| Re: P@H Strike again. |
Subject: Re: P@H Strike again. by longhairedgit on 3/5/2009 2:53:16 The point from the consumer end is this, and people have said it here many times and in various formats, but the reality of business in fishkeeping is this. Corporates would rather hook you onto buying a small tank and whatever diseased fish they think should go into it and take your money from meds and fish replacements and eventually that perhaps one in ten who then goes on (duly disgusted) to buy a bigger tank at ludicrous prices than they would strike up a decent relationship guide you properly and take that investment captial from you to get you started off right. Corporates consider your collective tendancies (no insult intended) to be a bunch of mugs when it comes to animal care and taking that chance to exploit you for items and replacements you should never need more reliable as a standard operating procedure for profit than telling you the truth and telling you the real cost of fishkeeping, and during that process they can and often do try to misinform you along the way to increase your expenditure, and they do this entirely at the sacrifice of fish welfare. Much of it masquerades as ignorance, but we know thats not how it works, ive heard shop assistants talk differently to me than they do other clientele, at management level it would take a blind idiot not to see the need for change, but no-one rocks the boat. Its all paycheques. People kill animals for money, and so do you, by going in like an innocent. If you want to change a market force you have to play your part, someone has to break the back of it, and its not that i'm deriding OATA, I know there must surely be genuine members with real concerns, but you have to arm them by making the right demands. That way they can clean their shop, or someobody better ises to represent your interests, whatever works. You really do get what you ask for in this life. We asked for cheap fish, we wanted a "yes" culture free of learning, we wanted many things without thinking, and by god, we got it. It opened the door to corporate abuse of animals.Did we really not expect the corporates to have their puppets? Animal abuse in this country is an unpleasant truth, we allow others to sweep the issue under carpets for us, but every year that rug gets taller. We can only be naive about this sort of thing for so long, and in truth, perhaps we arent even naive any more. Question is , we know. So who's going to do anything about it? Oata, the corporates, will govt make a move off their own back or is it you? Will you make the law work for you or will you watch it for another decade. Will you vote with your wallet or will you pretend another fiver in a p&h doesnt matter? These are questions we should be asking ourselves, and perhaps we should learn to be less complacent that there are independant bodies out there watching out for our best interests. Because frankly, I don't know that they are. Do you? |