Friday 1 October 2010

WHO ACTUALLY IS IN CHARGE IN THE UK LABOUR OR LABOUR

Death of the office joke: Coalition enacts Harriet's PC equality law which means ANYONE can sue for ANYTHING that offends them

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 3:46 PM on 1st October 2010

New equality laws masterminded by Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman have come into force today, threatening to create a political correctness minefield for recession-hit businesses.
Under the Act, vegans, teetotallers and atheists are to be given the same protection against discrimination as religious groups while gipsies and travellers will get special favours because of the 'many socio-economic disadvantages' they face.
There is also a provision which extends protection from third party harassment, meaning employers have a responsibility to shield their staff, where possible, from abuse by customers.
This has led to fears that bosses could be sued for jokes or comments that staff overhear and find offensive - even if it is not directed at or about them.
The Act, which ministers claim will help stamp out pay discrimination, have been slammed by employer groups who claim it will cost £189million to implement.
Home Secretary Theresa May
Labour Party Deputy Leader Harriet Harman
Equal measures: Home Secretary Theresa May has pushed ahead with 90 per cent of the Equality Act championed by Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman
The Coalition has pressed ahead with 90 per cent Ms Harman's Equality Act, including a measure to stop pay secrecy clauses being used to hide unfair differences between what men and women are paid.
From today the law - which was first passed by Parliament in April - will be changed so that men and women in all firms are allowed to discuss and compare their salaries.
But employer groups warned the new laws will cause a red tape nightmare at a time when businesses are already struggling with the recession.
In other measures, new powers for employment tribunals will mean those found guilty of discrimination can face sweeping orders to change their policies, rather than just being hit for compensation in individual cases.

 

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And firms will be banned from asking job applicants about their health, while new protections for disabled people will make it easier for staff who have taken a large number of sick days or who look after elderly relatives to win unfair dismissal cases.
The Act will also make is easier for staff to claim they were discriminated against because of disability because they no longer have to prove they were treated less favourably than a non-disabled colleague.
David Frost, the director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce said: At a time when the Government is trying to create jobs in the private sector, this legislation will put people off for fear of getting it wrong'.
Home Secretary Theresa May, who is also minister for women and equality, said: 'In these challenging economic times it's more important than ever for employers to make the most of all the talent available.

SOME OF THE EQUALITY ACT PROVISIONS...

  • Vegans, teetotallers and atheists given the same protection against discrimination as religious groups
  • Churches forced to hire homosexuals and transsexuals against the tenets of their faith when employing staff under planned Labour equality laws
  • Gipsies and travellers to get special favours because of the 'many socio-economic disadvantages' they face
  • Fire chiefs forced to prioritise the poor when drawing up fire fighting plans as poorer areas need better cover because they tend to suffer from a greater number of fires owing to the worse state of their homes and a lack of smoke alarms
  • Fears that bosses could be sued for jokes or comments that staff overhear and find offensive under 'third party harassment' provisions
What's still being discussed....
  • Plans to force local authorities to discriminate in favour of the poor in order to narrow income inequalities
  • ‘Affirmative action’ plan to allow firms to explicitly discriminate in favour of women and ethnic minority candidates
'When a company reflects the society it serves, it's better for the employer, the employees and the customers, so being a woman should never be a barrier to being treated fairly at work.
'From today the gagging clauses that stop people discussing their pay with their colleagues will be unenforceable, allowing women and men to find out if they're being paid unfairly.'
One employment lawyer warned that many large firms would find the ban on pay secrecy clauses 'unpalatable'.
Alex Mizzi, a solicitor at Dawsons LLP, said: 'Setting aside the fact that companies will view this as yet more red tape, bonuses and salaries are hugely sensitive for the vast majority of businesses.
'We know full well that a bonus can differentiate wildly from person to person, irrespective of seniority, and employers will have to be mindful of that when the Christmas bonus season gets into full swing.'
Tory and Lib Dem ministers are still arguing about whether to implement Miss Harman’s notorious plans to force local authorities to discriminate in favour of the poor in order to narrow income inequalities.
The plans were hailed as ‘socialism in a single clause’ when Miss Harman unveiled them last year.
But a Whitehall source said: ‘The Tories felt they went too far and the Lib Dems believed they didn’t go far enough. Discussions are continuing on whether to implement the clause.’
Also still up for discussion are Labour plans to allow firms to explicitly discriminate in favour of women and ethnic minority candidates - the kind of ‘affirmative action’ which has proved a political hot potato in the United States.
A Home Office source said the Act brings together nine different laws into a single piece of legislation, 'simplifying the law and reducing the administrative burden on businesses'.
The Government will announce 'in due course' its plans for the remaining parts of the Act, he said.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission welcomed the Act. Its interim chief executive, Helen Hughes, said: 'It's more than just an Act.
'Simplifying equality legislation and extending protection to a wide range of groups that face discrimination will help Britain become a fairer society, improve public services, and help business perform well.'
Banning the use of pre-employment questionnaires under the new Equality Act could make it easier for veterans who have been recently disabled in the line of duty to get work, she said.
And protecting young mothers from discrimination in school or college could mean they finish their education rather than drop out'
Ms Hughes added: 'It is also a reminder that treating people fairly protects organisations from costly discrimination claims.'

