The Specialists/Experts - Individuals who are consultants to governments on civil unrest, hostage negotiations, psychology and policing.

To your surprise I'm going to leave the politicians out of this, not because they aren't involved, but more because I really don't think they have done or said anything that wasn't expected.

Observing the roles:

Rioters; if we were to look at the assembly of these people and liken them to that of an army formation, the rioters would be considered the 'front line'.
These are the soldiers sent in to:
a) catch the enemy by surprise,
b) assess the ability of the enemy,
c) soften up the enemy defences.

Due to the strategic lack of action from the police, part c) wasn't ever really required. a) definitely worked and b)was deduced as the 'enemy' (this case the authorities from a rioters view point) didn't really retaliate and so by default they displayed no ability or action or....you know what I mean.

I guess, the most interesting thing about the action of the 'Rioters' was the damaging and destroying of their own local neighbourhood.

Now, everybody has their view on this and most agree that it makes little or no sense...I too went down this road initially, then found solace in the fact that I consider wearing your jeans low enough to display your underwear as a nonsensical act, but its been widely accepted as 'fashion'. With that being said, sense and logic have little opportunity to reign on this part of the subject.

I too know frustration, all types, for a number of reasons. I too, feel frustrated about the way the country is run and the distribution of wealth among the population and all that fine jazz, but to torch your own neighbourhood, your neighbours who are not necessarily doing any better than you are, i̶s̶ ̶f̶o̶o̶l̶h̶a̶r̶d̶y̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶..... no in fact its fucking crazy, let me be honest!

Although that is on the surface...if for example, you smashed up your own neighbourhood in a fit of rage and frustration, but then proceeded to neighbourhoods that didn't resemble your own economically, that is a different scenario altogether. (Simple Simon does NOT condone Rioting, rioters, or destruction of private property).

Last thing on the rioters, I don't think the burning of private properties (houses) was intentional, I think that was a matter of poor thinking, as most of the residences affected were above retail establishments.

The Looters; back to army strategy...these individuals represent a 'disabling' force, normally used to survey the ground that the 'frontline' (rioters) have gained and remove all usable supplies...in this case retail stock. Now the looters didn't necessarily cause as much damage as the rioters in terms of destruction, but they did however, in terms of collateral damage...Nike anyone?

Saying "Nike", does bring me on to my observation about the looters, they seemed to hit the same shops in each and every town (JD, Comet, Currys, Pc World, Argos, Santander, HSBC). I believe a news reporter raised this question and was quickly hushed with the notion that it was 'kids, displaying a demand for what kids desire, fashion and technology'. Now off the cuff, that explanation satisfied my brain for a moment or two, but then I couldn't understand why these same 'kids' were also smashing up HSBC's and Santanders but NOT trying to steal any money out of them?

With noticing the pattern of stores that were 'hit' I decided to try and find out who owned these stores. I did this because the student riots a few months back, saw certain brand names being specifically targeted because they (or their business group) didn't pay corporation taxes in the UK

Upon looking, I couldn't find anything to say they didn't pay tax....so maybe it was people stealing what is popular?

Opportunists; now these unfortunate bunch could be seen as the victims of the unrest that made the best of a bad situation. These were literally people who were going about their normal way and just so happened to be passing shops that had their inventory sprawled out on the pavement and they just so happened to pick up 'something' they wanted/needed...no harm done right, insurance will cover it? That is the plight of the 'opportunist'.

Reporters; I'm disappointed with these individuals with regards to their reporting of the whole event. Sometimes I'm naive, naive enough to believe that reporters actually report things impartially, unbiased and without an agenda, but in reality the news reporter is just a pawn in a corporation and so the similarities between their reports shouldn't have been surprising...

In typical media fashion, each crisis is somehow homogeneously linked with a 'new' term/catch phrase. Of course there really isn't a link between the elements that are combined, but with constant strategic rhetoric a sleeping audience will soon find a synergy between the elements and so form a homogeneity. An example of this was that all too over used term 'Terrorist'.

Thanks to an unwavering constant blasting of the term 'Terrorist' in relation or conjunction with people from the middle east, the average Joe, has created a homogeneous relationship between 'Terrorism' and the population of the middle east and or Muslims in general. As I said before, there isn't anything 'homogenous' about the relationship between the two elements.

