Why don't Brits grow the f up, instead of creating this entire media frenzy that is bad for the European economy as a whole... Besides -- horse meat is super tasty! Especially smoked!!!
Unfortunately most of the world does not agree with you critique of horse meat. Especially when they payed for something else
I'm a vegetarian that thinks you should be able to buy any sort of meat, including human if the meat was sourced voluntarily (through death of suicide). People need to get over their personal views and realize that coercion against others is not justified because of your irrelevant practices and beliefs.
What is so wrong with horse meat? Why it is ok to eat cow but it is so bad and disgusting to eat a hourse?
Horse meat is often badly cooked, and personally I am not a fan of the flavor. But from a market point, horse meat contaminates a lot faster than beef, and people pay for beef they expect to eat beef - - - Updated - - - Horse meat is often badly cooked, and personally I am not a fan of the flavor. But from a market point, horse meat contaminates a lot faster than beef, and people pay for beef they expect to eat beef
So the problem is about triking buyers, but moralizing attempts and sensationalist articles are kinda unnececary and wrong for me.
So complaining about mislabeled food is being immature? Its immature to expect 100% beef when you are told you are buying 100% beef? Is it immature to complain about false ingredient labels?
First of all people were not buying horse meat, secondly most people here do not fancy eating horses, thirdly given that the meat was not as said there is reason to believe there is criminal activity which obviously raises safety worries. Yes, I have read how you in Belgium enjoy eating your horses but I have to inform you that you also have removed from your shelves meat that claimed to be beef but was instead beef and horse or only horse.
People are simply complaining about being defrauded. Should we allow ourselves to be defrauded? Would you?
But when people are simply complaining about their own internal problems, it's simply stupid to do it at the international level. So quick were you to find the one to blame from across the continent. Yet it turned out your own English distributors were the sneaks who mixed up the legally exported horse meat with beef and branded it as beef. Some idiotic team from some idiotic newspaper of yours already came to Romania to investigate and just as they arrived an update on the scandal revealed the truth. Clowns. Those who say that private press should be allowed to say anything they like just because it's supposed to be a democracy are suave pedophiles. If you allow newspapers like The Telegraph etc to twist reality in the way they do, tell me, in what way is a country any different than a communist 1984-like country? The only difference is that the one fabricating reality is not the state but the private sector...on the economic scale it is those extremely deregulated models that lead you to the same mirror result that nationalization of reality does in 1984. I am an adept of the Horseshoe Theory. Your economy, your big companies including the newspapers are so far on the economic right that they touch with the extreme left. In communism the state controls the people and all the economy. In extreme deregulation the private sector is stronger than the state and controls the people and all the economy. You think a comparison with communism is that much of an unrealistic joke? Well let me tell you that communism in Britain doesn't necessarily & guaranteed have to lead to any kind of poverty, hunger or oppression. Quite the contrary. Why not play with all cards on the table and give it a try officially? You may even be the country that makes it work for the first time in history! Karl Marks lived and died in London for a reason... Maybe it didn't work in other countries because in fact it was purpose-made for England. Maybe bring the hammer & sickle back to surprise home! Remember that when Karl Marx wrote his economic version of Harry Potter, the British Empire was all around the world, its elites seemed like they would replace all non-British elites on the planet and that the empire was destined to rule the world. And destined to rule it forever. Now that you look at Karl Marx from his historic context, this idea doesn't sound that bizarre. Of course he didn't mention the word British because he would have faced opposition and aversion... but think about it... what other empire was that strong in the 19th century? The Chinese empire was a faint shadow. The Ottomans were in full decline. The Russian Empire was nowhere near being as developed technologically. Maybe the United States but they too were in the Civil War period and as a former British colony with many Anglo-Saxon traits seemed close in terms of values to the British. The British Empire in itself wasn't even an empire. It was more of a world structure resembling that Marxist statelessness model in which great chunks of the world were turned into non-countries. The only difference is that those non-countries were resource fields and the flow of diamonds and rubies was one way: to London. It makes sense that Karl Marx thought it would be better for the world if this was equally shared between all involved. People today so much associate communism with Russia & Eastern Europe but in fact Karl Marx was a Western European and the East just happened to adopt it out of the blue thanks to its popularity back then.
