The Horror that is Hartshead Meats

 

Tears were streaming down my face as I walked over the hill to join the peaceful protesters outside Hartshead Meats yesterday (8th May 2026).

The place is a kosher and halal meat slaughter house; the actual abattoir being hidden inside the confines of a scrap metal company – P. Mullaney and Sons Ltd. I, along with all the other locals, had no idea this was an abattoir. Been here since 2011 it seems. A river of blood and gore flowing down the road towards the village of Mossley, was what alerted us. An investigator managed to get inside the killing shed and filmed what was going on. His video is too graphic for most people. Cows being kicked in the head, screaming, hung upside down and dismembered while still conscious. This is animal torture and is a criminal offence under the Law. This goes way beyond kosher slaughter. Once seen, this video footage cannot ever be unseen. The company is now employing numerous security guards on the gate. The place is a hell-hole, hidden in plain sight.

As I join the other protesters, I am aware of a deathly hush hanging over the entire hillside, reminding me of the time I walked through the concentration camp at Dachau. There, Jews and political prisoners were inhumanely treated and killed. This place is exuding the same atmosphere; cold and subliminally threatening. Wouldn’t you think that a race of people who had suffered so much trauma in their past, would have more empathy for the un-necessary suffering of other sentient beings? Maybe Netanyahu has founded a new religion.

A police car is cruising by every half an hour or so, policing the peaceful, chatting to the security guards, disregarding the reports of criminal breaches of animal welfare inside.

There’s a constant stream of articulated lorries looking like they are trying to purposely knock protesters down. One nearly got me as I stumbled trying to get off the public road and scramble up onto the uneven, narrow grass verge bordered by barbed wire. A fellow protester grabbed me, pulling me up and holding me tight until the lorry had passed, its huge cab turning only an inch away from my face. It was terrifying.

The guy who brought the unbelievable animal cruelty to light, Joey Carbstrong, had been arrested the night before and all his computer, mobile etc . . . seized. Who the hell is the criminal here ????. People have written to their MPs and all got the same standard letter in response, no matter where in the country they live. Basically saying, UK slaughter regulations do not apply to religious slaughter. For kosher - animals are not required to be stunned at all. For halal – they are required to be partially stunned. The replies state that there are no plans to change these religious exemptions in the future. I wonder how many people are aware that full stunning ramps up production costs and so most of the meat now being supplied to schools, hospitals and supermarkets, is unmarked halal slaughtered meat. This needs to be properly labelled so consumers can choose whether to eat animals that have died screaming in terror and pain. 

Now I know, even animals killed in a properly UK regulated abattoir, suffer, especially when the people doing the killing (men usually) are attracted to the job because of their own psychopathic, violent tendencies. But the suffering is nowhere near as prolonged nor as intense as religiously slaughtered animals. 

We will never stop humans eating meat, there will always be abattoirs, but we need to stop the barbaric practices and have proper, enforced regulation. Currently, there is virtually no monitoring being done and companies like P. Mullaney & Sons, who by the way turned over £75million pounds last year, can cut corners and do exactly as they please.

By the time I got back home, I was totally traumatised and feeling terribly helpless.

It is now the following day and I seem to be in a weird sort of nether world. Outside my window, the world is unusually quiet underneath a bruised, grey sky. It’s as if time has stopped so that I can reassemble all the pieces of me that were broken and scattered yesterday. I feel hopeless and depressed. Respect for humans and animals is mostly gone and we are governed by a threatening bureaucracy that cares only for money. Corruption, complacency and incompetence hold sway at every level of our society. The more money you have, the more power you have and the more protection you get. Perhaps it’s always been like that, it’s just more visible now.

I would add that my conscience has kicked me in my hypocritical head and I stopped eating meat the moment I saw the river of blood and gore. I have always loved farm animals – I greet cows by mutual blowing up noses, and I sing to sheep while apologising for eating them! Not anymore. I have no intention of ever eating meat again. So, I urge everyone to look at Joey Carbstrong’s video – just search for his name on YouTube or Facebook. Hopefully, if enough people give up buying meat, these poor, cursed creatures will not be born in the first place.

Note: so they can retain their star rating, the company has blocked anyone posting negative reviews on Google. I did try giving one star but was blocked. I have also written to my MP, Debbie Abrahams. You never know, something may come of it!

Has Netanyahu changed the world's perception?

