Eat a deer to save the planet

I made venison casserole on Saturday. It was indeed a thing of wonder. I slow cooked it for about 6 hours in a red wine and lamb stock. Oh it was most delicious. Sadly the dragon found it hard to get past the Bambi moment. She did eat it though, and claimed that it was really just a question of getting used to it. She found it easier to eat with mushrooms. The boy really seemed to like it, but he is of course not yet familiar with fury-faced Disney character.

I take the view that venison is a really eco-friendly choice of meat. Deer are not intensively farmed. They're not farmed at all in fact. They're free range, and about as organic as it's possible to get, no hormone injections or antibiotics, and they even graze on wild pasture, so no pesticides. They really need to be periodically culled because they are destructive to farm land, and they have no natural predators any more. So, there you have it, eat a deer to save the planet, and it has the bonus factor of upsetting vegetarians.

On an almost related point, it suddenly occurred to me last week that dairy cattle must eventually reach a point at which they can no longer produce milk. What happens then? I was guessing that they got made into dog food. It appears I was wrong though. Thanks to mad cow disease in the UK, no bovine over 36 months old are allowed to enter the food chain. So they just slaughter them and burn them. And, something I hadn't thought of, boy cows are almost worthless because they don't produce milk and they are not beef grade animals, so they pretty much get slaughtered as soon as they are born. The stuff you learn here.

We took the boy to Butterfly World yesterday. He likes it there. You can pet the animals. He particularly likes the goats. He's not so keen on the butterflies. But there are also ducks, chickens, turkeys, rabbits, guinea pigs, geese, and some reptiles. There were a few second hand books for sale there as well. I found a copy of an ex-library book with stamps from 1952. It is called "Steamboat Gothic" and it would seem to be a collection of short stories. So I picked it up for £1. What an absolute bargain.

I got a private note from TittyMcBoobs on the last entry. Sorry Ms McBoobs, I can't leave you a note on your diary as I am not on your favourites list. But it was a good note because it pointed me to an article in the NY Times about the US Purity movement. It talks about the same Purity Ball that appeared in the documentary I got so scared about last week.

Incidentally, Abby came up with something on that entry too. She obviously supports purity, and I have no problem with that. Abby is however a smart young woman of the 21st century, quite capable of making her own decisions. What bothers me about the purity movement is the repressive nature of the fathers that seem to sign their daughters up to it. All the fathers interviewed in the documentary I saw admitted that they were essentially promiscuous during their youth. It all seems rather hypocritical to me.

Bradford and Bingley bank has been partly nationalised and party sold. It was a big buy-to-let lender. Once again the tax payer is left with a huge bill. We inherit the toxic mortgage business. George Osbourne, at the Conservative conference, has attacked the Labour government and blamed them for the debt crisis. I'm betting the next polls will show a swing to Conservatives. Polls will appear after Cameron's speech, but I don't know what day that will be. News has also just broken that the Conservatives intent to freeze council tax for two years if elected at the next election. That will be popular. Council tax in my area doubled in the five years I was away.

Bailing out the banks is not entirely bad news in my view. The huge expense means that the treasury coffers are emptied, and that makes the government less powerful. This is a good thing. What kind of lunatic government is going to commit to huge and expensive projects like id cards in these conditions? I made a mistake in a recent entry by the way. I said that government spending in the last 10 years had doubled to £300 billion. Actually it has doubled to £600 billion. That is about £1,000 for every person in the country. No government should be that rich.