This same tactic was used with the London riots... The 'new' term used for this incident was 'Criminality'. Now, I like the English language, well I like it enough to be interested in words and their meanings, but when I heard the term 'Criminality' I really struggled to acknowledge it as a 'proper' word. It almost sounded like a construct developed purely to coin the incident occurring. After looking the word up in the book of diction, I found it to indeed be a genuine term

Criminality

1. the state of being criminal.

2. a criminal act or practice.

Use of this generic term allows the user to be able to address a group of people without getting into the specifics of 'who' those people are or what they represent. This, I feel, was of value to the media as the participants of the rioting and looting were NOT of one ethnicity. In fact they were not of one ethnicity in particular, it was truly a mixed bag of faces and genders who participated in the acts. Despite boroughs such as Harringey, Hackney and Brixton being notorious for being predominantly Afro-Caribbean in population, the pictures on the news represented all nations, a rioting 'UN' if you will.

In addition to 'criminality' there was another term banded about and that was 'Youth riots'....yet again another attempt by the media to single out a portion of the public in the process of assigning blame. The media failed here, the participants were NOT all of the same age group, in fact there were reports of parents and children looting/rioting side by side.

I guess my biggest disappointment came when Clapham Junction and Eailing came under attack. The level of shock displayed by the media, made me realise that although its not often addressed, there is a two or three tier social system at work in the UK. When the Tottenham incident broke out, reporters were shocked by the damage being done and the rate of escalation of the incident, but I got the impression the location wasn't a surprise. Now given the events that proceeded the unrest I can understand that. When Hackney broke out, the same response as Tottenham was repeated, again same in Brixton. The only time the reporters seems to be shocked about where it was happening was when news of unrest in Clapham and Eailing was made public. It was almost as if those two boroughs weren't in London, or were possibly above such events....almost as if 'people' don't live there.

All of a sudden MP's/PM's who weren't cutting short their vacations (I agree with them on that by the way) were all of a sudden cutting short their vacations with news of Clapham and Eailing being the 'new' rioting zones. It could of course have been coincidental, even if Clapham and Eailing just so happen to be Conservative strong holds....I'm just saying...


Specialists/experts; this group of intelligent people did me proud. Of all the interviews I saw with regard to the unrest, these individuals were the only ones who were broad of mind enough to see that this was not an isolated issue, subject to a few members of society. They were the only group of people that acknowledged the systemic marginalization of whole sections of society. The same individuals were smart enough to acknowledge the issues go far beyond race now...as this event cannot be seen as a race specific incident.

They also acknowledged that its not even entirely a wealth specific incident as 'Leafy Eailing' and Clapham proved.

Unsurprisingly these intelligent people didn't feature on the news too many times...not much in the way of constant repeat of their interviews either...in fact if you want to hear a professionals take on what occurred in London, you have to look on YouTube. I guess the public is supposed to remain aloof of whats really going on....?


What did I gather from the whole thing?

I thought long and hard about the events, about the causes, about the mentality of the people involved. About the events around the world that were/are similar and although I didn't come to a firm conclusion, here are my findings:

1. Lack of direction - If one were to look at the other events....in fact don't. Lets just look at this for what actually happened. Outside of the unrest in Tottenham, which was directly linked to a police murder and the physical assault of a 16yr old girl, a spectator would be hard pressed to positively identify what the riots were actually about. I'd go as far as to say, that some of the rioters themselves couldn't articulate whatever compulsion had them behaving the way they did. For me this is an issue because it means you are failing to express yourself in a fashion that others can understand. Yes we get that there is an element of frustration about you, but over what?

2. Lack of police action - Probably the most telling of the events. The police have played a very intelligent game with the handling of the riot situations. It would be extremely silly to suggest that the officers couldn't deal with the riot situation. Simply because we've just recently had the student riots, in which the police killed someone else (sorry if that came across as a dig). There are a number of anti-riot techniques that could/should have been deployed.

Contrast this lack of action with the political situation of financial cuts to the police force and you can start to see that maybe....just maybe someone is trying to force the hand of someone else. In this game of chess the public take the position of the pawns!

3. Pseudo-unity - This subject prompted a long debate amongst me my kin and in the end I had to concede that what I was terming as 'Unity' was in fact a pseudo-unity. You know the kind that allows the term 'United Kingdom' to have any relevance in the world today. I considered the inter-gang, inter-postcode 'ceasefire' to be a sign of unity and in many ways it was, but it was pointed out to me that once the rioting was over, the relationship between rival gangs would soon deteriorate back to former standing. A common enemy too mighty for one party, will see the weaker parties combine to extinguish the powerful enemy, without any fore sight and without the common enemy, there really isn't a huge need for peace or unity.

