Archive for May, 2011

The May meeting of the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire was a talk by a representative from the animal rights group Uncaged on the subject of animal experimentation. Unfortunately the speaker didn’t actually show up, but we had a fantastic debate on the subject anyway, with opinions being very much divided.

I’m not sure what side of the line I fall, though on the strength of the arguments I think Gijsbert delivered a powerful argument in favour of animal experimentation. It could have been different if someone as eloquent had been there to argue against it, unfortunately most of the arguments but forward by that side were just rubbish.

The biggest problem was that the anti-animal experimentation side used an endless amount of bad arguments and logical fallacies, of which Gijsbert quickly called them on. These included:

• The slippery slope argument and constantly envoking Godwin’s Law.
• Claims that we shouldn’t care if humans die, “so what,” which is fine, but you then can’t argue that we should care about animals. If you say it’s just natural for humans to die, you can also argue that it’s natural for one species to use another for it’s own ends.
• Some people abuse animals and do horrible things to them, so all animal experimentation is bad. It’s true that some animals are treated horrifically, but of course, it doesn’t follow that this makes all animal treatment inherently bad.
• “We’re against ALL animal experimentation. Except humans.”
• Uninformed opinions about the regulations surrounding the issues.
• “You shouldn’t take into consideration how intelligent an animal is. Pain is pain, no matter how intelligent a creature is. Except for insects, it’s fine to kill them.”
• “I saw this on a video many years ago.”
• “If you carry out Kosher slaughter correctly the animal feels no pain, whereas if you don’t pre-stun the animal correctly it suffers horribly.”

There are some great arguments against animal experimentation and it’s a shame that certain voices making comments such as those above, drowned out the few logical arguments that were put forward against animal experimentation.

Last week we headed over to Elbow Room to shoot some pool.

It’s a great place to play as they have plenty of room (as Norm pointed out – the name is probably derived from the fact you have enough elbow room to play) though they are American pool tables which means the pockets are massive and so the chance of you potting the white quickly becomes more of a when than an if, even if you put some thought into it.

In the end myself, Norm and George all came out three wins to two defeats, most of which were won or lost on the white following the black into the pocket lol. Fonze played well also, beating George in the last game, though he did have the advantage that he wasn’t drinking.

At Atheist Society last week, they screened a Dan Dennett lecture given at Conway Hall. During the talk he made some excellent points including a new quote to go on my favourite quotes list: fairies are invisible – so how come everyone knows what they look like?

In the lecture he also answers the question often asked – if religion was just total rubbish, why is it still around? Surely it must be good for something? Dennett’s response was to give an analogy – think of the common cold. What is it good for? It’s good for itself. Similarly, what keeps religion alive is not because it’s good for society, or humanity – it’s just good at keeping itself around.

I headed up to York last week to the North Yorkshire Humanist Group’s meeting as they had a talk on the role of faith based representatives in nursing. The talk was interesting and proved some great debate afterward. It’s interesting to see the variance of opinions on the subject, though most humanists seem overall in favour of the idea of humanist chaplaincy.

After the meeting we headed to a local pub which got a very impressive attendance – probably over 50% of people who went to the meeting joined us at the pub, a retention rate which I’m sure West Yorkshire would love to emulate.

Earlier this year, when Oli and Jess got together, Norm made a start on the usual paperwork for a possible new application to The Circle. This resulted in us having to schedule a house party for some induction training – it’s a hard life, but you just have to get on and do it I guess.

While unfortunately neither Oli nor Jess actually made it to the party, it was a great night none the less with the party raging until around 4am and a strange hour in which everyone decided to try and pick everyone else up.

Indeed, the night ended up so heavy that Norm was unable to eat his recovery steak at the next day and I just collapsed out in front of the TV for most of the afternoon.

Myself and Norm recently headed over to Manchester to see Uncaged Monkeys – a popular science stage show based on the radio show Infinite Monkey Cage. The show featured Brian Cox, Ben Goldacre, Simon Singh, Matt Parker and a host of other sceptical faces, all anchored by the always entertaining Robin Ince.

Not only was the show entertaining, but it was also great to go to a gig where we actually felt far younger than the average audience member, rather than far older (such as here or here for example).

