Having it large with Nigel Farage

i.

I had a dream about Nigel Farage last night. Essentially what happened, minus details, was that I went to a party at his place and, after initial hostility, unbent to his view that he really wasn't that bad once you got to know him; the dream ended with him holding me tenderly against him in a paternal hug. Before any low-minded types start jumping to conclusions, I'd like to say that the hug was entirely chaste, with only, at most, a vestigial erotic frisson. I woke up with some lingering warm feelings towards him, but cured them by looking at his photograph.

This dream was not (as the low-minded might say) related to the state of my psyche. It was about you, England. It was about the reasons we may sink into Farage's embrace. To the sensitive dreamer, watching Newsnight is like eating a piece of bad cheese, and I was probably influenced by a particular vox-poppin' fresh who had been featured the previous night, saying that he voted Ukip because they 'answered his questions' in a way that no other political party did.

Of course, the thing about Ukip is that they don't really answer anyone's questions, they just point away from them - literally away: Farage's answer to all our questions about welfare, unemployment and poverty is 'foreigners', and his answer to most other questions is 'beer'. The recent success of Ukip could be put down to them tapping into deep anxieties, but in both their media image and their policies it seems that what they primarily address is our need not to think about our problems. Window posters for the local elections said 'I'm voting Ukip. No more leaflets, thank you'. They are a party you vote for to express embattled impatience with everything. Every time I look at a Ukip manifesto I age ten thousand years, but in abstract the party's vibe is pretty tempting to those of us who basically hate everything and don't want to think.

ii.

If the theme of this post is 'Not Thinking', rather than 'Fantasy Liaisons with Reactionaries', then I can manage a tenuous link to a vegetarian issue. The recent heavily-processed kerfuffle over halal meat being served in the country's two most hallowed institutions - Nando's* and Oxford University - was, as many have pointed out, not about animal rights. There would never have been a big scandal if a secular abattoir was neglecting to stun animals before slaughter - it's the fact that Muslims did it that really freaks people out. This outbreak of halal horror is tied up with the Trojan-horse idea that the UK is going to be taken over from the inside by something that is not itself (even though the place has never been culturally homogeneous, but whatever).

The point I'm gradually getting to is that two things that have been pointed to as consequences of foreign invasions - unemployment (one of Ukip's focal points) and and cruelty to animals - are fostered by long-standing structural faults and iniquities in British society. You could say that these issues are being used as a smokescreen for xenophobia and racism, but it's also true to say that xenophobia itself acts as a distraction from whatever's rotten in the UK. 

There is no self-contained safe place to scuttle back to, and if we feel threatened by outside influences we should look at ourselves and see what kind of utopia would be left if we created some kitsch fantastical hermetically-sealed Middle England. But, as Nigel came to me and told me in a dream, it's easier to go around sticking pitchforks into straw men.

*ok, it's South-African

Fish Fight: a bit of a cop-out.

Hugh's Fish Fight: The Battle Continues surprised me with Mr Fearnley-Whittingstall's transformation from foodie Etonian pig-in-a-wig to smiley-but-slightly-drawn campaigner for marine conservation.

In a nutshell, Hugh is succesfully drumming up interest in reforming the EU's Common Fisheries Policy. As it stands, the CFP's quota-based system of controlling how many and what kind of fish a fisher can legally bring in to land results in a lot of fish, dead or half-dead, being chucked back into the sea after having been caught. A hideous waste of life, or, as Hugh puts it, of 'lovely edible fish.'

My impression throughout the programme was that Mr F-W is less concerned by the serious ecological consequences of over-fishing (which is destroying habitats, destabilizing and contaminating eco-systems and endangering species) than by the idea that some of the plundered sea-creatures will fail to end up on his plate. Hugh's attitude to most living creatures is a meal-minded form of compassion which is alright in its way, but falls short of a real respect for life (eating a pig is not respecting it, Hugh) and of realistic sustainability: you cannot feed the world from a high-minded smallholding, nor does Fish Fight strike at the heart of the overfishing problem.

Fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki has expressed support for Hugh's anti-wasting campaign; she has also said, 'We are not going to fish less because of this ban on discarding.' That is good news for fishermen but does not acknowledge the fact that we're going to have to fish less - a lot less - given that the world is predicted to run out of wild-caught seafood by 2048.

Fish Fight highlights an important issue and has achieved some good things: it was a driving force behind the reformation of the CFP, the new version of which should be put into action from 2013. Nevertheless, it never properly acknowledged the importance of not eating fish, and it has been shown that while it has boosted the sales of 'unpopular' fish it has not dented the overconsumption of endangered ones.

