Zebu review of the year – part 2
A ROUND-UP OF THE MOST GLARING, RIDICULOUS AND EGREGIOUS LIES, DECEPTION AND BULLSHIT OF 2009
Zebu Organisations
British Telecom make the list, primarily for telling the villagers of Hambledon in Oxfordshire that it was impossible to provide them with broadband. That might not have been so difficult to live with, had they not then discovered that BT made an exception in the case of one solitary resident.
NOT SO BROAD BAND
Zebu Regulations
EU regulations on food are incredibly tough, except in one area – “filth”. Amazingly, it does not cover extraneous matter like insect fragments and animal hair. According to the American Agricultural Law Association, “it isactually illegal for anybody to prohibit, restrict or impede foods on the grounds that they contain bits of insect, animal hair or other extraneous matter.”
WHY OUR FOOD MIGHT BE FILTHIER THAN WE THINK
Zebu in the Media
JFK, while still a senator, sunbathing, while around him naked women frolicked. It a “photo that could have changed history” trumpeted TMC.com. It was also a fake.
JFK NAKED PHOTO IS A HOAX
Zebu Farmer of the Year (nomination)
Politicans telling us lies? Nothing new there, perhaps. But to keep repeating the same lie, despite being told by the Office for National Statistics that it is wrong and that she “may undermine public trust in official statistics”, sets Harriet Harman apart from the herd.
IS HARRIET HARMAN A LIAR – OR JUST PLAIN STUPID?
Most Shocking Zebu Story
Why on earth would the BBC invent a story about a heart-rending famine in Africa?
THE FAMINE THAT NEVER WAS
Dictionary of Deceit
When even our language lies to us.
RINSE AND REPEAT
Bizarre Zebu
How can calorie-free water help you slim by having stuff added to it?
DIET WATER
Funny Zebu
The glorious case of the Identity Minister who forgot her own identity
ZEBU REVIEW OF THE YEAR – PART ONE
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1 Comment
Jan 8, 2010 4:33 pm |
I’d like to add the following to your discussion of Harriet Harman who is (in my opinion) a crazed control-freak.
Quote:
In a show of sisterly concern, her Tory shadow, Theresa May, weighed in to deplore university research “which downplayed the extent of trafficking” for prostitution and was cited in Nick Davies’s Guardian report along the same lines. Not only did Harman agree, (citing a dreadful case in passing), she revved up. “I take this opportunity to deplore the reporting in the Guardian … those involved should be ashamed of themselves.”
Unbelievable – so she condemns the research, not for the methods used, but purely because they came up with results that did not fit her view?
Passing to my own comments, Zebu is a great word, as you say, but I think you overplay your hand when you complain that people describe its flesh as beef. Hillaire Belloc, in his Moral Alphabet, began his Z entry with:
This Zebu, which like all Zebus
I sacred to devout Hindoos …
Clearly, Hindus regard Zebu as a breed of cattle, and quite rightly so, since you mention yourselves that they can be crossed with other such breeds. OK; some crosses between closely related but separate species ‘mule out’. All (or almost all) individuals are infertile, with each other and both parent species. Now it may be that in S America and elsewhere the owners of the herds arrange a mating whenever they want a calf, but I hae’ me doots. I suspect that they have large herds of the crosses, which they breed according to the usual principles of animal husbandry.
Although Zebu look distinctly odd if you’re only used to UK cattle (I remember my first sighting of them in Malaysia), that is only a question of familiarity. They are, I suspect, a race, or sub-species, of kine. For that matter, wolves, dogs, jackals and coyotes are all one species, and will interbreed naturally. Did I mention dogs? Suppose you were a Monster from Outer Space and, having been courteously received by us humans, were presented with a Great Dane, a St Bernard, a Pekinese and a Chihuaha. You might possibly guess that the first two were different breeds of the same species, but I think most likely not as regards the latter. As for all four being fully interfertile – No way! Yet it would be no great trick to inseminate artificially either of the first two with either of the second. Exactly what you’d get, and how many, I’ve no idea – most likely a lot, but they’d all be dogs. The other way round would be messier, as you’d have to use IVF and a surrogate – but I suspect those that made it would look very like the first litters, and breed with them by normal means. You’d surely get some problems with whelping, through throwback puppies, but veterinerary caesarian section ain’t exactly rocket science. (Nor is selective breeding, though it requires rather more finesse.)
Of course, describing imported Zebu or cross-Zebu meat as British must be wrong, but had the cattle been born and reared in the country, I’d have no objection. After all, suppose you were to visit a London restaurant and there consume a superb, guaranteed British, sirloin steak; would you complain if the waiter couldn’t say for sure if it was Hereford or Holstein?
Even more relevant, would you (other things, such as freedom from disease and pollutants being equal) rather eat your favourite cut from a young Zebu(cross) steer that had been bred and nurtured for the table, in whatever country, or a 25-year-old Jersey milch-cow who had been slaughtered because the last attempt to breed from her had failed?
Coming closer to home, I happen to work at a site which employs a stupendous mix of races. Among my colleagues are a huge black man (nearer seven feet than six, and heavy with it) and an even taller but somewhat slighter Pole. There’s also a small-boned Fillipino who barely tops five feet. I regard all three as men, and surprisingly enough, such is their opinion of me (not a big claim).
My other bone of contention with you lies with your reference to the ‘promise to pay’ on UK banknotes. When I was still in short trousers (which is to say, well before either of you gentlemen were born, and the name on the notes was L K O’Brien), I asked my father exactly what that meant. This was a pound, so what was the point of promising to pay a pound for it? He explained to me how the word ‘pound’ in this context meant originally a pound of English silver pennies, there being in those days 12 pennies to the ounce, 12 ounces to the pound (rather than sixteen), also twenty shillings to the pound. So what did it mean? I forget his exact answer, but not too long afterwards I substituted my own – an empty form of words, rather like the grandiloquent expressions on my passport, or the promise to ‘love’ in the CofE marriage service.
Aho! This is not the point to commence a discussion of the topic of ‘fiat money’. Other things aside, I’ve had a long, hard day and I’m dead drunk. (Had I been sober, this e-mail would have been shorter, less verbose,and more cogent. It would also have been more grammatical, and contained fewer typos and spelling mistakes.)
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