Stuff Iceland

[Peter Burgess]

An Icelandic delicacy is sharkmeat, which is hung in caves until absolutely rank. Luvvly!

Every culture has different preferences. Some cultures think horsemeat is perfectly acceptable. We don't. Some cultures historically think whalemeat is perfectly acceptable. Others don't. Apart from times when whalemeat was eaten due to wartime conditions etc, I think our whale hunting ceased when the whale oil market died, as other more convenient products came on line.

Any arguments other than those based on sustainability is muddying the waters.

Sentimentality will cut no ice with the Icelandics or Japanese, or anyone else with whom we take issue. (Though I don't smell any issue of sentimentality in this discussion).

If sharks were endangered, (and I think some are), would there be as great an outcry against shark fishing as there is against whaling? I do not condone whaling, but urge those who condemn it to think about whether they would feel the same way about a less endearing species, equally at risk.

And as for setting our own house in order, yes, of course we should practice what we preach, and I don't mean not catching whales, I mean not further depleting endangered fish stocks, for example. You cannot expect one culture to listen to another's point of view, when there might be issues that we need to deal with here in the UK.

 

[cap n chris]

No man (woman) is an island. The world isn't perfect (nor can it be). Things change.

By all means boycott whatever you wish.

But don't kid yourself into thinking it's going to make any significant difference.

 

[AndyF]

No man (woman) is an island. The world isn't perfect (nor can it be). Things change.

By all means boycott whatever you wish.

But don't kid yourself into thinking it's going to make any significant difference.

Consumer led campaigns can and do make a difference. Take McD's for example, would they really have changed from CFC laden packaging to non-CFC without the public campaigning.... that's a lot of CFC'c world wide. KFC and Murder King follwed suit immediatly afterwards, fearing the campaign would then turn onto them.

Look at Tesco Shampoo with little bunnies proclaiming "Not tested on animals", would that be the case bar consumer pressure?

These are small wins, but they are cumulative. Tesco & McD's will never reverse those decisions....

You can't do everything it's true, it would be a full time job and you would starve. But that isn't a reason to do nothing IMHO

 

[cap n chris]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6077798.stm

A quite timely news item today (24-10-06) which includes the statement "if the world's population shared the UK's lifestyle, three planets would be needed to support their needs". This leaves me to conclude:

The UK lifestyle is unsustainable at a global level since the world's population is 3 times too great for the resources available. In which case either we should deny ourselves the lifestyle to which we have become accustomed (yeh, as if) or there should be a massive reduction in world population (yeh, as if). Therefore it looks like the mass starvation scenario is looking more and more likely - but it will mostly affect the countries without money; anyone working for a relief aid charity has got their job security minted.

 

[whitelackington]

Completely accurate Chris.

In the same way that very large companies get out of kilter, with several firms running into debt, thus being supported by others in the conglomerate,
the same argument can be used for sustainable poulations.
This argument is easier to folow if u use islands.
Take New Zealand for example, they have a high standard of living because they have a naturally fertile country with lots of rain and A SMALL POPULATION.
Iceland has a very small population so, with the seas resources it is sustainable but if their island were to fill up with people it would rapidly become unsustainable.
All countries (ours included) to be sustainable over the long term, should only have as many residents as they can support, by that I mean producing, relyably their own food.
From this argument u will see that many countries are now not sustainable with their present levels of poulation.
At the very least politicians should be addressing this problem but they wont.
Another one of those "sensitive" themes best left for another day,
WHEN IT WILL BE TO LATE TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT
Billions will eventually starve before this is understood and acted upon.

 

[cap n chris]

Aha! The mystery of the . has been solved!

 

[Dep]

A point in favour of the Icelanders; they are doing a national trial of hydrogen fuel for vehicles, using their abundant geothermal energy to make electricity to crack water.
For any nation to move away from a petrol based ecomony they will need information and to establish a national infrastructure, no one will want a hydrogen car if it can only be fueled at a handful of locations.
It will be interesting to see how Iceland gets on...

 

[cap n chris]

Just to poke my large wooden spoon into proceedings (no change there, then), I wonder how long it will be before Icelandic types invent a car powered by whale blubber?

 

[AndyF]

HEHE Still had no response from Sainsburys, Tesco, Somerfield or Heinz, except I got an automated reply from Sainsburys giving me a tracking number for my query....  the mad fools that was a mistake.

