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March 30, 2021 6:08 AM Subscribe
The Milk Protest: What will your pint remind you of?
Last week UK MP Charles Walker stood up in the House of Commons and gave a speech setting out what would be a personal protest but one which he invited the nation to join with. He planned to carry a pint of milk around with him. To protest milk prices being too high. Or possibly too low. Perhaps you can carry one with you to protest whatever is on your mind? Edited video here. Hansard write up here at 2.32pm. John Crace sketch here.
Apparently he did have a serious point. But maybe it could have been a bit clearer.
Last week UK MP Charles Walker stood up in the House of Commons and gave a speech setting out what would be a personal protest but one which he invited the nation to join with. He planned to carry a pint of milk around with him. To protest milk prices being too high. Or possibly too low. Perhaps you can carry one with you to protest whatever is on your mind? Edited video here. Hansard write up here at 2.32pm. John Crace sketch here.
Apparently he did have a serious point. But maybe it could have been a bit clearer.
Sorry. Happy to have a mod copy the short vid link over the main link.
posted by biffa at 6:28 AM on March 30, 2021
posted by biffa at 6:28 AM on March 30, 2021
"We Conservative MPs can't bust heads like we used to. But we have our ways. One trick is to tell stories that don't go anywhere. Like the time I realized my party's intellectual bankruptcy was in danger of being exposed by an unrelenting pandemic and a total own-goal of a trade deal. So I tied a pint of milk to my belt, which was the style at the time."
posted by jedicus at 8:02 AM on March 30, 2021 [25 favorites]
posted by jedicus at 8:02 AM on March 30, 2021 [25 favorites]
England is giving off some serious Wicker Man vibes these days. People seem to be re-enacting ancient pagan rituals in twisted modern forms. The milk is a fertility symbol I assume. He's trying to perform a spell to increase the birth rate perhaps?
posted by thatwhichfalls at 9:42 AM on March 30, 2021 [8 favorites]
posted by thatwhichfalls at 9:42 AM on March 30, 2021 [8 favorites]
Well, I strongly support him or I couldn't disagree with him more, and others may or may not agree or disagree, which is their right, or possibly they will feel indifferent about the issue or issues or lack of issue, which is also how I may or may not feel.
I will not be taking questions at this time.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:11 AM on March 30, 2021 [10 favorites]
I will not be taking questions at this time.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:11 AM on March 30, 2021 [10 favorites]
The milk is a fertility symbol I assume.
Unless it's worse: Regarding Walker, [ecofeminist Carol] Adams says, “Ironic that he uses milk as a sign of freedom. Of course, dairy milk, for the majority of people in this world, is actually a sign of colonialist nutritional policies that failed to recognise that it is only descendants of northern Europeans who have the lactase enzyme for digesting this milk. But it’s not surprising he chose milk from a dairy as a sign of freedom, as it's already been embraced by the male-dominated right wing in the United States as a symbol of white nationalism.”
[...] In this context, milk becomes a prop to fight a front in the culture war. Dr Corey Wrenn, sociologist at the University of Kent, elaborated on that. She explains, “The COVID restrictions in the UK come on top of a longer lead-up to Britain's exit from the European Union, a move that was significantly influenced by ethnocentrist, imperialist sentiments about ‘Great’ Britain and the rest of the world. MP Walker's choice of milk for his personal protest is quite telling. COVID restrictions, like EU restrictions, are interpreted by some British nationalists to be threats to their ‘freedom’. - Christopher Sebastian for Euronews Living
posted by Iris Gambol at 10:16 AM on March 30, 2021 [3 favorites]
Unless it's worse: Regarding Walker, [ecofeminist Carol] Adams says, “Ironic that he uses milk as a sign of freedom. Of course, dairy milk, for the majority of people in this world, is actually a sign of colonialist nutritional policies that failed to recognise that it is only descendants of northern Europeans who have the lactase enzyme for digesting this milk. But it’s not surprising he chose milk from a dairy as a sign of freedom, as it's already been embraced by the male-dominated right wing in the United States as a symbol of white nationalism.”
[...] In this context, milk becomes a prop to fight a front in the culture war. Dr Corey Wrenn, sociologist at the University of Kent, elaborated on that. She explains, “The COVID restrictions in the UK come on top of a longer lead-up to Britain's exit from the European Union, a move that was significantly influenced by ethnocentrist, imperialist sentiments about ‘Great’ Britain and the rest of the world. MP Walker's choice of milk for his personal protest is quite telling. COVID restrictions, like EU restrictions, are interpreted by some British nationalists to be threats to their ‘freedom’. - Christopher Sebastian for Euronews Living
posted by Iris Gambol at 10:16 AM on March 30, 2021 [3 favorites]
I'm fascinated (in general) by the cooptation of common goods as symbols of protest, so there's plenty of confirmation bias available to identify friends or enemies in the crowd. All I know now... is that every milk drinking Brit might be a be a white nationalist in sheep's clothing, even if Walter is unsure of what his protest means.
