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The Rainbow Vegetarian Café in Cambridge, England, has announced that it will not accept the new £5 polymer notes, introduced by the Bank of England in September. Last week the British vegan community discovered that the notes contain trace amounts of beef tallow, which is animal fat, and are therefore unacceptable by their cruelty-free standards. A heated online controversy has resulted, including a petition asking the Bank to remove tallow from the polymer.
The Rainbow Café's owner, Sharon Meijland, told The Telegraph that her stance was announced last Wednesday, at the end of a BBC radio interview on the unrelated topic of Christmas food.
"We sponsor the Vegan Fair and announced on Wednesday we would not be accepting the £5 notes because they are dubious ethically. We have been providing food for vegans for 30 years and have tried to be as ethical as we possibly can...This is not just a restaurant, it's a restaurant where tiny details like this are really important."
Is any of our money cruelty-free?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @05:28PM
That moment your emotions caused a decision that inconveniences the people you rely on to survive is when you stopped being an impassioned idealist trying to make the world a better place, and just became an asshole.
That's the false narrative of dispassionate decision making at work.
Nobody makes decisions free of emotion, especially not decisions that are wrapped up in personal identity.
If you believe yourself to be immune to it, that's just self-deception.
In fact, Michael Lewis (of Moneyball, The Big Short, etc fame) is running a PR tour right now for his new book at that examines exactly that phenomenon, its called "the undoing project."
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Tuesday December 06 2016, @05:42PM
The key wasn't just the emotions making the decision, but the qualifier about the people you depend on.
That being said, your book sounds intriguing.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @06:06PM
> but the qualifier about the people you depend on.
And that's just as specious.
No, really.
If they inconvenienced people they didn't depend on, then they would be accused of being bad citizens, uncaring about the public welfare. We see it every time there is a public protest.
Support from the people you depend on is the point of having people you depend on. Its practically the definition of having people you depend on. If that support was zero-cost there would be no dependence. Your thesis comes across as very reductive and transactional - that you don't support the people you love because you love them, only for what they can give you and once their needs from you are greater than your needs from them, they need to cut that shit out and conform to your expectations.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Tuesday December 06 2016, @07:24PM
The alternative would be to NOT inconvenience people, or rather more realistically, minimize the amount of inconvenience you do to those people. If you really loved them, I'd think you'd want to avoid being a burden on them as much as possible.
You're right about the zero-cost thing. I was not considering any sort of initial dependence upon a person an inconvenience. I suppose I should have said "further inconvenience".
The problem is that I have a general sense of one-sidedness about it. Ranty anecdote time: She was a vegetarian, then after she moved in, suddenly went in with the vegan bullshit. Singlehandedly, she caused the monthly food budget to go up 350-400% (200% people, fake vegan food roughly 150%-200% the price of real food). I had to cut back on things I enjoy doing significantly as a result of it, which is fine, but then later, when I told her that, with her other bills on top of that, I was struggling to save anything, and had already cut out about everything I could. I told her that I couldn't afford to sustain her, and she needed to get a job. She said she was going to get one, but never did. That became a fight, and she begrudgingly (after I showed her the numbers and invited her to find something else I could cut out) found a job that barely covers her personal bills, self-righteously citing that she "doesn't need that much money to be happy," nevermind that I'm still paying for everything else. Now she's "too busy working to help with housework" and gets mad at me for not doing more, though I work 20-30 hours more a week than her, and cook almost every night.
I don't like keeping score, but that one event stuck in my mind so vividly, even now. Just the total ungratefulness of everything I'd been trying to do already as well as the total resentment about needing to do something other than sit on her ass all day long. Prior to that, I'd never bothered her about the job. Never demanded it of her. So in the case of my anecdote, I'd say yeah, she needs to cut that shit out and conform to my expectations. I'm struggling under the load. She needs to pull HER fucking weight and help out. Maybe that makes me the bad guy. If it does, I don't really mind.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @07:56PM
Poor bastard. You forgot the cardinal rule. If it flies, floats, or fucks it's cheaper to rent. You've taken on ownership responsibilities.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @08:04PM
> The alternative would be to NOT inconvenience people, or rather more realistically, minimize the amount of inconvenience you do to those people.
Anything that challenges the status quo will cause inconvenience. If it did not cause inconvenience, then it would be the status quo.
You seem to at least partially recognize that because you are now softening your position to "minimize." But that is a completely undefined definition, your version of minimal isn't necessarily going to be anyone else's definition.
> Ranty anecdote time:
I am not even going to read past that because your personal relationship problems are not a basis for a general principle. You trying to make them into such a principle is a variation on the appeal to authority fallacy because it lets you abdicate responsibility for working things out with this person in favor of unilaterally declaring them wrong and you right.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Tuesday December 06 2016, @08:16PM
Why does anyone's definition of "minimize" need to be consistently defined across any set of people? For any given person, if you have principles, and your principles inconveniences that person sufficiently, that person will not like you and go elsewhere.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @08:30PM
> Why does anyone's definition of "minimize" need to be consistently defined across any set of people?
Because you've offered it up as a general principle for when to judge if someone is in the wrong.
If it can't be consistently defined, then its not a general principle. Its situational.
(Score: 1) by cmdrklarg on Tuesday December 06 2016, @08:59PM
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday December 06 2016, @09:02PM
You might consider getting a new girlfriend. Money breaks up most marriages, and it sounds like you're not doing well on that front already. If she's behaving this way now, how do you think she'll behave when she thinks she owns you? Cut your losses and move on.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Wednesday December 07 2016, @12:47PM
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 1) by Francis on Wednesday December 07 2016, @04:00AM
Veganism is 100% about emotions. The difference in health between eating a little bit of meat/animal products and eating none at all is pretty significant.
It doesn't take much meat to make sure that you're diet is nutritionally sound, but trying to construct a diet that's vegan and nutritionally sound is incredibly difficult. I used to go to a college where there were a ton of vegans and they always looked malnourished and usually were. I have known a vegan powerlifter who appeared to be in great health, so it would appear to be possible to get the necessary nutrients without the animal products, but I have to wonder if it would be affordable for people who aren't independently wealthy and don't have advanced degrees in nutrition to accomplish.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 07 2016, @01:41PM
Or as seen from the other side:
Veganism is 100% about morality. The difference in morality between committing even one murder and not murdering at all is pretty significant.