People don't take me seriously for the second half of the above post, I'm just joking like I sometimes do in posts about the British.
Apart from being defrauded, the horse meat is not necessarily fit for human consumption, even as horse. It may contain carcinogenic drugs used in treatment of horse ailments, and may even be animal-grade meat diverted into the human food chain. Far from being a British problem, there is a crazy Europe-wide network where meats travel between several countries for processing into ready-meals.
Oh do shut up Jan! Brits are not upset about horse meat, they simply believe if something is advertised as beef, it should come from a freaking cow! - - - Updated - - - Kinda ironic, considering your location buddy.
As some other people reiterated, the problem is that people were expecting to eat beef, not horse. Also, as to why a majority of people are not OK with eating horse meat, part of the answer could be because most people see horses as companions. We keep cows to eat but we keep horses to ride. Even in horse shows, they are an emblem of strength and beauty, not of something delicious to cook and eat. It's about culture and social context, not so much of the logical fact that they could be a good source of protein.
What has location got to do with anything? I'm an outsider. I saw that place as a visitor (studied a year there) and formed my opinions. That's what outsiders always do about other places. Though it's more ironic when others start considering locations they've never been to... Come here and you will see infrastructure. Btw we have more green machines than you (around 60% of all public transportation uses electric engines, something you never bothered with). During communism it was an industrialized country independent of USSR. Mass production lines of tanks, trucks, locomotives, our own brand of car and rover all these exported to China, Argentina, Iran, India etc. Of course engines were nothing like Rolls Royce, technology was more modest but those vehicles still did their job and as long as there's still someone out there who needs your exports you can't be doing that bad. Why not pay 'my location' a visit? Once here you can see that despite the very low wages unemployment is lower here than there. Everyone has got a nice car and a home and.......a job!
Like this? (click on link) Romania has a 7.2% Unemployment rate which is only marginally better than the UK's 7.8% then factor in the number of Romanians who have left romania to take jobs elsewhere in Europe. Romania has 265 private cars per 1000 people and the UK has 535 I would check your facts before making claims, especially ones that are intended to claim that your country is better than someone elses
You should also factor in the number one great fact: Romanian population is aging. There are more old people than young people here, by far. Because of the poor economy many people don't afford children, in many cases none, and therefore there are way more pensioners. So most unemployed people of Romania are unemployed because they are pensioners and are over 65. Just walk on the streets of bigger cities and you will see how many old people there are. In turn, youth unemployment is a light year better than yours. Wages extremely low but people still sustain on it and don't demand benefit I never said it's better than any other country. Maybe only slightly doing better than Bulgaria. But some facts are real facts and I am right about what I say. I was just telling Leffe it's not the dump place that your media portrays. Your Mail link that you quoted shows the Mail is a bit more objective than other UK media and says quite correctly: The Mail makes it clear enough that the Gypsy problem is not a Romanian problem but a European problem. Gypsies are not Romanians or Bulgarians or Slovaks or anything European. They originate in Northern India and after 5 centuries they continue to seem unadaptable no matter the place. In fact I think it is them who do not want to adapt and never wanted to. We are not the only ones who sealed off a gypsy community in a ghetto. The Slovaks have done it too with some of their gypsies. Gypsies are everywhere and they are a troublesome minority. On the other hand it is true that we are very racist and do not want to give them jobs. But what can you do...that's the way we are. So it's no wonder our gypsy minorities leave for Western Europe and then it is us who complain that they make us a very very bad image. It is a vicious circle that I do not know where it started. When gypsies migrated to Europe about 5 centuries ago, they first went straight to Western Europe. But you were so kind and human rights oriented towards them that you Western Europeans together with your authorities used to cut their nose or their ears as a mark that they are gypsy. So they fled towards Eastern Europe where the Orthodox Church was a lot more human and peaceful than your Inquisition. The Eastern Church has never had inquisition or anything like it. You did. The gypsies were meant for you form the very beginning yet you burned them at stake and mutilated them. They fled from you to us. And now you tell us that we are racist and don't give them enough rights. Why not go read on who the gypsies are.