I don't think I'm on the Icelandic Embassy Christmas card list either MWAHAAHAHAH!

 

[andymorgan]

Don't also be tricked into thinking organic food is 'good for the environment'. More land is used for the same yield which could be left alone;and as more land is used, more machinery is used as more fossil fuels are burnt. Much of the organic food in the UK is produced outside of the UK and so lots of aviation fuel is used to burn it.
  Do not discount GM products either, if high yields are maintained with reduced pesticides then it may not be such a bad idea.

 

[whitelackington]

Just to poke my large wooden spoon into proceedings (no change there, then), I wonder how long it will be before Icelandic types invent a car powered by whale blubber?

As whale blubber is rendered down to whale oil, you could almost certainly make fuel from it
but you would have to kill an awful lot of them to fuel every vehicle in the World.
A better "solution" would be to make whale fingers,
make an excellant breakfast

 

[AndyF]

HEHE I actually got a response from Sainsbury's...

Thank you for your email.  I would like to know if Sainsbury’s (or any of its subsidiaries) sources products or ingredients from Iceland. 


"The Icelandic fishery is acknowledged by international fora such as FAO and ICES and NGO's such as Greenpeace and WWF as being amongst the best managed in the world.  The Icelandic economy is overwhelmingly dependent on the utilisation of marine resources.  Its quota system has evolved aimed at sustainable harvesting of those resources in accordance with independent scientific advice.



In respect of whaling Iceland has set a quota for the fishing year from September 2006-August 2007 of 30 minke whales and 9 fin whales.  This is set against stock estimates of 70,000 minke whales and 25,800 fin whales in the Central North Atlantic. The takes planned equate to less than 0.2% of the minke in Icelandic waters and 0.04% of the fin whales in the Central North Atlantic. This quota has only been set after a research programme that commenced in 1986.

Fin whales are on the IUCN red list of threatened species however, this is based on a global perspective. Fin whales have separate populations in all the major oceans between which there is no interchange. If the IUCN criteria are applied to the stocks of fin whales in the Central North Atlantic their classification would be neither endangered nor threatened.

Whilst we are sensitive to the issue of whaling generally, we believe that the current Icelandic quota does not represent a threat to these species. Their programme is highly limited in comparison to the take of whales annually by the United States, Russia, Norway, Japan and Greenland."


Thank you for taking the time to contact us.  I do hope that I have gone someway towards explaining our position on this matter.

Kind regards

Cxxxx Kxx (my deletion)
Sainsbury's Customer Services

There are some fair and valid points in this, and they have been honest that they think it's o.k.  Well, credit to them, no one else has been a***d to reply.  I don't really expect a Supermarket to start boycotting things, (well except for the Co-op), but at least my views got read my someone and somebody somewhere thought about it and noted some customer feedback. I sent a nice thank "you back", so sainsburys ten points for customer service  , everyone else squat diddly...

 

[underground]

No man (woman) is an island. The world isn't perfect (nor can it be). Things change.

By all means boycott whatever you wish.

But don't kid yourself into thinking it's going to make any significant difference.

Chris (and all the contributors to this thread toeing a similar line), I find that attitude rather spineless, quite frankly. So what do we do, just sit back and let it all go to fucking ratshit around our ears, retail parks and supermarkets on every square mile? Maybe the attitude would be different if Tesco's looked at buying Priddy Green. They'd put the services in the handy local conduits in the rock. They probably could given their finacial and political might. The only people who van make a difference are the ones who care, and I'd rather die having done something, than subscribed to the quote above.

http://www.howies.co.uk/content.php?xId=78&xPg=1
1 Percenters

They are the activists.
The difficult sods.
The awkward ones.

Those who don't toe the corporate line.
Those who ask questions.
Why? How come? Says who?

Those who don't take things at face value.
Who don't bend in front of popular opinion.
Who put their body on the line for their beliefs.
Who see the big picture when we see
only tomorrow.

Society struggles to accept them.
Governments try to ignore them.
Big business would like to silence them.
But they cannot be silenced, lobbied
or bought off.

They are driven to protect this planet of ours.
Belief is all they have. And all they need.
And they fight on all our behalfs.

