Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/11/20/uk-government-votes-that-anima.html
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Next step: deny that anyone who is receiving government benefits is capable of feeling pain or experiencing emotion.
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Unable to vote and/or donate = incapable of feeling emotion and pain.
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They know animals feel no pain or emotion because they themselves feel no pain or emotion.
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And so it begins. The Brexit ‘deregulation’ to make us competitive in the race to the bottom, being the only place the Brexiteers ever wanted to take us.
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UK government votes that animals are incapable of feeling emotion and pain
The most honest statement ever made about tRump.
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So reality is now subject to the opinions of the U.K. government? I suppose next week they will vote that water is not wet to teach it a lesson.
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Does it really matter? Are they going to make the conditions of farmed animals any worse, really? It’s not like animals are treated as if they can feel pain and have emotion anyways.
Whenever I read this, and then a post elsewhere that touches on eating meat, it feels pretty disingenuous. Enjoy the upcoming torture and slaughter of millions of turkeys and then get mad about this. Sure.
It’s like complaining about trophy hunting while eating meat. They’re both done for fun when there are very easy ways not to do them.
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Willful ignorance. The new normal.
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But is sentience the same thing as emotion and fear?
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I feel that this is an implicit denial of evolution, and it’s an explicit denial of neuroscience. Humans and other animals share the same pain receptors.
And don’t get me started on the amygdala.
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Something worse than the flat-earthers… and just within a half hour of each other!
I’m afraid of what’s next.
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It’s gotten to a Trump-like state here in the UK…
Any time i feel the Tories are close to hitting the bottom of the barrel for basic human morality/decency, you then see them breaking out the metaphorical industrial digging tools to go lower…
I am so very much done with this cesspit of a country, if i had a viable route to emigrate i’d have left already…
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You’re right, it may not matter when it comes to the treatment of animals. However, it does matter politically. A government denying basic and obvious facts signifies to the public that it doesn’t care about truth, and therefore, it doesn’t care about justice. It’s one thing for a government to strive for justice and occasionally fail, but it’s so much more horrific when a government flat out disregards justice altogether.
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I does not help the recognize emotion and pain in animals. You have to act accordingly and most people don’t.
Need proof? Read the comments from this boingboing post: https://boingboing.net/2017/08/23/firefighters-rescue-farm-pigle.html where people are having a good laugh about animals being killed. No joke is stupid enough.
Just sad.
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They would think otherwise if they bothered to wash more often… or at all.
Ok, wait a minute. They didn’t create and approve a bill saying “animals don’t have sentience”, they declined to include language to the effect that they do in the EU Exit bill. I don’t understand why that bill would be the proper place to put scientific conclusions one way or another. And voting against such an amendment isn’t voting against sentience, it’s voting against making an affirmative statement in that context. If I wrote a bill to enforce Net Neutrality, and somebody wanted to amend it to enshrine in law a statement that cheese is delicious, my resistance to that amendment isn’t anti-cheese, and it certainly would be a big crock of shit to have Boing Boing put up a headline saying “Government votes that cheese is terrible”.
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… as opposed to plants or what?
How about apes?
Because the EU already incorporated such a conclusion, and as members the UK would have de facto been on the same page, but now the UK can write its own script it has to decide which former EU regulatory and other principles and rulings it will continue with. I hate to use such a hackneyed phrase but this is a thin-ended wedge. As I said: ‘And so it begins’. Wait until they decide, just as one example, the working time directive is not suitable for our dynamic competitive economy - and there will be many other examples yet to come - as they will similarly not think that a conclusion/opinion that being forced to work more than 48 hours a week is a suitable thing for a government bill, either.
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