Tuesday, February 10, 2009
A problem
It seems, from the Guardian, that the animal rightees have a problem. We used to have a lot of red squirrels which were cute and cuddly once they had been discovered by Beatrix Potter and Beatrix Potter had been discovered by us. Then a bad person introduced gray squirrels. Now they are cute and cuddly too, but they are also foreign and therefore bad. They are also slightly better at being squirrels than their red cousins. I imagine that this is mostly about their being slightly bigger but competing for the same niche. So when it comes to a competition for a nest or a food supply they are going to win, and, slowly but surely the reds are going to cop out. This, without the wholesale slaughter which usually accompanies humans when they do the same sort of thing. And even without that consideration, it is hardly the grays' fault that some bad person brought them here.
But now the animal rightees are saying that the reds have a right to existance, even though they are dying out of more or less natural causes. So lets kill as many of the grays as we can in order to make a bit more space for the reds.
Not at all sure about the morals of all this. Killing a much larger number of pigs or chickens in order to eat them is one thing. But killing gray squirrels because red squirrels are more cute is quite another. So I think the animal rightees ought to appeal to some higher authority to adjudicate on the matter. Perhaps the Pope would take it on, on one of his afternoon's off?
Or perhaps a shrink? The risk there is that he might divine that animals is only the surface agenda of animal rightees. The real agenda is something quite differant and getting to find out about that might be even more unwelcome than being told that if the grays can roll over the reds, they should be allowed to get on with it. In the way of natural selection since the time the Lord got cracking on separating the earth from the sky (Genesis I.1.i.a).
The bunch of rightees from Greenpeace have a differant problem with whales, and they are making a nusiance of themselves down in the southern ocean. They think they have the right to barge around in their boat, right next to the boats of those awful whalers from Japan, in complete disregard of the ocean going highway code. Now while I do not much care about whalers, I do care about maintaining civility, in this case maintaining the ocean going highway code. So I will not knowingly give any money to Greenpeace while they carry on with this kind of stunt.
I dilated recently on another kind of ocean going stunt, that is to say piracy. And I am now the proud possessor of HC 1026, being the eighth report of session 2005-06 from the Transport Committee of our very own House of Commons. Your House of Commons as they would say in Marks and Spencer. A committee which was chaired at that time by the late Gwyneth Dunwoody. I recall very mixed reviews at the time of her death - bit of a loose lady cannon - but the notice I find on the BBC site today glows. It seems she comes from Labour aristocracy and thought that being a backbench MP should still count for something. Be that as it may, HC 1026 makes interesting reading. Tastefull cover with a pompous start, as befits an institution which has been around for a long time. Then it transpires that what happens is this. The committee announces that it is going to do something about piracy. They summon some people who know about this sort of thing to appear before them one day in March 2006. Their rather small staff then write a 40 page report plus a couple of rather silly annexes. The first, amongst other things, tells us what the Royal Navy is, or rather was. The committee then, to all appearances, nod it through when they meet in June 2006. Lo and behold, we have HC 1026; the encapsulated wisdom of the House of Commons on this matter of piracy. Consigned to the vaults of the House of Commons and other libraries.
So is it surprising, that while one does learn a bit from the report, it is all a bit feeble? Spends a lot of time going on about how the lack of agreed definition of piracy is hampering the various efforts to curb it. But I did learn some things. For example, that the merchant shipping trade organisations seem to be against the routine arming of merchant ships. That the merchant shipping unions think it is all down to cutting costs and institutionalised under-manning. There did seem to be some force in this. Huge merchant ships have gotten used to cruising about, more or less unattended, and their owners are loath to change this arrangement. That the naval people want to get permissions for hot pursuit and proper arrangements for bringing apprehended pirates to justice. It seems that some of the countries where there is lots of piracy are both very touchy about their sovereignty - and so are not keen on hot pursuit - and very feeble in the matter of justice. So there is a bit of a problem there.
I wonder if Congress does a better job at this sort of thing? It ought to, representing a much bigger and richer country. Perhaps their committees have proper staffs. All on defined benefit, index linked pensions, of course. Or the French or the Germans?
But now the animal rightees are saying that the reds have a right to existance, even though they are dying out of more or less natural causes. So lets kill as many of the grays as we can in order to make a bit more space for the reds.
Not at all sure about the morals of all this. Killing a much larger number of pigs or chickens in order to eat them is one thing. But killing gray squirrels because red squirrels are more cute is quite another. So I think the animal rightees ought to appeal to some higher authority to adjudicate on the matter. Perhaps the Pope would take it on, on one of his afternoon's off?
Or perhaps a shrink? The risk there is that he might divine that animals is only the surface agenda of animal rightees. The real agenda is something quite differant and getting to find out about that might be even more unwelcome than being told that if the grays can roll over the reds, they should be allowed to get on with it. In the way of natural selection since the time the Lord got cracking on separating the earth from the sky (Genesis I.1.i.a).
The bunch of rightees from Greenpeace have a differant problem with whales, and they are making a nusiance of themselves down in the southern ocean. They think they have the right to barge around in their boat, right next to the boats of those awful whalers from Japan, in complete disregard of the ocean going highway code. Now while I do not much care about whalers, I do care about maintaining civility, in this case maintaining the ocean going highway code. So I will not knowingly give any money to Greenpeace while they carry on with this kind of stunt.
I dilated recently on another kind of ocean going stunt, that is to say piracy. And I am now the proud possessor of HC 1026, being the eighth report of session 2005-06 from the Transport Committee of our very own House of Commons. Your House of Commons as they would say in Marks and Spencer. A committee which was chaired at that time by the late Gwyneth Dunwoody. I recall very mixed reviews at the time of her death - bit of a loose lady cannon - but the notice I find on the BBC site today glows. It seems she comes from Labour aristocracy and thought that being a backbench MP should still count for something. Be that as it may, HC 1026 makes interesting reading. Tastefull cover with a pompous start, as befits an institution which has been around for a long time. Then it transpires that what happens is this. The committee announces that it is going to do something about piracy. They summon some people who know about this sort of thing to appear before them one day in March 2006. Their rather small staff then write a 40 page report plus a couple of rather silly annexes. The first, amongst other things, tells us what the Royal Navy is, or rather was. The committee then, to all appearances, nod it through when they meet in June 2006. Lo and behold, we have HC 1026; the encapsulated wisdom of the House of Commons on this matter of piracy. Consigned to the vaults of the House of Commons and other libraries.
So is it surprising, that while one does learn a bit from the report, it is all a bit feeble? Spends a lot of time going on about how the lack of agreed definition of piracy is hampering the various efforts to curb it. But I did learn some things. For example, that the merchant shipping trade organisations seem to be against the routine arming of merchant ships. That the merchant shipping unions think it is all down to cutting costs and institutionalised under-manning. There did seem to be some force in this. Huge merchant ships have gotten used to cruising about, more or less unattended, and their owners are loath to change this arrangement. That the naval people want to get permissions for hot pursuit and proper arrangements for bringing apprehended pirates to justice. It seems that some of the countries where there is lots of piracy are both very touchy about their sovereignty - and so are not keen on hot pursuit - and very feeble in the matter of justice. So there is a bit of a problem there.
I wonder if Congress does a better job at this sort of thing? It ought to, representing a much bigger and richer country. Perhaps their committees have proper staffs. All on defined benefit, index linked pensions, of course. Or the French or the Germans?
# posted by Jim @ 11:05 PM 
