BASC has issued a press release telling its members to hide their wild side and to appear nice in case they lose their firearms licences.
The advice comes after someone’s behaviour on social media was used to withdraw a firearm licence (reinstated on appeal).
BASC doesn’t actually tell its members to be nice people, just to be careful about the image they are portraying. Duncan Thomas of BASC said ‘£^”876″(*823)*&£_!!!!!!’.
The BTO is expected to issue a press release warning their members occasionally to mention ‘pop’ music in their tweets just to show they are not a bunch of fuddy-duddy birders, armed with binoculars, and without lives outside birding.
The RSPB is asking its members to ease off on the Stannah stair lift tweets.
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It is always baby steps with these damn people.
Maybe one day we’ll get them to understand they have to be nice people to everyone else as well. I mean okay, I get that in a lot of their life they are nice to their friends, family, pets, and might even have perfectly normal conversations and make interesting small talk, but then the issue of bloodsports or wildlife comes up and they go through this complete Jekyll and Hyde transformation into wide eyed invective raving loons and it makes you wonder which side of them is the “real” person.
I mean right now University of Exeter is running a survey on attitudes to Beaver introduction and they are getting hammered with politically motivated canned responses from the grouse and farming industry. Just opposition for the sheer sake of it and lockstep vandalism because they were told to. It makes you want to just give up at times. I think I hit peak anger sometime last week over it all, and now I’m just sliding into the depression on the other side.
And the Hawk & Owl Trust is urging its membership to recruit as many of their fellow game keepers and other country ‘sports’ types as possible to keep the cash flowing in and dissipate the influence of ‘conservation types’ and other urban plebs that still sully the ranks of its membership, all be it in diminishing numbers.
A forked tongue is still a forked tongue even if it is being nice to me. The way for shooting to gain our respect and trust is not to be nice to us but to obey the law and to be perhaps rather more open to a different approach than they are now. Its time they learnt it is not just the invective we find objectionable but the polite lies, obfuscation and head in sand attitudes to persecution and their dodgy and damaging management practices. Being nice won’t change that and the days of hood winking us are long long gone.
Well its no wonder there is concern… when you follow up on these folk you find out that their public profiles are littered with bigotry, racism, homophobia and all sorts of incitements to criminal activity. The police obviously don’t check them out very thoroughly or very few of them would be considered suitable to hold a firearms certificate.
Unfortunately the false front of shooting types is a big problem. It’s why the RSPB and others got suckered into working with shooters on the mistaken assumption that some of them were enlightened conservationists. I’ve become increasingly sceptical about whether shooters who are enlightened conservationists actually exist. For a long time I was willing to buy into the claims of the supposedly more enlightened shooters. However 2 things have caused me to question this.
1) When I’ve known and spoken to shooters, who I’ve known throughout my life I don’t give much away. When they assume you are not a “bunny-hugger” it’s amazing how the attitude changes, and you realise how two-faced they are. In fact many have boasted about needing to put on the charm for the “bunny-huggers”.
2) Given the clear evidence for persistent illegal raptor persecution, which is widespread, you’d expect these so called more ethical shooters to speak out about it. They don’t. In fact they go along with the lie about the occasional bad apple gamekeeper. The whole idea that illegal raptor persecution is carried out by a few rogue gamekeepers is a smokescreen. If the employers of these gamekeepers made it clear that they strongly disapproved of the killing of raptors, I cannot see gamekeepers doing it if it would put their jobs and livelihood at risk.
Obviously the BASC advise is for members who haven’t been to one of the top public schools that teach their pupils to be absolutely charming, and how to hide their ruthless side. So admired is this ability, that foreign despots send their children to be educated at our public schools, and Sandhurst.
I think its a basic fact of life that anyone who kills animals is desensitized to the living world, you would have to be. Farmers and meat processors I can accept, but those who do it for pleasure – unforgivable. I feel sure that those with a sub-human attitude to animals are equally unkind to their fellow humans.