Gwyneth's personal blog

Wednesday 6th May, cold night, same sun through overcast in the morning, still no swifts.

I've had a bit of a sniffle all this week, touch of a runny nose, watery eyes. D'you think I should report myself to the government?

What's that Gordon old chap? Did someone whisper in your shell-like that now would be a good time to talk-up a pandemic, cut down on the space for talking about hm, other things? Cram the early evening news with long discussions about coughs and sneezes spread diseases?

No, this is something intelligent to say about swine flu: and something intelligent to be done about the disgusting global mess from which our tasty cheap food is extracted. It's factory farming of course. Remember that Bernard Matthews (amusing slip corrected here, corporate meatgrinder the dirty shameless old comedian eh?) thing about turkeys and bird flu, two years ago? What happened about that? Nothing, except the advertising got a greenwash, and here we are again. "Smithfield farms of Virginia say there's no sign of swine flu at their huge Mexican facility" Local reports beg to differ. . . Unsafe, filthy, hideously cruel. One day there might be real trouble. No, there already is real trouble. This is the real trouble, the death by inches that we're all aware of, and that we whisper about to ourselves in code, through all our longings for a proper big scare. Please God, we have no willpower, send us a big, terrifying pandemic, it's our only hope. . .

I stick to outdoor reared, local reared pork products, of course. And so do you, dear reader, I am sure. All the cool restaurants are doing it! (or pretending to, bless em, the H&C trade doesn't change). But suppose you can't afford that, or suppose you're one of the well-off helpless, and can't get it together to do anything but fatten Corporate Food shareholders and trust, implicitly, the early evening news? Then your only hope is that people with more resistance will make an impression, and world food production will change its ways. From each according to their abilities. Here's AVAAZ on the subject, check it out:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/swine_flu_pandemic