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Tuesday 20 January 2015

Britain - Democracy Day - Rebranding and Government by Gimmick


I thought I would mark this new fangled Democracy Day by taking a slice and recording the reshuffling of Britain's veterinary hordes in an attempt to manage the sick pigs and superbug spin-off.

OK, it is almost 800 years since Magna Carta was signed eventually giving rise to parliamentary democracy after centuries of continuous struggle, but:

The British government are selling off everything they can to the veterinarians and bolting. The operation is not so much selling the family silver, but more like abandoning the family disaster. The veterinarians have the money and the need for "commercial" confidentiality - known as a cover-up in the real world.

Defra,  Britain's agricultural ministry, is rebranding their front organisations again as a response to a growing crisis. It is accompanied by a shuffling of seats and retirements often to sinecures elsewhere. They will need many a pair of safe hands to meet the storm. We are one step away from returning to the Meat and Livestock Commission and much tighter control, discretely applied.

Some of Britain's most senior pig veterinarians are reported as openly reinventing themselves as an industry rather than a profession. If you are selling drugs on an industrial scale, you are safer as an industry in Britain today, rather than as a crusty failed profession with a silly old, disregarded, oath.

It is events in Denmark that is driving the change, for Britain and the rest of the EU.

The complicated court case over the Danish government arresting journalists and gagging the Ombudsman is under way. Irrespective of the outcome, the result is that we know rather more than was intended:

The pigs in Denmark are sicker than ever, many of the people carry bugs that can kill and the pig industry is on the point of collapse. It cannot go on. The situation there is desperate and, unlike Britain, widely known to be desperate by employees and employers alike.

But the information leaking from every Danish seam carries with it gems of real value to Britain's reformers and hope for the future.

We know that comparatively recently half of west Jutland's pig farms were riddled with pig MRSA, but by logical extension that half are not.

The rest of Denmark is actually much worse than west Jutland.

Why is the west better than the rest?

One reason is certainly a less dense spread of pig farms, the other may well be the sea and prevailing winds.

Regular readers will know where this is going.

The Danes were attempting a very sensible drive to clean up the remote(r) island of Bornholm. The situation in west Jutland encourages that idea, and of course, by extension, the Islay High Health Pig Farm Project for Scotland.

New readers can find an outline of the developing proposals late last year on the newsgroup uk.business.agriculture. The ideas propagated there will apply to the western fringes on all the British and Irish islands and perhaps even worldwide.

The world needs a supply of clean disease free breeding pigs to re-establish the herds. The isolated west also needs the jobs.

Public Health needs the pig and veterinary industries cleaned up from  disease and corruption.