 
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This woman should never have been allowed out of the kitchen.
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Political correctness gone mad and once again the people who will be penalised are the honest, cheerful (but don't dare make any jokes), hardworking majority. No wonder Britain is in such a mess.
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I think they should bring in a law only one person in a household can stand for parliament There are so few seats available so why do we allow a husband & wife to be in Parliament having so much say
I see the Kinnocks have made sure that their daughter is with them on the gravy train as she is now working for Ed Milliband
It would be interesting to know how much this family cost the tax payers with EU pensions, Lords fees and expenses old age pensions and many perks
Is this what socialism is about keep it in the family
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Thursday 30 September 2010

**THE SAYING GOES YOU CAN FOOL SOME PEOPLE SOMEOF THE TIME BUT NOT ALL THE PEOPLE ALL THE TIME ***

Royal Society issues new climate change guide that admits there are 'uncertainties' about the science

The UK’s leading scientific body has been forced to rewrite its guide on climate change and admit that it is not known how much warmer the Earth will become.
The Royal Society has updated its guide after 43 of its members complained that the previous version failed to take into account the opinion of climate change sceptics.
Now the new guide, called ‘Climate change: a summary of the science’, admits that there are some ‘uncertainties’ regarding the science behind climate change.
And it says that it impossible to know for sure how the Earth's climate will change in the future nor what the possible effects may be.
An iceberg breaks off from the shelf in Antarctica.
An iceberg breaks off from the shelf in Antarctica. The Royal Society has reissued its guidance on climate change
The 19-page guide says: ’It is not possible to determine exactly how much the Earth will warm or exactly how the climate will change in the future, but careful estimates of potential changes and associated uncertainties have been made.
‘Scientists continue to work to narrow these areas of uncertainty. Uncertainty can work both ways, since the changes and their impacts may be either smaller or larger than those projected.’
And it avoids making any predictions about the possible impacts of climate change and advises caution in making projections about rising sea levels.
It says: 'There is currently insufficient understanding of the enhanced melting and retreat of the ice sheets on Greenland and West Antarctica to predict exactly how much the rate of sea level rise will increase above that observed in the past century
for a given temperature increase.
'Similarly, the possibility of large changes in the circulation of the North Atlantic Ocean cannot be assessed with confidence. The latter limits the ability to predict with confidence what changes in climate will occur in Western Europe.
The new guidance still makes it clear that human activity is one of the likely causes for climate change but now does so in a more considered way.
It states: 'There is very strong evidence to indicate that climate change has occurred on a wide range of different timescales from decades to many millions of years; human activity is a relatively recent addition to the list of potential causes of climate change.'
The working group behind the new book included two Royal Society fellows who were part of the 43-strong rebellion that had called for the original guide to be rewritten.
Professor Anthony Kelly and Sir Alan Rudge are both members of an academic board that advises a climate change sceptic think-tank called the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
Professor Kelly said: "It's gone a long way to meeting our concerns.
‘The previous guidance was discouraging debate rather than encouraging it among knowledgeable people. The new guidance is clearer and a very much better document.’
And Benny Peiser, Director of The Global Warming Policy Foundation also welcomed the Royal Society's decision to revise.
He said:  'The former publication gave the misleading impression that the 'science is
settled' - the new guide accepts that important questions remain open and
uncertainties unresolved.
'The Royal Society now also agrees with the GWPF that the warming trend of
the 1980s and 90s has come to a halt in the last 10 years.
'In their old guide, the Royal Society demanded that governments should take "urgent steps" to cut CO2 emissions "as much and as fast as possible." This political activism has now been replaced by a more sober assessment of the scientific evidence and ongoing climate debates.
'If this voice of moderation had been the Royal Society's position all along, its message to Government would have been more restrained and Britain's unilateral climate policy would not be out of sync with the rest of the world.'
The new book is certainly very different in tone that the original and takes into account some of the problems that have arisen in climate change science over the past year.
The new version sets out its objectives by saying: ‘In view of the ongoing public and political debates about climate change, the aim of this document is to summarise the current scientific evidence on climate change and its drivers.
‘It lays out clearly where the science is well established, where there is wide consensus but continuing debate, and where there remains substantial uncertainty.’
The Royal Society’s decision comes in the wake of a scathing report into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which called for it to avoid politics and stick instead to predictions based on solid science.
The review, which focused on the day-to-day running of the panel, rather than its science, was commissioned after the UN body was accused of making glaring mistakes.
These included the claim that the Himalayan glaciers would vanish within 25 years - and that 55 per cent of the Netherlands was prone to flooding because it was below sea level.
Earlier this year an email scandal involving experts at the University of East Anglia had already fuelled fears that global warming was being exaggerated.