Where did you get this info btw? Show me your source and be specific. 265 sounds kind of low. I strongly doubt that this is true, especially if you include the rich who have more than 1 car per family member. 535 is also low for the UK. Your source must be several years old.
Exactly. There are two problems, and the objection to eating horse itself is neither of them. Some people would prefer not to eat it, of course, and it's not a meat widely eaten in the UK, but that's not the point of this particular issue at all. Firstly, there is simple fraud in labelling - some people might choose to eat horse (it wouldn't bother me particularly - I'd happily give a horse burger a try, as long as know the meat was produced to the appropriate safety standards), but if they buy something labelled as beef, beef is obviously what should be in it. That's not different from other meat. It's a matter of choice which meats (if any) to eat, but labels need to be honest to allow for that personal choice. Secondly, there is the issue of the origins and quality of the horse meat in question, and whether it is fit for human consumption. There are exceptionally high levels of traceability and quality standards for beef. Since this particular horsemeat has already entered the food chain illegally via the fraudulent labelling, how can we be sure that the horsemeat has come from a reputable producer, producing to all of the relevant safety and health standards, and just as safe to eat as beef is supposed to be? Obviously, until it is all traced (if that is possible), we can't. As for the international issue, yes it is absolutely an international (EU) problem, nit just a UK problem. Many of the processed food items where horse has been discovered were shipped to the UK as complete packaged ready-prepared meals from factories elsewhere in the EU. Some horse contamination has also been found from UK sources, but that doesn't cover the ready meals being shipped in from manufacturers elsewhere to be sold in the UK, which is where this problem was first identified - they weren't sourcing all of their meat from the UK, by any means. It is not just an internal UK problem at all. The UK was far too quick to point the finger at Romania, of course, as if there were something 'dodgy' going one there - no argument there. Romania is a large producer of horse meat, of course, and it is possible that some of that meat has found its way into these pre-packed meals (also possible that the source is elsewhere, of course), but that is certainly not to say that the fraud was committed in Romania at all. The chain of supply for these ready meals is complicated, and there are any number of places where the fraud could have happened. The important thing is to try to identify where the problem has occurred so that any criminal activity can be stopped (and arrangements made to prevent such fraud in future), and the criminals dealt with, wherever they are. Pointing fingers at a particular country doesn't solve anything, and only causes an unhelpful negative reaction. I also thought that the Romanian government were too quick to be effectively saying 'it can't possibly be from here at all' before any real investigation could have taken place (and it's not impossible that some criminal activity has taken place there - there are criminals everywhere, and that fact in itself is no reflection on the country at all), but I can hardly blame them for reacting in that way - how else are people likely to react? What should have happened is people and governments talking to each other, rather than via the media, working together to identify the issue instead of playing the blame and response game. Those are the issues in this story, not just the fact that the UK doesn't traditionally eat horse meat (it doesn't traditionally eat Ostrich, either, but plenty of people are more than willing to give that a try if it's on offer!). In fact, if anything, it could mean that people in the UK might be more receptive to trying a bit of horse in the long term, once the labelling and fraud mess has been sorted - a surprising number of people in the UK seem to be saying that they aren't bothered about the idea of eating horse, as long as they know that is what they are doing (and as long as it's been passed as fit for human consumption).
So its wrong because its not your experience? Sure you are from a wealthy familly and so are your friends.You extrapolate that the whole country is like you? WHy should I trust you over government statistics. You have made up stuff before, after all. You have tried to boast to us that Romania has higher car ownership than the UK ("everyone has a car"). Why not use that expensive education your parents have bought and google " Car ownership per capita in Europe" I'm not anti Romanian at all, far fro it, but I'm not going to put up with your absurd claims.