Earlier this month, the Atheist Society held it’s 2011 AGM. This was an important event, as it marked the end of my involvement with the group. This year has very much been consultative anyway, as fresh blood takes over, and it’s great to see the society is returning to its great shape.

This December will mark five years since the society was founded, though it seems like forever ago that we were first starting things up. As such, I would like to say a big thank you to everyone who helped make the society what it is.

Without a doubt Norm is due the biggest amount of credit, having signed up on day one and being easily the most influential person also to be involved in the society. I would also like to say a big thank you to Matt and Claire for helping the society to get started and Nicola and Paul for their tireless work over the years. And of course, all of those who have served on the committee and helped out at events have all made valuable contributions which I’m grateful for.

The recent elections saw James, Elettra, Will and Michael form the new committee and I’m sure with such excellent leadership, the society will continue to prosper and grow.

We often joke about Godwin’s law so it’s easy to forget that sometimes, people are actually silly enough to try and use it as a legitimate argument.

A few months ago, 4Thoughts, a series of short commentaries by Channel 4, did a week on religious slaughter, a topic which I wrote about a few days ago. The first of which was by a man named Chanoch Kesselman who literally said, the first thing the Nazi’s did was to ban ritual slaughter, and then they killed six million Jews. You can watch the video here.

In total there were seven videos on the subject, though they didn’t prevent a very balanced argument. Only one of the videos was by a non-religious person, the rest were from believers. Two of which were Christians, but you really can’t call what they said being supportive to either side. Only Helen Rossiter made the case that animal welfare considerations might want to play a part in a decision about animal welfare.

A few weeks ago I went into Sainsbury’s, accompanied by my girlfriend Elina, who was there to keep me company as I did some personal shopping. We were throwing a soirée that evening, so included in my long list of food was a bottle of champagne.

I got to the checkout and scanned everything through on the self service checkout. I had to call an attendant over because, as usual, the system went a bit crazy and my bags needed “verifying.” While he was over there I asked him to approve my alcohol purchase.

I’m 24 so on the boarder line of whether you really need to ID me even on a Check 25 policy, but he decided to, to which I quickly produced my driving license clearly showing I was no less than six years past the date in which I was legally allowed to buy alcohol.

That would have all been fine, but Elina, who was hovering behind me, not actually helping me in any way with my personal shopping, was then asked to produce ID. She didn’t have any. As such, I was declined the sale of the alcohol.

Now, I don’t mind carrying round ID, even though for me to be under age you would have to believe that I looked seven years younger than I actually am. While that’s quite a nice complement, there is no way any rational human being would look at me when playing guess the age, and think “that man is probably about 17.” Not least of all because people who are under 18 and are trying to get hold of some alcohol to go drink in a park somewhere don’t buy champagne. But I’ll overlook this, let’s pretend it’s a sensible policy.

When it really does get mental, is when everyone who is with me has to carry ID as well. As it happens, Elina is 23, but what if she wasn’t? What if she was 17? Does that mean that I shouldn’t be allowed to by alcohol with my personal shopping?

I put this to Sainsbury’s customer service team. They gave me a prompt but fairly nondescript reply, going through their policy in vague detail stating that…

If a group of customers go through the checkouts together, all may be asked to provide identification. If any member of the group is unable to provide ID when requested, we will be unable to complete the sale.

…and ending with…

Sometimes it can come across as over-zealous but it’s really important that colleagues don’t risk age-restricted products being used by anyone underage.

This argument, simply doesn’t hold up to scrutiny however. Requiring everyone who goes through the checkout, even if it is just one person actually buying anything, to produce ID in no way limits the sale of alcohol to people underage because as only the person buying something is actually required, everyone else can just wait outside.

I could easily come along with some underage, make them wait outside, go in and buy nothing by alcohol for them, come outside and give it to them and Sainsbury’s would have effectively just sold alcohol to someone who is underage, according to their thinking.

Yet, when I come through making a purchase for myself, clearly as part of my weekly food shop, clearly not for underage drinkers to get drunk because it wasn’t White Lightning or Sainsbury’s Basics Table Wine, I am unable to complete my purchase because, for perfectly understandable reasons, Elina wasn’t carrying an ID (or money, or anything), because she wasn’t buying anything, she was just keeping me company.