4. Impartiality is a rare necessity- Among all the 'social commentators' political correspondents and generally 'important' people...there were very few impartial opinions aired. It seems as if objectivity had become a concept for the archives. Of all the news that I watched I can count on two hands, the number of people who spoke from the point of view of what happened, leaving out all salt, pepper and additional seasonings. One person in particular was a negotiator and rioting strategy expert.

He was the only person that didn't get into colour or socioeconomic profiling, he literally just said that there is due frustration among the general population and he wasn't surprised it was happening, in fact the only thing that did surprise him was the scale of disruption, in his opinion he was expecting it to be bigger. He even eluded to the fact that it won't be the last time either.

Everybody else was too per-occupied with who was to blame. Normally that would be OK as you can then assess the causes of the problem and prevent them from happening again. Unfortunately the reason for finding who is to blame on this occasion, was so that people could be identified and then thrown in jail...cos that fixes the problem...NOT!

iRant, even when I try my hardest not to...


!!!Update!!!

This post has been written over a number of weeks [Yes its a little lazy] and this last bit has just been added.

I have respect of historians, right up until the point they make stupid generalisations like this - Dave Starkey interview

iRant: This language I love

I'm proud of the fact that I've stayed away from this rant for so long, simply because it is without a doubt the most f'ing annoying subject in my life at any one time. Every reminder, launches me into a fury that is perfectly replicated every. Single. Time.

I can't help it, I know it seems strange to be able to positively identify a flaw but then continue to perfectly replicate it time and time again, in fact you'd be forgiven for considering it 'retarded' because in short...it is. Fortunately I'm not asking for your understanding...I'd just like you to hear me out.


Let there be no misunderstanding here, I'm not suggesting this rant is in anyway exclusive, its not a new line of thought or in any way a break through. I'm sure it has been acknowledged before... For you to fully see where I'm coming from with this rant I'll need you to take a journey with me...back to my school days!

-Back Ground-

Simple Simon is simple, has always been, however Simple Simon...tries very hard to analyse the details because he knows he's 'simple'. Due to this attention to details I was decent at school, not overly studious (short attention span) but when I put my mind to it, I produced results.



-Scene 1 act 1-
Setting - Secondary school, Set 2 English class Yr 10 (tenth grade). Simple Simon sits at the back of the class.

Teacher: "Class, today we are not going to read from any books, or reconstruct any poems or text. I thought we'll have an improv day...I'll start on a subject area and we'll see where we end up.

Class: "Yeeeeeessss!" [begin to get a little rowdy]

Teacher: "OK class calm down, lets start with this, a quick fire spelling test, I'll call a person and tell them to spell a word. It will be easy words, no pressure its just for fun." "Martin spell 'Castor'"

Martin stands up and says "C.A.S.T.O.R"

Teacher: "Very good" "Spencer spell 'Spill'"

Spencer stands up and says "S.P.I.L.L"

Teacher: "Excellent! Simon spell 'Knife'"

Now before I continue I have to let you know, that I did it on purpose. [Right continue]

I stand up and say "N.I.F.E", everyone in the class goes quiet and there is one child in the middle row who can't help but laugh out loud. The teacher quickly says

Teacher: "Ruben stop laughing, its an easy mistake to make. Simon, you have made a mistake, care to try the word again?"

I said "Sure Miss, N.I.F.E. I didn't spell the word incorrectly thats how its supposed to be spelt."

Teacher: "Now now Simon, you know the word is K.N.I.F.E, there is a silent 'K'"

She should never had said that!

Simon: "Miss about this silent 'K' what is the point in it, if its silent why bother putting it into the spelling, I mean imagine how many people have spelt a word correctly only to be told its incorrect because of some silent letter that has no presence in the verbal morality, I mean its not as if we spell each word we utter... so whats the point?"

Now as you can imagine the teacher is stunned, that kid that thought my spelling was funny is now silenced and the classroom has now turned into my army...

Teacher: "Simon, just because something does not announce its presence or stand out so you take heed of it, does not mean it does not exist or you shouldn't respect it. Take gravity or air for example, you've never seen either of those before, yet you respect their existence"

Can anyone say "Power Shift!". My army all turned and looked to see what comeback I would issue to such an eloquent display of reasoning. I won't put up a front she would have won many battles with that one submission, but she made a fatal mistake...she brought Science to an English lesson and Science is about the details ... what is Simple Simon good with?