Over population is the real problem, however as it is not white people breeding like mad we can't talk about that, and when a nation tried to limit population grow it was widly condemned for its human rights abuse, and now has the problem of 23+ million men that have no chance of finding a woman as they "culturally" had the problem that girls were not wanted and so aborted.
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Whart science, climate change is a myth!

- Chris Carr


No, climate change is real, it's man-made global warming that's the myth
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Please name me - very specifically - a "green tax", Ron ???
- cp, Kent Europe, 30/9/2010 13:29

very specifically - government subsidies.... which the taxpayer funds.

- mild mannered, Liverpool, England, 30/9/2010 13:43


Also dont forget the 8% on electricity bills & 4% on gas bills under the title of "GOVERNMENT ENVIRONMENTAL CONTRIBUTION", ive got the printed proof from Npower in my hand now, & all energy companies do it,,,,,,So cp,Kent Europe, does that satisfy you?.
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Hmm better start back peddling, I know let me write an article to cover our a@@@'s
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"But Zeds, I know you are the self appointed saviour of the human race, though I must say your evidence is getting weaker by the day."
- Nigel, Somerset, 30/9/2010 13:52


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Wednesday 29 September 2010

*******THE END IS IN SIGHT I THINK*******

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Wednesday, Sep 29 2010 6PM  14°C 9PM 13°C 5-Day Forecast

The end really is nigh... but don't panic, there's only a 50% chance of it coming in the next 3.7BILLION years

By Niall Firth
Last updated at 1:50 PM on 29th September 2010

There is a 50 per cent chance that time will end within the next 3.7 billion years, according to a new study.
Some physicists believe that our universe - and everything in it -  will continue to expand at an ever-increasing rate, splitting into newer universes as it goes.
This is known as theory of 'eternal inflation' and has spawned the idea of the 'multiverse' in popular science-fiction.
But a group of scientists have argued that the laws of physics do not work in a  universe that is never-ending and continues to expand – it must end at some point.
A star explodes in a Hubble space image.
A star explodes in a Hubble space image. Some scientists believe that our universe is not never-ending and will finish suddenly one day in the future
And Raphael Bousso, at the University of California, Berkeley, has worked out when this is most likely to happen.
His team’s argument is that in an infinite universe any event that can happen, will happen. Furthermore it will happen an infinite number of times.
The problem with this is that if there are an infinite number of instances of everything happening it is then impossible to determine the probability of them happening at all.
This means that the laws of physics, as we know them, no longer work.
We're stuck between a rock and a hard place,' says Bousso. 'If you don't like the cut-off, then you have no way of making predictions and deciding what's probable in eternal inflation.'
The only way to make our current universe work is to include a catastrophe at some point in the future which ends time - and takes us with it.
Using complicated theoretical physics and advanced mathematics the team calculated when this is most likely to occur.
Bousso says: in the study: ‘Time is unlikely to end in our lifetime, but there is a 50 per cent chance that time will end within the next 3.7 billion years.’
This means that time and the universe would end before our own Sun has died.
Other physicists give us slightly longer, calculating the end of time to occur within the next five billion years.
But there is some good news. The research team say that, due to physics, we will not know when the end of time is approaching before it actually takes place.
 
