Getting agitated about stuff!

Posters keep inviting me to get involved in Veganuary. Another silly name! Silliness abounds! A chef called Laura Goodman got annoyed about some customers, vegan customers for whom she apparently concocted some fine vegan dishes. Then one of them went and ordered a pizza margherita, complete with mozzarella cheese - definitely not vegan. Late in the evening Laura Goodman posted on social media that she had spiked a vegan’s food. Oh, boy! The mistake of venting your spleen on social media!

She has since stopped working in the restaurant she ran with her partner but still the backlash continues. She and her partner have been receiving death threats. Death threats!?!? Over what people eat!?!? Even though she has explained that there was no hint of meat involved and she only posted because she was angry about the holier-than-thou attitude of some of the vegans, it was too late. I wonder why so many people feel the need to tell others what to eat!

There are more important things to get worked up about. And while I can understand someone being cross that they have been coerced into eating something against their principles or better judgement, I don’t understand how that merits such an extreme reaction as making death threats. Besides, from what I have been given to understand nobody was coerced into eating anything. And besides, once again, how do a bunch of people who believe it is wrong to harm animals, wrong even to exploit them by eating their eggs or drinking their milk, not see the wrong in threatening violence against human beings?

When did it become acceptable to express such ideas, or even to think such things? Even the stuff that we should be getting really angry about - domestic violence, children being abused, innocent victims of political conflicts and wars - is not something we can personally take direct action on. We have justice systems to deal with that. We can protest. We can cajole those responsible into taking action. But we have no right to take justice into our own hands.

And yet people still get voluble and potentially violence about all sorts of things: political opinions, how people dress, what people eat and, possible silliest of all, what colour our passports should be!

I hold my hands up in despair! Colour of passports!!