So I say: "Miss, you make a very valid point with regards to 'something' not having to announce its presence in order to be respected or acknowledged and on that point I concede, however, gravity and air have very discrete ways of letting you know when they are 'not' present, namely you float up without gravity and you can't breath without air. So in a funny way if your on the ground and your breathing, they have both respectively announced their presence... This is where the silent letter fiasco falls flat on its face, because there is no rhyme, reason or rule for when a silent letter is to be utilised. I mean, I could literally say my name is to be spelt P.s.y.m.o.n and every time you spell it S.i.m.o.n I would be well within my rights to tell you your wrong...it just doesn't make any sense. Whats worst Miss, is we have always been taught that if a word is difficult to spell we should try to spell it phonetically, the word 'Phonetic' is a rouse in itself because my immediate attempt at spelling it would be F.O.N.E.T.I.C. How do we know that we shouldn't use phonetics for words with silent letters, better still how are we supposed to know a word has a silent letter if its silent? Miss, way back in history I'm sure the spoken word came before the written, so it stands to reason that words written would have been phonetically identical to the spoken version, so where or when did the inclusion of all this silent letter mockery occur?"

Remember that power shift I mentioned earlier? Completely neutralised.

The rest of the class looked to the teacher for answers she could not provide. About a week later I was moved to Set 1 English...I'm not quite sure why...

Looking back on that episode and knowing what I know now (I actually know some teachers) I must have been a difficult pupil. I say that because teachers teach a syllabus and the syllabus is often f@&%rey, the teachers have little to do with the origin of the content, they are just the masters of the delivery, much like Milli Vanilli in the late 80's/90's.

So fast forward a couple decades and we now have a boundless dictionary, some smart alec tried to claim we had over a 1million words to the English language back in June 2009. The response to the claim was mixed and it wasn't decided either way, although I take comfort in the following quote

The Vocabulary of a widely diffused and highly cultivated living language is not a fixed quantity circumscribed by definite limits... there is absolutely no defining line in any direction: the circle of the English language has a well-defined centre but no discernible circumference.

Now in plain English, the above quote just means, 'We know where English started, but it has no perceived end'. This is both an interesting and dangerous concept (the danger only comes for the connoisseurs of language). Languages outside of English were bounded, that is, they had a finite number of words that made up their diction. This has its advantages and disadvantages in my opinion.

Advantages

1. The language would potentially be less open to extremely broad interpretations (written)
2. Words could possibly be more meaningful....?
3. There is a high probability that the mockery that is the 'silent' letter would not exist.


Disadvantages

1. Language could be less expressive
2. Concepts explored by the use of extensive vocab could be less likely [not sure about this one]
3. We could lose amusing institutions such as sarcasm

Whether good or bad, there is one thing that is definitely true and that is, the growth of the English language has forced the grow of others. In some cases its been a brute force attack, example:

Words/vehicles such as Car and Aeroplane have only been in wide circulation in the last 100 years. At introduction they would have been available to a select few, but gradually over time and as they became more affordable they were pushed to the masses.

So take your mind to a small village in Africa, the villagers have seen these Aeroplanes flying overhead, they've never been in one, they have never seen one up close, but they guess it must have someone controlling it. They have no real name for it, because generally speaking 'transport' is a finite term that is proceeded by a type e.g air transport, land transport, sea transport. For the African language in question this is not an issue, after all, its transport that is in the air on the ground or on the sea. However these terms will not satisfy English, simply because:

Hot air balloons
Blimps
Aeroplanes
Helicopters
Fighter Jets

are all modes of air transport but have very different methods of completing the same task ('ish' work with me here).

Anyway, as time progresses and the reality of the plane that used to fly over the village comes closer to home (relatives coming from far on planes), the language could quite possibly need to include the new terms above, the problem is, there are no literal translations for the terms and so they get added to the language as is..and hence the language of the village/nation has grown by 5 'new' types of air transport. Multiply this by every 'new' invention made and you potentially have a language littered with words that have no real place/meaning in the language they are being used in. Face it, air transport is air transport, its literally transport that travels in the air, the intricacies are not necessary (IMO).

The danger with this is, English is becoming a widely spoken language worldwide and with this, increasing numbers of youth are not learning their mother tongue or are not learning it properly. Thus bringing about the death of languages, that is not that the language doesn't exist anymore, but the number of fluent speakers is dwindling...