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Tuesday 28 September 2010

*** THE COVER-UP BETWEEN UK AND USA OVER UFO'S***

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Monday 27 September 2010

THE GOVERNMENT AND MILITARY FROM UK AND USA COVER_UP

America's X Files: Top U.S. airmen to accuse Air Force of cover-up as they claim UFOs have been deactivating nuclear missiles since 1948

By Daniel Bates
Last updated at 11:02 AM on 27th September 2010


It may sound like a Spielberg movie plot, but if senior U.S. airmen are to be believed, this scenario is not science fiction.
They claim that since 1948, aliens have been hovering over UK and U.S. nuclear missile sites and deactivating the weapons– once even landing in a British base.
Furthermore, they warn, our governments are hushing the activity up.
Captain Robert Salas, who, along with six others is to break his silence on the subject, said: ‘We’re talking about unidentified flying objects, as simple as that.
‘They’re often known as UFOs, you could call them that.
Ufos
Disruption: The group of veterans will claim on Monday that several nuclear missiles malfunctioned as UFOs hovered overhead
'We¿re talking about unidentified flying objects, as simple as that': Captain Robert Salas, in an undated image, is set to accuse the U.S. Air Force of lying
'We¿re talking about unidentified flying objects, as simple as that': Captain Robert Salas, in an undated image, is set to accuse the U.S. Air Force of lying
‘The U.S. Air Force is lying about the national security implications of unidentified aerial objects at nuclear bases and we can prove it,’ he said.
The former officer said he witnessed such an event first-hand on March 16, 1967, at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana.
‘I was on duty when an object came over and hovered directly over the site.
‘The missiles shut down – ten Minuteman [nuclear] missiles. And the same thing happened at another site a week later. There’s a strong interest in our missiles by these objects, wherever they come from. I personally think they’re not from planet Earth.’
Colonel Charles Halt claims to have seen a UFO at RAF Bentwaters, near Ipswich, one of the few bases in the UK to hold nuclear weapons.
The sighting is said to have taken place 30 years ago. First he saw the object firing beams of light into the base then heard on the military radio that aliens had landed inside the nuclear storage area, he said.
‘I believe that the security services of both the United States and the United Kingdom have attempted – both then and now – to subvert the significance of what occurred at RAF Bentwaters by the use of well-practised methods of disinformation.’
The six former U.S. Air Force officers and one former enlisted man, are to present declassified information which they claim backs up their findings.
RAF Bentwaters USA airbase in Rendlesham, Suffolk
RAF Bentwaters USA airbase in Rendlesham, Suffolk. Aliens fired beams of light at the base 30 years ago, it has been claimed.

Ufos
Controversial: At the event in Washington on Monday the men will release declassified U.S. government documents which they say back up their claims
They have witness testimony from 120 former or retired military personnel which points to alien intervention at nuclear sites in the U.S. as recently as 2003.
They will urge the authorities to confirm that alien beings have long been visiting Earth.
A press conference today in Washington will also highlight testimony from retired U.S. Air Force Captain Bruce Fenstermacher, whose security team saw a cigar-shaped UFO hovering above FE Warren nuclear base in Wyoming in 1976.
Researcher Robert Hastings, who has written on the subject, explained that so far the aliens appeared interested in ‘mere surveillance’ but warned they seemed to have gone further in some instances.
‘At long last, all of these witnesses are coming forward to say that, as unbelievable as it may seem to some, UFOs have long monitored and sometimes tampered with our nukes,’ he added.
Robert Hastings
The truth is out there: Author and veteran Robert Hastings will host the press conference tomorrow

Watch a video of the 2001 press conference below:

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If these UFO are fact they represent technology that is so far beyond ours that release of these technologies would be dangerous. However the physics is against these so called UFO's from other systems (if these vehicles were from any of the planets in out solar system it would be obvious) being fact. The great distances between systems and physical restraints on speed and energy requirements would make visitors from other systems doubtful. No matter if you travel a a hundred miles an hour or a million miles per minute you still have the same energy requirement and unlimited energy is the same as a free lunch.
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@ Jay, Durham, 27/9/2010 14:01

What relevance is there in a vague quotation from Marcus Aurelius? Obviously, "the objective in life" is to stay alive. It is a inaccurate (useless) collection of words used only to insult someone.