 

I’ve been wanting to comment on the situation in Gaza for a long time but have refrained because I was never sure whether I knew all the facts. But video footage verified by respected journalists, cannot be disbelieved no matter what Netanyahu says. 

But this post isn’t about the horror that has been largely ignored by the western world, it’s about how my subconscious perception of Jews has changed. And if mine has changed, then the chances are that the world view is changing too. And please note, this is NOT an antisemitic post. It is merely a discourse on my changing conscious perception.

I work with dreams and have written many books on how to explore and interpret one’s own dreams. In ‘Working the Night Shift’ I included one of my own dreams from the 1990s; a dream that featured a Jewish woman. The association to the concept of a Jewish person I made at the time was someone who is brave and respectful but someone who has suffered greatly. Another dream about a Jewish man cropped up in 2010 and was included in my book ‘Dreaming Yourself Aware’. Here the associations were subjugation, disempowerment and victimisation – all aspects believed by me to be embodied within the concept of a Jewish person. This belief was reflected in my consciousness – I have always had enduring empathy for Jews because of what they, and their ancestors, suffered during WW2. I now feel really sad to report that all that has changed. What they suffered at the hands of Hamas was terrible and inhumane but, an eye for an eye ends up with both the aggressor and the victim blinded. 

In one of my other books about my visit to Dachau (2021), I wrote in the epilogue;

‘We may feel helpless and ineffectual when we are fed the daily news of slaughter, but there is something we can do.

We can teach our children to be empathetic and compassionate. We can nurture them so that when they grow to adulthood, they don’t need religion or political ideology to make sense of their life, nor to feel secure in the world.

We can show them what happens when intolerance and injustice prevail or when religious or national fanaticism tramples humanity under foot. We can teach them that violence breeds hatred and intolerance and only leads to more violence.’

All I can do now is hope that the younger generations all over the world, grow up heeding those words. Yet, I don't see how a child that manages to survive this current horror, will ever be able to forgive.

I just cannot understand how a people, whose ancestors suffered genocide in Hitler’s concentration camps, can commit the same crime in an even more inhumane way by reducing a country to rubble and slowly and systematically starving children to death. It’s horrific and I hope the world never forgets. And I should add, that my heart goes out to all those Jews who disagree with what Netanyahu has done because they too will suffer the consequences of a changing world view.

 ‘Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.’  Martin Luther King

Charles in Red

 

This new portrait of King Charles has prompted many discussions (and arguments) on Facebook. I find that fascinating. I talk about the interpretation of colour in dreams, in my book Working the Night Shift and what I say in there is just as true in real life as it is in dreams.

It's interesting how the colour red suggests different things to different people. Is red angry, passionate, energetic? Or is it violent as in blood that's been shed? Or it may be the possibility of new life as in menstruation. There are so many interpretations and all are dependent on our own projections and our view of the world. What about you? How do you feel about the colour of this portrait?

 To Exercise or not to Exercise? That is the Question.

After enduring two months of gym twice a week, yoga twice a week and Pilates twice a week, I’m just about done with it all. To be honest, it was torture. Forcing my body into all those unnatural positions has taken its toll. Downward dog has knackered my wrists, sit ups from lying position has knackered my back, my knees are groaning under the weight of the cat and the gym has reduced my inner thighs to quivering wrecks.

The only upside of my short membership was a visit to the steam room once a week. It gave me a chance to ease my aching limbs and do mindful, silent meditation as if I was back in the womb. What a treat that was! Sadly though, there was usually a pack of men partaking of the pleasure of the steam. What is it about men in a steam room? It's like being at a buffalo watering hole with all the grunting and snorting, puffing and panting. Why do men do that? 

So, anyway, I’m thinking of ditching the gym and the classes and going back to my regular, brisk walks over the Saddleworth hills. I was a lot fitter, and a lot happier, when I was doing that. Working up a sweat with a roomful of other sweaty, panting people is probably not for me.

 

Knowing; I Wish We Did.

The past twelve hours have brought it home to me how the human race is fast approaching the bottomless pit, if not already there. Are we all asleep? Blindfolded? Or do we secretly want it all to end? I watched the movie ‘Knowing’ last night. That’s the one starring Nicolas Cage. A prophecy about the end of the world comes true because of a solar flare blowing away all the ozone that protects us from the searing heat of the sun. Not sure if it was that, but I had a very bad night’s sleep.

