Pig Farmers Rejoice!

I really struggled to come up with a suitable title for this post.

BBC Breakfast this morning ran a report on an NHS trust in Derbyshire that had gotten into bed with local farmers. On the surface it all made infinite sense ... buy local meat instead of importing from South America at a premium.

Millions of pounds would be saved by the NHS and local farmers with their backs against the wall would be given a new lease of life. That sounds like a "win-win" in anybody's book!

Ironically, it also underscores just how lost our health system has become.

Here on national television was an idea so apparently clever that it was perfectly logical to suggest that it be rolled out to NHS trusts across the nation. And yet virtually everyone that viewed the report would have missed the saddest irony of all.

Our "health care" system continues to feed its patients with the very same food that got most of them there in the first place.

Even our intrepid reporter apologised that his report was being filmed against a backdrop of two majestically beautiful cows. As I watched the scenes that followed, I could only shake my head at just how lost we have all become.

First, a pig farm, profitable now for the first time in a decade ... graphic scenes of pigs rooting around in the muck followed by workers slicing ham and tying off pork sausages.

Yum!

From there it was the precictable slow walk through first the abbatoir and then the butchery ... a team of human hyaenas grunting clinically amongst the quivering slabs of gore.

And all I could think about was that most people watching were absolutely unaffected, quietly stroking their panting labradors beside them, content in the knowledge that they could continue to receive the standard of care that was their due.

All was right in the world.

A new government was rising like a phoenix from the ashes of political confusion in the United Kingdom. And when (not if) they got sick, at least they could continue to depend on a hearty menu and a litany of drugs to mask their symptoms and prolong their vacant existence.

If your instincts are screaming at you too, I invite you to consider a cleaner, gentler, purer alternative.