When using a quotation (noun) to quote (verb) someone, one should be very careful to avoid accusations of "ignorance". It's unnecessary and can backfire.

In your very particular instance though, I like the Goethe quotation. And, I'll risk a backfire for the benefit of the other contributors.
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Nothing happened after the 2001 video was flighted, because the POWER OVER PEOPLE syndrome, the major syndrome of our times, was still too strong. Now, in 2010 is it still too strong?
Perhaps only the unconditioned teens of this or the next generation will save humanity, which is essential.
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This is a good thing, to deactivate nuclear missiles. Not a national security issue at all. These aliens are doing us a favor. Hope they go to Israel and deactivate their nuclear missiles, all 300 odd of them.
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Well that will be a first then, in our entire documented history in fact. Possibly the most important revelation should be on the front page, surely?
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Could be secret missions by earthbound governments to deactivate nukes?


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1315479/UFOs-deactivated-nuclear-missiles-U-S-airmen-accuse-government-cover-up.html#ixzz10kP4HAWu
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Sunday 26 September 2010

***WE ARE NOW ALL officially MUSLIMS**

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Sunday, Sep 26 2010 3PM  11°C 6PM 11°C 5-Day Forecast

Top supermarkets secretly sell halal: Sainsbury's, Tesco, Waitrose, and M&S don't tell us meat is ritually slaughtered

By Abul Taher
Last updated at 11:25 PM on 25th September 2010
Most lamb imported from New Zealand by British supermarkets has been slaughtered according to Muslim law
Most lamb imported from New Zealand by British supermarkets has been slaughtered according to Muslim law
Britain's biggest supermarket chains are selling halal lamb and chicken without telling unsuspecting shoppers.
Those stocking meat slaughtered according to Islamic law include Waitrose, Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Somerfield and the Co-op.
And a Mail on Sunday investigation has found that fast-food chains including Domino’s Pizza, Pizza Hut, KFC, ­Nando’s and Subway are also using halal meat without ­telling customers.
But the UK’s second-biggest supermarket, Asda, has refused to confirm or deny whether it sells halal meat.
The Mail on Sunday contacted Asda on Tuesday, but by yesterday it had failed to answer any of our questions.
Initially, Waitrose, Sainsbury’s and Tesco were reluctant to admit they sold halal meat. But later they confessed to selling Islamically slaughtered lamb. Tesco also admitted selling some halal chicken without labelling it as such.
Most lamb imported from New Zealand by British supermarkets has been slaughtered according to Muslim law, but this is not mentioned on packaging. Some lamb from British abattoirs is also halal. 
Last night, Agriculture Minister Jim Paice said: ‘People should know what they’re buying in the shops or when they’re eating out and I will be discussing with the food industry the role labelling can play in giving consumers a choice.’ 
The supermarkets and fast-food outlets said they did not feel the need to tell customers that meat is halal because the slaughter conformed to Western standards, with animals stunned before being killed.
But the RSPCA has raised concerns about the way chicken is killed in Islamic abattoirs because the birds are stunned with a weaker electric current, which does not guarantee unconsciousness during slaughter.

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Our enquiries have found that ­Subway uses some Islamically slaughtered chicken that has not been stunned.
Our enquiries have found that ­Subway uses some Islamically slaughtered chicken that has not been stunned.
Non-Muslim religious leaders say that Christians, Hindus or Sikhs may find it offensive to eat meat slaughtered according to Islamic ritual. Jews are unlikely to be exposed to such meat because they eat kosher, or animals slaughtered according to Jewish law.
Last week The Mail on Sunday revealed how halal food was being served to unsuspecting people in hospitals, schools and pubs across the UK.

