I've just been flicking through an old copy of Attitude magazine, and come across an interview with Boy George, who suggests:
"How can you be a right wing queer! It's like being a vegetarian butcher!"
What do you think? I ask for two reasons: i) The Tories have an openly gay candidate in Alan Duncan, and had other prospective, (but failed) candidtaes in the last election. So clearly they think it IS possible. ii) A couple of my mum's close friends were butchers all their lives, and came out vegetarian a couple of years ago. Not only that, but they refuse to even cook the vegetables. So they just eat raw fruit and veg.
Can these bizarre combinations be justified? Or are they just a couple of screws loose? Was Boy George right? Or was he just sniping at the right?
Steven. xxx
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CRAP? WHAT D'YA MEAN IT'S CRAP? THERES EIGHT BODIES AT THE END AND HE GETS TO SHAG HIS MUM!!
Boy George generally comes out with sweeping generalisations to make the headlines. The fact that he is queer seems only to be a reason for why he can still produce such crap music all these years on. Vegetarian butchers i would imagine are quite common though - just down the street from where i live we have an abatoir where all the cows and pigs get killed for us to eat and most of the workers here are vegetarian because they think its horrible. Imagine having a whole pig and having to turn it into decorative types of food for a living... i'd imagine you'd feel some kind of affinity. Meanwhile Wendy Copes says....
Kindness to animals
If i were vegetarian and didn't eat lamb for dinner I'd probably be a better person And also thinner
But lambs are not endangered And i can truly truly say That i have never eaten a barn-owl So perhaps i am okay
Not always true tho, I know sum1 back home who's father is loaded n 1 of the main meat suppliers 2 butchers in derbyshire (breeds em, grows em, kills em, sells em)... they have pet lambs that follow em round n r domesticated & absolutley love roast lamb on a sunday
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Nic - Union Council LGBT Assembly Chair
Contact me at - lgbt.assembly@leeds.ac.uk / nicturner_85@hotmail.com
I'm not an expert on whether you can have a vegeterian butcher or not, but the second part of what Boy George said is interesting. It's my view that although the vast majority of LGBT people position themselves on the left or liberal camps for various reasons, I know alot of Bourgeois jet-setters who are definately gay and definately Tory. This is not as odd as it sounds. When we speak of Conservativism, it would be more accurate to speak "Conservativisms". The right, just as much as the left possesses a variety of political positions. A Leftist could be either a generic socialist, a communist, a green, a democratic socialist ect. The Tories as we think of them today have been shaped the legacy of Thatcher and her vision of a society run by the free-market, where there is "no such thing as society", where money and cash-flow is more vital than welfare and where American style dog-eat-dog economics holds sway. The Tories were not always like this. They were once the party of paternalism, looking after little communities, championing rights of individuals, coupled with a repect for tradition and history as a means of slowly changing society.
Although this ideology can be charged with elitism and supporting the status quo; in fairness to my Conservative collegues, this Conservatism of apple pie, mother's cooking, individual rights, respect for traditional mores, looking after your patch, cricket on the village green is not the same as the nasty Thatcherism which our generation connects with Conservative ideology. For a Socialist such a vision is deeply inaffective to deal with social ills, too tiny, too insular but it is not deeply self-destructive, as Thatcherism obviously is. It is this type of Conservatism, of a tradition little Britain which many gay people follow. It is not right, no fair to back sweeping generalisations concerning people's political beliefs based on such a broard bracket as conservatism, socialist or otherwise
I began to realise this fact, when a friend of a friend came to coffee hour, (a traditional Tory boy through and through). He said he felt a bit uncomfortable with the deeply polarised atmosphere of Tory-slaging. Many people who are Tories don't feel comfortable talking about there right-wing views in a coffee hour because they fear a hostile reception from the Guardian-readership of Liberals and Lefties. We need to stop stereotyping and start listening. Sexuality can be political as the Gay Lib Movement of the Left rightly postulated but the nature of that politics does not need to be specified. Although I have no great afilliation with the Conservative way of doing things, especially in regards to the Welfare State, I respect conservative philosophy for what it is, a valid voice of critique within the workings of a stable democracy. It made me (A liberak Socialist) realise personally that I sometimes need to tone down my own rhetoric and start taking note of views which perhaps I do not share, but should respect without prejudice.
P.S- However I'm sorry I'll always dislike the Mail
If someone is a vegetarian because they don't like the taste of meat then there is no reason why they can't be a butcher. It's only a problem if they are a vegetarian for ethical reasons. That is my contribution to the political debate.
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I reserve... I reserve... I have a reservation... I HAVE a reservation.. What do you mean its not in the computer?
Sod ethics! Am currently drinkin cherry "cambodian orphans blood" coke n lovin it. Gonna cry my eyes out when the union turns ethno-ra n fair trade xxx
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Nic - Union Council LGBT Assembly Chair
Contact me at - lgbt.assembly@leeds.ac.uk / nicturner_85@hotmail.com
fairtrade aint communist, they r jus evil dictators pretendin 2b nice n caring, they really jus want us 2 buy their crap instead n make them rich, they go about this by targetin ethno-ra dickheads who've had far 2 many shrooms n think that they can make the world a better place by goin "raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" doin stupid flag dances & voting 4 "ethical" companies to fill the union shelves n aboloish their main competitors & thats all i have 2 say on that really.