In such situations I could of course just ask her to wait outside while I go in and do my shopping. This is probably a valid option if you don’t consider the idea of her coming to keep me company and then spending most of the time waiting outside the store, beyond ridiculous.

But of course this isn’t always an option – take for example a mother who is doing her weekly shop and wants to buy some alcohol. Her kids genuinely are under 18 and she can’t just leave them outside on the street while she completes her shop. To me, this seems like discrimination as their policy is clearly victimising a specific group here.

I asked them what their policy was for such situations in my original email, to which they ignored it, so I pressed them for an answer in my response. This is what they said…

We have to leave the judgement to ask for ID up to our colleagues, as it is them who can be prosecuted and fined for selling alcohol to underage customers. It’s important to note it’s also an offense to sell alcohol in the knowledge it will be passed on to someone underage, which is why we look for ID from the whole party.

If you were shopping with your daughter we would hope that our colleagues would use their judgement, but if they were unsure they would err on the side of caution and ask for ID.

So their policy seems to be that they don’t have a policy, but train their staff to ID people as often as possible, even at the risk at denying perfectly legitimate purchases or discriminating against people with children.

Fair enough (well, not really), that is their policy, but I disagree with it because I think it because I don’t believe that it actually prevents the sale of alcohol to people who intend to give it to underage people but I do believe it unfairly targets legitimate customers and even implies criminal behaviour when they suggest I could be buying alcohol for someone who is underage.

So I asked for the contact details of who I could write to, to express my concerns about the policy. My request was declined.

I’d like to be able to provide you with the contact details you’ve requested, unfortunately, this isn’t possible. The Think 25 policy wasn’t a policy created by one person or a group of people, it’s an initiative that Sainsbury’s as a whole has created and it’s something we all stand by.

As mentioned, this policy is supported by the British government and as such, we feel confident using this system.

So far, I’m not impressed. Supermarkets have a reasonable duty of care, and this seems way past the line of reasonability to me.

On April 10th, I wrote to all my local MEPs, asking them to support legislation in the European parliament which would require all meat to be clearly labelled as to whether it was slaughtered by humane of religious methods.

If you aren’t aware of the background, animals slaughtered in the UK must be done do by first pre-stunning the animal to make it unconscious before you kill it. However, Islamic and Jewish communities have an exemption from this law which allows them to slaughter the animal while still fully conscious by slitting their throat and then leaving them to slowly bleed to death as they thrash around in pain. It’s pretty horrific, which is why the governments advisory board, the Farm Animal Welfare Council, advised the exemption should be removed immediately.

What is worse however, is that many restaurants and shops, including high street supermarkets, often sell Halal meat as regular meat, without any labeling – you could be eating meat from an animal that was unethically slaughtered and not even know it.

While the ultimate solution is to remove this exception, which would be the fair thing to do in our modern secular society – we’re not asking for anything special, just that the law by applied to us all equally without the current discrimination that happens, at the very least it should be a requirement to label meat as having come from religious slaughter, so that those of us with an ethical conscience, can choose to avoid it.

Only three of the MEPs I wrote to responded, here is what they said:

Timothy Kirkhope MEP from the Conservatives told me that his colleague, which sits on the ENVI committee was doing everything possible to support this legislation, stressing that his concern was animal welfare and allowing consumers to make an informed choice.

Godfrey Bloom MEP from UKIP told me that he opposed the legislation because he didn’t support any legislation that came from Europe and therefore detracted from our sovereign power. From what I can work out, it seems UKIP candidates just sit in the European Parliament and cheer at the entire proceedings. Still, that is probably what the electorate want them to do.

Linda McAvan MEP from Labour told me that she supported legislation that required meat to be properly labelled and had voted for this before – but would not be voting on this one because they didn’t feel it was appropriate (nothing to do with it having been proposed by a Conservative of course).

She also said it was important that religious slaughter, while it should be properly labelled, should be allowed to continue. I replied to her on this, challenging the idea of religious privilege over applying the law fairly and consistently to all. She responded, saying that the views of the Muslim and Jewish communities took precedence but also said that while the exemption exists, 80-90% of religiously slaughtered animals were actually pre-stunned.