This morning, I switched on the TV BBC News channel 231 only to be met with more of the same. It’s Holocaust Memorial Day. Mention was made of all the other countries that have been subjected to the same genocidal horrors over the years, with one man aggressively bemoaning the current rise in anti-semetism in the UK.  Why didn’t the interviewer ask him the reason for that. Sadly, she didn’t and absolutely no mention was made of Gaza.

That news item was followed by the scandalous spread of AI-generated sexually explicit photos of Taylor Swift. It’s so easy to produce and upload such damaging images, that it’s only going to get worse because there is no way to control or stop it.

Next came an eight-year-old girl, with her mother, asking for more regulation on skincare products for children. What!!!!!!!! Her daughter and all her friends have skincare parties where they experiment with all the wonderful beauty products they buy – and her mother goes shopping for them with her!!! Many of which are anti-aging products! What madness is that? They’re blaming the ‘influencers’ on TikTok. From what I can see, most ‘influencers’ (what a ridiculous term!) are attention–seekers, so wrapped up in their own egos that they don’t care what they’re promoting, providing people look at them.

That was followed by news of the seizure of 4.5million illegal disposable vapes – up from 4,000 in 2021. Why people feel the need to suck on a tube, I have no idea. Maybe they are substitutes for babies’ dummies? I guess that would make sense as so few of us are self-responsible and able to find comfort within ourselves. If those skills were taught in schools, there would be no need of ‘influencers’.

Finally came a report from Bejing where unmanned AI police cars with video cameras (and face recognition capability, obviously) are patrolling the city streets looking for trouble makers. Another small step and they’ll be armed, indiscriminately tasering suspicious looking pedestrians.

Honestly, if this is how human beings are living and evolving, we do not deserve to survive. Roll on Armageddon.

Forerunner to the Smart Meter

While browsing through an old writing jotter the other day, I came across this little ditty written in 2012 about a device British Gas gave me. It sat on my kitchen counter for three years and was clearly a fore runner to the present day smart meters. It did the job very well and I want to know why the government felt it necessary to burden the consumer with the cost of something far more expensive.

There's a little face that looks at me everyday

Monitoring the cost of work and play.

It frowns at the kettle and hates the TV

I wish so much it would just let me be.

Usually in the morning it smiles like a lark

It makes me feel happy when it makes no remark.

Round about lunchtime the mouth starts to droop

So dinner tonight will be a bowl of cold soup.

Sometimes it throbs and its face turns red

That's when I know I must go to bed.

 I refuse to have a smart meter installed in my house. For one thing, the electricity meter needs moving. Currently it is below ground level, in a damp, dark pantry. I did try to bargain with my supplier, saying I would have a smart meter if they put it somewhere else. "Yes," they said, "we can do that. It'll only cost you £200." I didn't reply so they kept ringing me up, hassling me, threatening me. "Everyone must have a smart meter. Don't you understand, this will help you save on your energy bills." No it won't! It just means I'll be stressed every time I switch on the kettle.

Does the Covid virus target mitochondria?

 

Well - here we are. Over four weeks post-covid diagnosis and still debilitated because of post-viral fatigue. I know people who have ME and I know what they’ve suffered because of the lack of acknowledgement from the medical profession. And now I’m experiencing the same. “Make sure you get plenty of sleep, eat a good diet, do gentle exercise, change your mindset - it could all be in your mind after all.” No, it really isn’t. I have never experienced anything like this before. My body feels leaden. It takes enormous effort to get out of bed and great effort even to shift the position of a leg while sitting down. It’s an effort of will and intention. Even my mind is exhausted. I feel drunk most of the time - dizzy and disoriented. Yet I am sleeping for England and have put on half a stone because my appetite has been undiminished throughout the illness. It’s all very odd. I noticed a couple of days ago that I have started to acquire a little energy around 3pm in the afternoon. Capitalising on this, I have been doing short two to four mile walks while chanting ‘onward and upward’. Usually tough twelve milers are more to my liking. However, it has felt glorious and hopefully signals that things will improve - eventually. In the meantime, I’ve been raking through my rusty knowledge of Biomedical Science to think about what the hell can be going on. My buck is resting with mitochondria. There’s plenty of circulating oxygen for them in my bloodstream so I suspect the little blighters have been annihilated by the covid virus, or may be have lost their reproductive capacity. Unless, of course, the virus has affected membrane permeability and the O₂ is not getting into the cell to feed the little critters. Whatever has happened to them, they need to sort themselves out and up their game. If I was thirty years younger I would apply for research funding. As it is, the only funding on offer to me now is for funeral costs.