Some Of My Best Friends Are...

Just in case you haven't been anywhere near a newspaper, TV or internet terminal for the past few days, the dominant news of the week has been the insistence of the Catholic Church that its adoption and fostering agencies will not place any children in vegetarian families. The head of the Catholic church in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, has warned that the agencies may close rather than comply with the requirement to accept vegetarian couples as adoptive families.

The Great Leader and the Minister for John Prescott's Former Responsibilities, both Catholics themselves, have indicated their support for the church on this issue and their desire to seek a compromise solution. Pressure on Tony was stepped up when the Anglican Archbishops of Canterbury and York wrote to him stressing that eating meat is at the core of British family life and the insistence that children should be placed with carrot-nibblers risked forcing people of religious faith out of valuable community work.

Typically, the Labour wannabes all piled in to see who could make the most hostile and undermining comments. The ship may not be sinking yet, but it's listing badly and having John Reid, Charlie Falconer, Peter Hain, Alan Johnson and Harriet Harman all rush to the port side doesn't exactly help ensure that it won't end up on Branscombe Beach.

Now I want to make it clear from the outset that I'm not prejudiced.

Some of my best friends are vegetarians and I have no objection to them holding vegetarian beliefs or practising their perversions behind closed dining room doors, despite the fact I personally find the concept of a meat-free diet absolutely disgusting. Linda and I are very fond of the odd truffle (and Augustus has been known to knock back some truffes purée) but they are no substitute for sirloin steak, veal, roast beef and foie gras.

I don't want to try to convert these weirdos to eating meat (actually this is not strictly true as I have made two converts in the past, one of them succumbing to an entire crispy aromatic duck at an eat-all-you-can Chinese buffet in Camden Town). So I don't expect them to try to dictate what I am allowed to eat.

Therefore, if the City of York bans foie gras, which is an integral part of my family diet, I will personally be boycotting York. Thankfully, after I made my views clear to them yesterday, the Council seems to have backed down, presumably in fear of my launching a Yorkshire boycott campaign from my blog (Yorkshire, Boycott, gedit?).

If my memory is correct, York Uni Labour Club was riddled with vegetarianism as well as Trotskyism, so the news comes as no surprise (cue angry comments from Duncan, Lee, Janine, Matt Carter and other York alumini). There is a considerable amount of research data to suggest that vegetarianism is a 'gateway' condition - you start with an innocent lettuce leaf or a bite of radish and before long you become a fully-fledged Maoist.

One of the few meals I can remember eating in York was at a planning meeting held in the upstairs of the Rubicon vegetarian restaurant to get Jim Murphy the NOLS nomination for NUS President (he was allegedly the "left" candidate!). Luckily his campaign was better than the food.

Anyway, back to the topic. We don't make foie gras in this country - its production was banned years ago. France produces 80% of the world total volume, so it's not British geese and ducks that are being force fed - it's bloody French ones. So why the hell are the RSPCA and a host of other British whingers complaining about it? Personally I can think of a few Froggies whose throats I'd like to stick a tube down and pump corn mash into - Dominique de Villepin and Brigitte Bardot for a start.

Just look at this nonsense. I wonder how much they paid that old hack Roger "eyebrow" Moore to pretend to be upset. Nice plump geese and ducks look pretty good to me. If I lived in a house rather than in a flat I'd fence off part of my garden, set up some cages and make my own foie gras. Mmmm! Yummy!