Yet we will not say a thank you.
There will be no monuments built in their name.
They will never be asked for their autograph.
We will not even know their names.

But without them who will speak for the trees?
Who will speak for the rivers, the seas,
the wild places?
Who will speak for the air we all breathe?
Indeed, who'll speak on behalf of this planet
of ours.

Not you or I.

We have the right to remain silent.
What is worrying is our desire to do so.

 

[AndyF]

..( Poem snipped )...

yeah!  liked that... 

 

[cap n chris]

The irony is, however, that it is precisely because people kick up a fuss that only big businesses can actually railroad their way through the bureaucracy put in place in response to the NIMBYism of the awkward brigade! Think about it.

Small endeavours die on the drawing board due to the stifling expense of fulfilling the paperwork hurdles legimitately. The big boys' hordes of legal professionals sort out that side of things, scaring the shit out of the public sector planning depts and their snotwipe whingers. The economics of an over bureaucratised nation are such that it's mostly corporations that can establish themselves and keep apace of the government's legislation.

P.S. It's only 9 whales.

I think we would live in a far more thriving and vibrant world if free market enterprise was allowed to surface once again. Problem is, no-one's actually allowed to do what they want with their own land. It's amazing. Europe has become a neo-communist state where tip-offs, secret police, quangos, bureaucrats and regulators squeeze the living shit out of any idea which would otherwise have half a chance of being successful. Why are they able to do this? - because they were given licence to do so by the electorate who complained that "Isn't it awful, someone should do something about it". Well, this is something, therefore this is what we'll do. The result is globalisation, big business and impotence of individuals in the face of change. So, go ahead, waste your life being King Canute.

 

[Dep]

The irony is, however, that it is precisely because people kick up a fuss that only big businesses can actually railroad their way through the bureaucracy put in place in response to the NIMBYism of the awkward brigade! Think about it.

Small endeavours die on the drawing board due to the stifling expense of fulfilling the paperwork hurdles legimitately. The big boys' hordes of legal professionals sort out that side of things, scaring the shit out of the public sector planning depts and their snotwipe whingers. The economics of an over bureaucratised nation are such that it's mostly corporations that can establish themselves and keep apace of the government's legislation.

P.S. It's only 9 whales.

I think we would live in a far more thriving and vibrant world if free market enterprise was allowed to surface once again. Problem is, no-one's actually allowed to do what they want with their own land. It's amazing. Europe has become a neo-communist state where tip-offs, secret police, quangos, bureaucrats and regulators squeeze the living shit out of any idea which would otherwise have half a chance of being successful. Why are they able to do this? - because they were given licence to do so by the electorate who complained that "Isn't it awful, someone should do something about it". Well, this is something, therefore this is what we'll do. The result is globalisation, big business and impotence of individuals in the face of change. So, go ahead, waste your life being King Canute.

Spot on. Get's my vote as 'post of the week'

 

[Peter Burgess]

King Cnut was trying to make a point to his a*se-wiping crawlers that he was NOT so powerful that he could do absolutely anything he wanted to. That he was only human with all the potential failings of any one of them.

 

[AndyF]

P.S. It's only 9 whales.

I think we would live in a far more thriving and vibrant world if free market enterprise was allowed to surface once again.

It was the free-for-all attitude of greedy free enterprise that brought whales to the brink of extinction...

It was the actions of the very "NIMBYS" you knock and protestors that saved them....

Labelled as nutters and weirdos by the comfotable middle classes who are now just beginning to think "oh shit, the world is actually being screwed". It it weren't for those small people fighting against impossible odds, there would not be any whales at all now.

Are you glad they succeded, or would you rather that they had not bothered or failed in the name of the god of "free-enterprise"?

 

[cap n chris]

Did the pendant's spellchecker miss something?


In modern parlance the story of Canute/Cnut has been bastardised more akin to my usage of it above; the pendant's version is the historically more accurate although a refinement is that his advisers were so fawning over the King's supreme powers that they were convinced that he could achieve anything - thus he set out to reverse the tides to prove to them that he was human like everyone else - thus ruining the King/Pharoah/Pope/God mindset stereotype.

 

[graham]

Problem is, no-one's actually allowed to do what they want with their own land. It's amazing.

Yeah, why can't I open a dioxin plant on this bit of land I own on Mendip?  :-\