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Nic - Union Council LGBT Assembly Chair
Contact me at - lgbt.assembly@leeds.ac.uk / nicturner_85@hotmail.com
anyway, everyone's so fvcking cynical these days, i say we might as well let the ethno-ras try and change the world. everyone has an agenda of some kind and id rather follow theirs than bush's or blair's
me xxx
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Three things that mark the Good Man: Truth, Honour and Love
I think agree with you sash, let the ethno--ras try and change the world. I'd rather the world was more "give peace a chance", hippie **** and all that rather than people not believing that a better kinda world is possible. If that means a bit of tree-hugging, fair-trade and the likes that's cool with me.
The happy commune environment is simply micro-society. It can and does work, primitive cultures observed by anthrapologists have been found to work successfully. Of course in a post-industrial world it's impossible to simply revert and live like Native Americans, (not that many people would now want to), where would be the toilet-role! That is, where I agree with you, it isn't possible now in 2005. Besides, human beings live in too large groups to be sustainable. But the virtues of communal living, people making democratic rulings and carrying them out without representatives or bourocracies; social cohesion, face to face politics, and instant accountability, are things we have to live up too. They should be things we need to keep in mind. The commune is an interesting model when you're considering small-scale politics. Nothing's perfect, but Political localism, a very hippe green party notion, is the best way to proceed these days. Call me a sily middle-class ethno-ra if you want but it makes sense to me.
As for ant-capitalism, I'm not keeen on the way we have to live sometimes, but I'm as guilty as anyone, I'll go down the shop or fast-food outlet. It's just hypocritical to bang on about it and I ain't an anarchist. But maybe the "Make Poverty History" begade have a good point. WE HAVE TO HELP THOSE IN NEED, WE DO NEED TO RESTRUCTURE OUR SOCIETY TO DO IT, WE DO HAVE TO RADICAL TO TACKLE INEQUALITY AND POVERTY. I need to do more and I'm a big hippiecrit for even lecturin anyone on poverty. All I can say is the best that can be hoped for, when you consider human flaws is a progression towards socialist values and looking at ways we can bring communities tgether.
NickyDyke85 wrote: Tree hugging n fairtrade stuff is **** n completely anti-capitalism, its been proven that every one can't live in a happy commune sorta style society
the reason communes don't tend to work on a large scale is because people are corrupt. simple as.
but that doesn't mean it's not a good idea to support fairtrade or have some kind of respect for the natural environment (even if that is manifested in arboreal frottage). it's not anti-capitalist to pay farmers enough for their crops to allow them to survive - it's just common sense.
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alright stop, collaborate and listen,
ice is back with a brand new invention
JesusBitch wrote: WE HAVE TO HELP THOSE IN NEED, WE DO NEED TO RESTRUCTURE OUR SOCIETY TO DO IT, WE DO HAVE TO RADICAL TO TACKLE INEQUALITY AND POVERTY. -- Edited by JesusBitch at 17:28, 2005-06-01
The thing is, though, 'ethno-rahs' do not want to radically restructure their society. It's not about helping people in need, rather, it's about making themselves feel like they've done a world a favour. Just as many hippies from the 1970s, they will patently be the business people and bureaucrats of tomorrow. That might sound cynical, but it's true.
Wearing a stupid plastic wrist band and eating fair trade chocolate doesn't automatically make the world a better place. In fact, people wearing those sodding wrist bands piss me off no end, as they've become a fashion statement in themselves. Part of me wonders whether they're doing it because they really care about the cause, or whether they're doing it because they want everyone else to think they're not a capitalistic middle-class idiot.
JesusBitch wrote: WE DO HAVE TO RADICAL TO TACKLE INEQUALITY AND POVERTY.
i disagree. there's nothing radical about writing off third-world debt. it's that mentality which has moved the neo-cons to um and ah over it for so long, and to continue labelling such a positive prospect as radical will do nothing to convince them otherwise.
if you lent your mate a fiver and he lost his home a week later, would you bang on about it for decades while he walked the streets surviving on handouts from others? that would be radical in a similarly negative sense. to forget it and help him in any way you could would be the moral thing to do. my morals? certainly. but the 21st century western world is more afraid of radicalism than ever and to masquerade social justice as a radical, albeit noble act, will only halt equality in its tracks.
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burn down our home, RAPE OUR DEAD MOUTHS. Just as long as I don't have to hear anymore of your disgusting babble
yeh, I do know what u mean dave, when I said radical maybe I was overplaying my point a bit. I think though that when we look at poverty, inequality and social exclusuion I think that some pretty clever solutions have to be sort for the problem. You can't for instance just through money at the problem and hope it goes away, or just cancel debt and assume everything will be okay, you've got to be careful. I hope New Labour will use the G8 Summit as a responsible platform for a bit of old fashioned socialism- ssssh, its a dirty word these days in British politics!