If the argument holds, "[P]eople who identify or espouse white nationalist ideology conflate genetic superiority with the body's tolerance for dairy because people of northern European heritage are most frequently able to digest it", something seems lost on these folks. Lactase persistence evolved and exists in multiple human populations: from the Tigris/Euphrates & Indus cultures to multiple times in East & West Africa. And there's certainly some circular logic that suckling from another animals teet makes you superior. Cue Borat when its realized the Kazakhs share the same lactase persistence SNP "for the joining of one great people and another as brothers for greatness."
For context this is what we have for milk on the other side of the pond
Got Impeachment?
Don't worry, apparently milk is a white nationalist symbol here too, as is the OK sign.
posted by rubatan at 10:17 AM on March 30, 2021 [5 favorites]
If the argument holds, "[P]eople who identify or espouse white nationalist ideology conflate genetic superiority with the body's tolerance for dairy because people of northern European heritage are most frequently able to digest it", something seems lost on these folks. Lactase persistence evolved and exists in multiple human populations: from the Tigris/Euphrates & Indus cultures to multiple times in East & West Africa. And there's certainly some circular logic that suckling from another animals teet makes you superior. Cue Borat when its realized the Kazakhs share the same lactase persistence SNP "for the joining of one great people and another as brothers for greatness."
For context this is what we have for milk on the other side of the pond
Got Impeachment?
Don't worry, apparently milk is a white nationalist symbol here too, as is the OK sign.
posted by rubatan at 10:17 AM on March 30, 2021 [5 favorites]
America has raw milk congressman but I don't even think I remotely understand what is going on with Pint-Milk MPs
posted by dis_integration at 11:07 AM on March 30, 2021
posted by dis_integration at 11:07 AM on March 30, 2021
Let us therefore brace ourselves to our fridges, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their pint of milk.”
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:30 AM on March 30, 2021
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:30 AM on March 30, 2021
Walker's a couple of weeks early: Milk for Maggie day is April 8th, when those of us who survived school in the 1980s raise a carton of UHT and toast "Long Life Milk, Long Dead Thatcher".
posted by scruss at 12:12 PM on March 30, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by scruss at 12:12 PM on March 30, 2021 [4 favorites]
I thought it was just a thing that you could say to police who stopped you in lockdown, "I'd just popped out for a pint of milk"...
posted by knapah at 1:38 PM on March 30, 2021
posted by knapah at 1:38 PM on March 30, 2021
The best thing that backbench MPs can do is to never, ever, get into the limelight, because they’re mostly crazed weirdos with more issues than the satirical magazine Punch.
posted by The River Ivel at 2:37 PM on March 30, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by The River Ivel at 2:37 PM on March 30, 2021 [1 favorite]
All I can think of every time I see a photo of him holding his milk is "Please. My son: he is very sick."
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 3:06 PM on March 30, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 3:06 PM on March 30, 2021 [3 favorites]
What was that? Nice, I, uhh, guess, to know that utter rightwing batshit insane craziness is distributed. But of course, it's weaponized stupidity.
posted by blue shadows at 9:26 PM on March 30, 2021
posted by blue shadows at 9:26 PM on March 30, 2021
> Don't worry, apparently milk is a white nationalist symbol here too
I'm not sure what you mean by "too": the Euronews article refers to milk having been "embraced by the male-dominated right wing in the United States as a symbol of white nationalism", and all the accounts I have heard about an association between white nationalism and milk describe it as existing in the US, not the UK.
> I thought it was just a thing that you could say to police who stopped you in lockdown, "I'd just popped out for a pint of milk"...
Or, given the explicit reference to protesting about the price of milk, a reference to the price of milk question and Nadine Dorries's comment in 2012 that the prime minister and chancellor were "two posh boys who don't know the price of milk".
posted by James Scott-Brown at 6:04 AM on March 31, 2021
I'm not sure what you mean by "too": the Euronews article refers to milk having been "embraced by the male-dominated right wing in the United States as a symbol of white nationalism", and all the accounts I have heard about an association between white nationalism and milk describe it as existing in the US, not the UK.
> I thought it was just a thing that you could say to police who stopped you in lockdown, "I'd just popped out for a pint of milk"...
Or, given the explicit reference to protesting about the price of milk, a reference to the price of milk question and Nadine Dorries's comment in 2012 that the prime minister and chancellor were "two posh boys who don't know the price of milk".
posted by James Scott-Brown at 6:04 AM on March 31, 2021
I'm scribbling notes on all the above comments for my forthcoming paper - Milky! Milky!: Interrogating the multilayer semiotics of the prop in the late stages of language breakdown
posted by thatwhichfalls at 10:30 AM on March 31, 2021
posted by thatwhichfalls at 10:30 AM on March 31, 2021
The River Ivel: The best thing that backbench MPs can do is to never, ever, get into the limelight, because they’re mostly crazed weirdos . . .
Whoa! Parliamentary democracy allows for MPs to speak contrary to the prevailing narrative. The same Charles Walker being incoherent about milk was quite clear about [not] silencing dissent in the UK.
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:59 AM on April 1, 2021
Whoa! Parliamentary democracy allows for MPs to speak contrary to the prevailing narrative. The same Charles Walker being incoherent about milk was quite clear about [not] silencing dissent in the UK.
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:59 AM on April 1, 2021
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posted by pompomtom at 6:19 AM on March 30, 2021 [1 favorite]