The country’s biggest hotel and restaurant group, Whitbread– which owns the Beefeater and Brewers Fayre chains – was also selling halal food, as were well-known sporting venues such as Ascot, Twicken­ham and Wembley.
Under Islamic law, an animal must be slaughtered by having its throat cut while it is conscious.
All its blood must drain out, otherwise Muslims regard it as impure. The person carrying out the killing has to recite an Arabic verse at the time.brings the practice in line with Western methods.
All Islamically slaughtered lamb and chicken sold in British supermarkets is stunned before being killed, but is not labelled as halal. Moderate Islamic groups allow animals to be stunned before slaughter, which brings the practice in line with Western methods.
Inayat Bunglawala, the chair of Muslims4UK, said: ‘Supermarkets should not be afraid of labelling their products as halal. Halal meat tastes just the same as non-halal meat.’
But Mike Judge, from the campaign group the Christian Institute, said: ‘The idea of having Islamic ritual said over meat would be objectionable to some Christians. I would find it objectionable, so it should be labelled as halal.’
Initially, Tesco and Waitrose were reluctant to admit they sold any halal meat. Tesco said in a statement: ‘It is not the case that all the meat we sell is halal or that our suppliers only offer halal meat.’
But when quizzed further, a spokesman said: ‘All our New Zealand lamb is halal-slaughtered, as is 35 per cent of our UK lamb. Less than five per cent of our chicken is halal.’
A Waitrose spokeswoman said in her first statement: ‘I can confirm that Waitrose does not sell any halal meat.’
But a day later, another spokes­woman said: ‘You mentioned the [Islamic] prayer said at the point of slaughter. This applies to all our lamb but not to beef or poultry.’
M&S said in its first statement: ‘No meat sourced by M&S from the UK is halal.’ When asked about lamb, a spokeswoman said: ‘Our New Zealand lamb is halal-slaughtered but pre-stunned.’
A Sainsbury’s spokesman said: ‘The abattoirs that supply us with lamb are licensed by the Muslim authorities and a prayer is said when the ­animals are killed.’
Sandwich chain Subway admitted that up to five per cent of its chicken is Islam­ically slaughtered without being stunned.
Subway said in a statement: ‘By mid-November there will be no halal meat in our non-halal stores. The meat served in halal Subway stores is not stunned before slaughter.’
Domino’s Pizza said it had served Islamically slaughtered chicken in most of its 580 outlets for ten years.

I kill 45 chickes a minute and all get an Islamic prayer

The Muslim slaughterman murmurs the Islamic verse as thousands of chickens whir towards him on a conveyor belt hung from the ceiling.
Masood Akhtar grabs hold of one chicken’s head with his left hand and, with his right, draws his knife across its neck.

The slaughterman barely has time to say ‘Bismillah Allah-hu-Akbar’ (meaning ‘In the name of Allah, who is the greatest’) before the next bird is upon him.
It appears a long way from the ritualised slaughter that many would imagine produces halal chicken. Mr Akhtar is not dressed in robes but in a hair-net and a yellow blood-spattered jacket.
And far from a spiritual ceremony, the process is clinical and robotic – Mr Akhtar claims to kill 45 birds every minute and 40,000 in a week.

The procedure appears to follow Sharia law, which states that the bird must be killed alive by a Muslim man who recites the set verse as he cuts its throat.
At the Paul Flatman Ltd poultry processing plant outside Colchester in Essex where Mr Akhtar works, the chickens are stunned by dipping them in electrified water before they are killed.
‘The charge stuns the birds for around two minutes – it’s like a general anaesthetic,’ explained factory manager Tim Lane.
‘It’s crucial not to kill the bird because then, it wouldn’t be halal, so we adjust the charge depending on the chicken’s size. We are very careful to get the balance right.

‘Some of the other bigger poultry factories who are supplying the supermarkets claim the chicken they produce is halal – but it’s not really.

‘Instead of using a Muslim man as the killer, they use an automatic circular saw and a tape recorder to play the prayer.
‘They can’t do it properly because of the sheer volume of chickens they have to kill to meet demand. Some of the factories are doing one million birds a week.’

Mr Akhtar, 29, became a slaughterman at the age of 18 after a few months’ training.

‘When I arrived I wanted to be a killer,’ he recalled. ‘On my first day in training, three out of ten birds I killed were not cut properly through both neck arteries – this meant they were not halal.

‘But after three months
of practice I was perfect – every bird was killed in true halal style.’

The Paul Flatman plant opened in 1961 slaughtering chickens in the normal way, but in 1977, as demand from halal wholesalers increased, Mr Flatman switched his entire production to halal.