And so to come full circle, why the heck do we have silent letters in words!?! My simple brain cannot justify it....aaarrrrgggggghhhh it annoys me so much, if I had it my way:

Knife = Nife
Cycle = Si-kul
Psycho = Si-co
Elephant = Elefant
xylophone = Zi-lofone

Done...simple.


As if the silent letter saga wasn't enough you also have words that sound the same but are spelt differently:

Might, mite.
Light, lite.
Weight, wait.
Waste, waist.

How are you to know which is right and when? (Imagine you were new to the language)

Oh this language I love...

1. iRant: HotDog Vs Hot Dog Roll

OK...so I know this is probably the least important thing on your mind at any one time, but I have to say it's one of those minute annoyances that is gaged just right to hack me off, but not enough for a full on public outburst. Like I said, I know there are more pressing issues that are even more annoying like Bankers bonuses or Bogus Save Our Planet commercials or the fact that Pork seems to be in everything these days. But the ratio of Hot Dog Rolls to Hot Dogs is seriously messed up!

*Lets do the math*

The minimum number of hot dogs one can buy is 6 in a pack, but you can buy hot dogs (sausages) in any of the following combinations 6,8,10,12...which is great!
The crap part comes when analyzing the natural partner of the sausage; the hot dog roll. These are strangely sold in the following multiples 6.... and here in lies the problem, if you buy an 8 pack of hot dogs, your always gonna have 2 extras sausages, if you buy a 10pack, 4 ...you get the drift. So am I right in thinking if I choose to buy an 8 or 10 pack of sausages so the children in my house can ALL have hot dogs I have to buy more bread than is actually going to be used? Essentially throwing away 2 healthy hot dog rolls? Now where is the sense in that....just pisses me off.

(Yes I know you can eat the rolls with something else....but work with me here)

Maybe I have issues......

1.3 iRant: Pork seems to be in everything

What led to this point...




Ok...so I don't eat pork (I'm steadily noticing every single post is starting with "Ok...so"...i'm just sayin') if people want to 'dine on the swine' I have not one issue with it...really I don't. Dine to your delight, fill your chuffers with the split huffed meat, it bothers me none, thats your choice.

Therein lies the bloody problem though, pork as an ingredient is becoming less and less of a choice and more and more of a default option. "Pork with your cream crackers sir".

Gone are the days when you actually have to specifically ask for pork, now you get it in sweets, other meats, in preservatives...in dam near everything.

I once ordered a Tuna steak, the description on the menu tantilised my palette and opened up my appetite almost immediately. It came, looking absolutely scrumptious...upon closer inspection, the Tuna steak was garnished with some diced cubes lightly fried and very pink! No surprises then that I didn't eat it, but I did naively question the waitress

Me: "Erm excuse me, what are these pink cubes so liberally scattered all over this plate?"


Waitress: "That is the 'Chorizo' sir"

Me: "I'm sorry what is Chorizo by its nature I'm not familiar with it, is it a herb or a meat"

Waitress: "Its Pork sir"

Now initially I wanted to flip out and ask the most sensible question (to me) which was 'Why the hell would you garnish a Tuna steak with PORK!', but then some very quick mental arithmetic saw me admit to myself that not knowing what 'Chorizo' was, could be construed as naive. Equally however, if you don't eat something why would you know what it is...opposite to that, if you don't eat something then maybe you should know all possible combinations of that thing so as to actively avoid it...shit I'm on a winning losing streak with this one.

Anyway, whilst this mental tennis was talking place, the waitress tentatively waited for what I would say next. I simply asked her to take it back as I didn't want it, she did the usual "Whats wrong with it sir, can I get you something different?" but by this time my desire to eat had wained so badly that even the thought of chewing upset me. I simply watched my dining partner chomp away and waited to order a dessert (apple crumble with Ice Cream NOT Custard).

The scary thing is this 'Pork pollution' has also breached religions lines. There was a report in the UK about major suppliers of Halal chicken, who were inadvertently selling chicken meat that contained a protein supplement that also contained both pork and beef DNA! You may ask "why would you need a protein supplement for chicken meat?" I know I did and the answer left me a little disheartened.

The outfit that supply the chicken meat to the suppliers who then supply the restaurants, pump the chicken with water to increase its weight and thus profit. The best way to have the chicken retain this water is to also pump it full of protein, the proteins come in a number of chemical compounds some of which are vegetable based. However pork and beef based compounds are the cheapest... so no more guessing why they do it...?

This just leaves me asking "Why?"

Watch this and make your own mind up:




I think its worth a rant...