Plastic
Sometimes the truth is unpleasant, watching Simon Reeve the other night and he illustrated the lives of the immigrants that work in Almeria in Spain growing vegetables and fruit for many of us. The immigrants live in terrible conditions, very much like slave labour. And why plastic, well the whole area, probably about a 100 kilometres is covered in plastic, the photos of this phenomena speak for themselves....
"Many Spanish workers find it too hot to work and the conditions too brutal so the sweat-houses are staffed mainly by legal and illegal immigrants from Africa and Eastern Europe. One hundred thousand immigrants are thought to work in the greenhouses and many believe it is the lack of workers-rights that help the businesses to be profitable. Many ‘farms’ have no toilets and women are often forced into prostitution. Some workers are also sold contracts to work, which have to be repaid to their bosses. "
How did we arrive here?? Does the EU have blame, do we have blame, or perhaps capitalism. Does our easy comfortable lives hide a terrible truth, a bit like the Morlocks and Eloi in H.G.Wells - The Time Machine, or is this how the human world has always been?
Thoughts run through the head like the wildebeest on African ground, the lion is our consciousness chasing a truth, or is it a truth? We have been raising a song and dance about the terrible carnage in the sea caused by plastic, yet here is a vast landscape of plastic, which ends up choking dried river beds in Spain, did anyone do anything about it?
This morning I heard someone quoting George Bernard Shaw, though to be honest the commentator said it was Gandhi who had said it, but stop quibbling...
Sometimes the truth is unpleasant, watching Simon Reeve the other night and he illustrated the lives of the immigrants that work in Almeria in Spain growing vegetables and fruit for many of us. The immigrants live in terrible conditions, very much like slave labour. And why plastic, well the whole area, probably about a 100 kilometres is covered in plastic, the photos of this phenomena speak for themselves....
"Many Spanish workers find it too hot to work and the conditions too brutal so the sweat-houses are staffed mainly by legal and illegal immigrants from Africa and Eastern Europe. One hundred thousand immigrants are thought to work in the greenhouses and many believe it is the lack of workers-rights that help the businesses to be profitable. Many ‘farms’ have no toilets and women are often forced into prostitution. Some workers are also sold contracts to work, which have to be repaid to their bosses. "
How did we arrive here?? Does the EU have blame, do we have blame, or perhaps capitalism. Does our easy comfortable lives hide a terrible truth, a bit like the Morlocks and Eloi in H.G.Wells - The Time Machine, or is this how the human world has always been?
Thoughts run through the head like the wildebeest on African ground, the lion is our consciousness chasing a truth, or is it a truth? We have been raising a song and dance about the terrible carnage in the sea caused by plastic, yet here is a vast landscape of plastic, which ends up choking dried river beds in Spain, did anyone do anything about it?
This morning I heard someone quoting George Bernard Shaw, though to be honest the commentator said it was Gandhi who had said it, but stop quibbling...
“I choose not to make a graveyard of my body for the rotting corpses of dead animals.”
All very fine, vegetarianism started a good century ago One third of people in this country are not eating meat, or at least cutting down. There are various reasons, not liking it, conscious about eating animals and the environment, and then it has become too expensive to buy.
What puzzles me is that the powers that be know the mess the world gets into and yet does nothing about it, the sin here is surely greed. Could it be that in a hundred years we will become a Mayan wasteland, the jungle grown over civilisation, the ruins poking through the trees. Chernobyl by the way has entered a new phase of animal/vegation life now that humans have left!
We all know, or should know, what plastic is doing to the health of the planet and to ourselves. Yet, there is nothing being done about it. There are very few products that don't have plastic in them. Last week a (small) story was written concerning the plastics in our cereal. Money is money though, and plastics makes the world economy go round
ReplyDeleteThe people of course who need approaching are the manufacturers and litigation forcing them to conform to a different standard. And then a movement by people to question the need for it in everything.
DeleteBoth my friend and I watched these four programmes Thelma and have discussed them over and over again with increasing horror and frustration. I think the last programme, as you say, was probably the most distressing (both Morocco and Spain) and we both said we would never again buy produce from Spain. I looked in my supermarket this morning and almost all the fruit and veg come from there. I had already been upset by the Gaza strip in an early episode but this last episode was worst of all. And then to end up in Monaco with the yachts with helicopters on board and the giant cruise liners - what has happened that the world should be like this.
ReplyDeleteAs Simon said, Pat, in Monaco, there is a stink around here, it is the smell of dirty money! There is a long line of not questioning that goes on from the very top. Notice how Yemen and the starvation of its people is being discussed only because the terrible death of the journalist. brings it to the fore.
DeleteToo much plastic, too many people, too much money, too little money. I have no idea how it's all going to end. I fear for my grandchildren but feel helpless
ReplyDeleteHi Sue, I fear for my grandchildren as well, they are entering a world which seems to concentrate on individualism and not seeing the broader picture, whilst all around the real world slowly disappears.
DeleteI think the world's increasing population, more people living a middle class lifestyle, it all adds up and there always was going to come a time of reckoning. Look at South America and how the jungles are disappearing to turn to farming etc. We are in trouble as a world population.
ReplyDeleteHi Rain, I have just read that you are stopping your more, let us say, political blog which is a shame. I find it difficult to talk about American politics but it doesn't mean I don't read others to gain some knowledge on what I consider to be extraordinary events elsewhere. You talk of people 'not commenting' and you are right that feedback is sometimes necessary but writing if it is in the blood is more important.
ReplyDeletehi and a comment is how I found your blog, which I'll keep checking in to see what you're doing. I will still have Rainy Day Thought. On Wednesdays, my painter friend, Diane Widler Wenzel, gets into her life as an artist and I do write about whatever comes along on Saturdays.
DeleteI think for the politics, it's gotten so bitter in the US that I needed to pay less attention. Our mid-term is next week and maybe it'll simmer down-- although I doubt it, given the level of vitriol on both sides. Being a moderate has me unpopular with both ;).
I hope you check out Thoughts. It sometimes has thinking on cultural issues but just stays out of the party thing, which has become so destructive in the US.
Yes I have subscribed to 'Thoughts'. The problem with politics is that one gets angry, all to no avail as I know. I shall also try and comment more, something I am very lax about. Thank you for getting in touch, it is appreciated.
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