Ok man I believe you and it actually makes sense but even so the main wound is still there: what's the difference when the far fewer younger taxpayers pay the pensions for so many retired people...? Whether the old count or not it's actually just some purely paper stats we're talking about. But given they are as many as they are it is a great imbalance that the government has much trouble coping with. Had the young/ old population been balanced there would have been much more subsidies for the still nationalized employers here and therefore way more jobs. Some of our national companies and means of production are now in appaling condition with great budgetary deficits despite the jobs that have been cut recently because of the crisis. We are still in the transition stage from the socialist system and we still have a long way to go. The old socialist mechanism is still present in a great part of the economy and is clashing with the incompatible new capitalism that we are working hard to embrace. As long as all these (national companies have to be funded with taxpayer money) this young/ old population problem is still a very bad imbalance. So let us see. Show me where I said such things. LOL everyone can see I didn't remotely imply that. It's just your fear of being marginalized, insulted and minimalized. Relax. My claim about housing is as true till the end of time. That article of yours covers just a little northern city. And gypsies by nature have always liked to roam & travel. The socialist state gave them flats like they gave everyone else but after 1989 most sold their property at the new, capitalist, much much higher price and despite the great effort of the socialist state to have integrated them they continued to travel and wasted much of their money on the roads and continued to do small business of their own style. They did not want to integrate. Despite living in Romania/Bulgaria/Slovakia/The Czech Republic, they never wanted to live like Romanians/Bulgarians etc. They never wanted to be Romanians and never respected our European ways. So don't give me that bullshyt. You know that communism & socialism gives the same rights to everyone regardless of race or ethnicity. Yet it was their choice to be like that. And now that mayor of Baia Mare simply removed them from the European streets of Baia Mare because, as the article says, gypsy children were playing naked on the main streets. Romanians don't like that. Gypsies in their turn never wanted to conform and admit that they have to respect the ways of the country that houses them. They do not like to work like us. They like to do small business, mostly unofficial, and follow no rules, have no boss and pay no tax. The Mail hits the nail on the head in regards to this. It mentions that Craica slum, the ghetto where the gypsies have been sealed off from the rest by the mayor. I'm happy to see that there actually still is objectivity in the UK press: But you should also look at how many extremely rich gypsies there are here. Many of them gangsters. Many of them. In some smaller towns they have mansions bigger than the city hall. Easy for you to talk. You don't understand the social hardships us Polish, Slovaks, Romanians, Bulgarians etc who lived under the Soviet Union have. You westerners only read it in books. You Mr. Lecturer haven't done your homework here. Despite the many books you may have read on the subject the final aim of communism & socialism is the people and their lives. Mr. Lecturer I can give you lessons on how socialism works at the level of the people and the common individual and the subtleties of common life. Oh really? Sorry my friend but I'll have to accuse you of dishonesty & hypocrisy. Even your Mail link mentions: So it seems indeed they are more integrated there than they are here. So were they during Carol and Ferdinand's reign in Romania. But then the Soviet Union swallowed us whole and by 1989 people were so impoverished and desperate that corruption flourished and the very mobile gypsies spearheaded it by bringing a large contribution to it. Bu UK was never under the Soviet Union so talk more moderate because you don't know what you're talking about. Seriously. Gypsies used to have their nose and ears cut by westerner hands. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. Authorities couldn't care less about their condition. Whether it was the inquisition or not, well, such petty details don't matter. What matters is that you did it. Admit it.
Oh please LEARN SOME HISTORY. Yes We have had Gypsies since the 15th century and they came through central Europe from the Balkans to get here VIA what is now Romania and Bulgaria. Here is a nice map showing you their movements. Its in Italian so you should have no problem reading it. Or read the whole article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people your inventions are now just petty details? So first its the inquisition murdering thosuands and now its having 'ears and ears' cut off. Rather a difference. Ceaceascu's government was aligned against the Soviet union. You seem to believe that Gypsies arrived in Roman After 1989?
My richness is just in your imagination. My parents are divorced, my father is an alcoholic, I live with my mother and our condition is rather modest. You must have read between lines. Show me where I said that... Just show me... Also... if you are that confident in the validity of your source why not show it? The simple fact that you believe such thing as anti-Romanians can exist reveals enough of what's your subconscious perception of us.