He says he has never found it hard to recruit Muslim slaughtermen. ‘It’s usually just through word of mouth in the Muslim community – it’s not hard to find volunteers.’
I am a qualified meat inspector and have lost count of the days and weeks I’ve spent in slaughterhouses. I’ve never liked the ritual way of killing – I don’t believe it is humane.

I don’t know any slaughterman who likes it either. But we accept it because it is the law – even though the law has been fudged because the issue is too sensitive for the Government and the EU (which now makes the rules) to take on.
A spokeswoman said: ‘The majority of our chicken is halal slaughtered, but it is all stunned prior to slaughter.’
Pizza Hut and KFC, through their PR firm Freud Com­munications, said: ‘We use a number of international suppliers, some of whom provide halal chicken as standard practice.
‘Importantly, all of the chicken we source, halal or otherwise, is stunned before slaughter.’
Nando’s said: ‘All of our chickens are stunned first. A small proportion of all the chicken sold in our restaurants is halal.’

They HAVE to tell us what we're buying

Analysis by Richard North
Even though I’ve seen it done thousands of times, you never really get used to watching animals being killed. But as long as we eat meat, it has to be done. And it is our duty as a society to ensure that the procedure is carried out humanely and with as much dignity as possible.

Society also has to respect religious freedom and rituals, and I don’t have a problem with that. I am, however, uneasy that the laws that require humane killing of animals for meat – particularly that they must be rendered insensible before being slaughtered – do not apply to Jews for their kosher meat and Muslims for halal foods.
It is a fudge we have all lived with, however uneasily, for years, feeling safe in the knowledge that this is very much a niche market. Only last week the Office for National Statistics reported that just four per cent of the British population was Muslim.
Surely, if you want halal or kosher meat, you go to a specialist butcher and everybody else can be confident their meat is produced to more humane standards?
Well, actually, no. That choice has been scandalously taken away from us. Not only are we deliberately not informed if our meat is produced according to religious ritual, many retailers do not even know.
And there is only one real reason: profit. The reality of modern meat production, both here and abroad, is that most animals are killed in vast, modern slaughterhouses.
Once there were small, specialist kosher and halal producers, but now the trade has been taken over by industrial concerns. To cover the increasing demand for halal meat, these corporate slaughterhouses have either had to introduce halal methods or buy in halal meat from specialist butchers.
The choice is either to introduce a separate production line or to take the cost-cutting option of having just one production line. But in this one-size-fits-all world, it’s not the most humane and dignified method of slaughter – the one enshrined in British and EU law – that wins out.
 No, the ‘one-size’ is the less humane method of killing tailored to the religious demands of just four per cent of the population. Since it is not illegal to palm off halal meat on non-Muslims, that is being done on a massive scale. And there is nothing the Government or the EU can or will do about it.
The UK has draconian regulation, far more rigorous than in the rest of Europe. But this was supported by the large slaughterhouses which thought that closing down smaller competition would increase their market share and profit margins. In this country, the combined pressure of regulation and the greed of commercial producers have ensured local butchers are now rare, and local slaughterhouses even rarer. And it is the massive factory abattoir, hidden from sight, that perpetrate these practices.
Thus, commercial greed has found a way of circumventing a law that we, in our ignorance, expect to be obeyed and that we have a right to see obeyed.
We do not expect commercial interests to prevail, on a technicality, over something that many campaigned for – the humane slaughter of our animals.
This is not only commercially wrong, morally it is a disgrace.
* Author and journalist Dr Richard North is a qualified meat inspector and former technical adviser to the Small Abattoirs Association.
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Perhaps some Christian religious group like the Vatican could come up with a franchise brand; meat blessed with holy water ..
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The only option is to find a local butcher, if you can.
Then ask them if the meet you are buying is Halal.
Butchers are more expensive, but at least you know what you are buying.
Supermarkets don't care if they lose a bit of trade, they will just make it up in other things.
But if this happened at a local butchers, they would probably go out of business over night.
Looks like the local butchers will be making a come back, I hope.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1315278/Top-supermarkets-secretly-sell-halal-Sainsburys-Tesco-Waitrose-M-S-dont-tell-meat-ritually-slaughtered.html#ixzz10dlvjBB8
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