Besides, anything touched by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is bound to carry the taint of food-snobbery: that smug whinging over having to be seen holding a Tesco bag; that cringing conversation with fellow organic-fetishist Prince Charles where Charles was appalled to learn that cod is still the public's favourite fish: "They can't get off it!" Shame on you, you nation of plebby cod-heads! Haven't you heard of Hugh's Mackerel Mission?

The fact is that producing meat  and fish ethically, sustainably, cheaply and plentifully isn't an option. Not until they start selling stem-cell meat, that is. But I can guarantee that the organic brigade will be out waving their pitchforks at the first mention of that.

AgriCullture

Very good article in the Guardian today, which describes the badger vaccination programme being deployed in Gloucester over the next five years. As well as starting with a thrilling mini-adventure about a badger called 007 (lured into a cage with peanuts, hence the cartoon) the  article discusses the pros and cons of using vaccination to deal with bovine TB, instead  of culling. On the one hand, it is humane and doesn't cause perturbation, which is a major drawback with the culling method. On the other, vaccination will not result in immediately dramatic improvements in TB hotspots (it's a vaccination, not a cure: there will still be infected badgers) and it is prohibitively expensive.

The coalition government is characteristically uninterested in planning for long-term solutions when it can butcher budgets: five vaccination schemes were cancelled in 2010 on cost grounds, though one potential contractor claimed that estimated costs were inflated by 'red tape and bureaucracy.'

The thing to remember is that bTB is a disease that badgers caught from cows, and cows (or rather, the farming industry) are the reason that we all have to fuss about badgers being poorly in the wilderness. The obvious solution, and one that is much more practicable than taking potshots at a protected, wild, nocturnal animal, is to vaccinate the cows.

Bureaucracy really is the villain here: cows that have been vaccinated against TB may have a positive reaction to the tuberculin skin test, which the EU uses to identify infected livestock. I can identify with this experience - when I was at school I wasn't given the BCG vaccine because when they gave me the skin test I  came up with a rash like a plate of salami. It meant that I was already immune. Because they get these reactions, immunised cows cannot be declared TB-free, according to EU law, and cannot be exported. It's all pretty stupid.

I am in favour of vaccination programmes like the one in Gloucester. I am even more in favour of developing an oral vaccine. But for the speedy easing of a crisis that can cost farmers up to £3.5 k a month, and has demanded hundreds of millions from the taxpayer over the last ten years, changing the EU testing method so that it can distinguish immunity from infection, thus enabling the vaccination of cows, is by a long way the most sensible solution.

Theatre of Blood

Readers who, like me, keep a keen eye on those goofy animal stories halfway down the Daily Mail homepage (stoner chihuahuas, anyone? Chocoholic fish?) will have noticed that bullfighting in Spain is to be 'developed and protected' in the face of well-publicised movements to institute a ban.

A statement made by the Ministry of Culture, which described corrida de toros as 'an artistic discipline and cultural product' reinforces the bloodsport's status as a symbol of Spanish nationalism, and comes as a direct response to last year's banning of bullfights in Catalonia.

The Catalan campaign against bullfighting was itself interpreted as a defiant reaction to the striking down of Catalonia's statute of autonomy in July 2010. The campaign - to extend animal protection laws to include the bulls and horses that are (ab)used in bullfights - was called Prou! - 'Enough!' in Catalan. The language issue highlights the political tensions between Spain and its autonomous communities: public use of Catalan was repressed under Franco and although its usage has been restored and encouraged since 1975 it is still a language that asserts difference from the Spanish mainstream.

Historically bullfighting is no less Catalan than it is Spanish, but corrida in the twenty-first century is posited as a kind of blood-soaked national anthem, and marketed as a tourist industry. Despite its cultural status, it does not necessarily mean much to ordinary citizens: most spectators of bullfights in Madrid are tourists, while in 2010 more than 60,000 inhabitants of Madrid signed a petition calling for a vote on banning them. The regional government's response was to declare the corrida protected as a part of Madrid's cultural heritage.

As is often the case, what should be a question about fundamental animal rights has been overshadowed by different political and emotional issues, in this case disputes about regional autonomy and national identity. Ideally EU animal protection laws would be stringent and comprehensive enough to protect all animals under its jurisdiction; the right to life should not be subject to cultural relativism. It is disgraceful that a tradition that involves the torture and slaughter of goaded and frightened animals can still be defended and even praised as an 'artistic discipline and cultural product.'

A country can embrace its history of warfaring, imperialism, slavery or head-shrinking, as the case may be - the  past should not be forgotten or censored, good or bad. The continued development and protection of a practice that is clearly in breach of internationally accepted standards of animal welfare cannot be justified or, I hope, sustained.