Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/302202
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 27 APRIL 2014 Opinion 21 And, let's face it, that is kind of annoying. Especially when these people have also dared to actually echo what many of the rest of us common mortals out here think, and have been arguing for years. I mean, the sheer cheek of it all. It's bad enough that thousands of ordinary nobodies in this country have the temerity to actually disagree with the hunters' lobby. But ordinary nobodies like you and I can always be conveniently ignored. At a stretch we can even be bullied and intimidated… sometimes even shot, as happened (twice) to a Foresta 2000 warden. And as things stand, the anti- spring hunting majority in this country has a long history of simply being by-passed and overlooked: not just by hunters, but also by governments of all shapes, sizes and colours. But celebrities who have access to international audiences? Who (like Brian May) have worldwide followings, and who (like Chris Packham) occupy strategic positions in the international press? Those are slightly harder to ignore. So where hunters and governments feel they can trample on ordinary citizens at will, without so much as even acknowledging their existence… they also feel compelled to answer the same criticism when it comes from international celebrities. We've already had the embarrassment of Gavin Gulia, the politically-appointed chairman of the Tourism Authority, telling Brian May to shut up about spring hunting… when May was actually echoing known concerns within the tourism industry, for which Gulia himself is supposedly responsible. (Note: strangely, Gavin Gulia hasn't yet responded to Chris Packham's argument that a spring hunting ban would bring tourism benefits at the beginning and end of the tourism season. I wonder why that is? Hmm). Now, we have the FKNK openly ridiculing them for their specific medical conditions, too. Bill Oddie, for instance, has been singled out by FKNK as… a 'mental case'. Why should be bother listening to this nutter, they argue? He is, by his own admission, a sufferer from bipolar disorder (what we used to refer to as 'manic-depression') and prone to occasional suicidal tendencies. So, like all sufferers from such disorders, he should presumably be locked up in an asylum somewhere, where he can babble his incoherent ramblings endlessly to the padded walls of his cell. In all honesty, I don't think I have ever seen or heard a more utterly nauseating and stomach- turning tactic, than to seize on a person's health issues to discredit his or her arguments (which, in turn, have nothing to do with the condition at hand). Had Bill Oddie been a paraplegic – or a sufferer from spina bifida, or some other physically degenerative disease – the FKNK would presumably have dismissed him as 'vegetable' or 'cripple' instead of a 'mental case'. The underlying thought process is after all identical in either case: you suffer from depression, so your opinion on spring hunting doesn't matter. You're in a wheelchair, so you should just give up on life altogether, and keep your lousy opinions to yourself. Well, here I feel I ought to remind the hunters' federation – which now finds Bill Oddie's mental health concerns so very amusing – of its own previous statements on the subject of depression, suicide and mental disorders. In 2012, the same FKNK issued a statement concerning the mental health of its own members, following the spring hunting ban in 2009. I quote from a news report: "Hunters suffered from higher levels of depression and anxiety in the wake of a spring hunting ban imposed in 2009, according to a study [commissioned by the FKNK] published yesterday." And this is from another report, which also hinted that some people may even have committed suicide as a result of the 2009 ban. "Joe Perici Calascione, the federation's press officer, said: 'We did not have to come to this. People should not have had to lose their lives because they were deprived of an integral part of their daily lives. Many are now on antidepressants and suffering from different psychological disorders'…". Ah yes, of course. Because depression and suicidal tendencies are serious matters only when they affect hunters. And we should all be moved to compassion and sympathy, when it is a hunter who is forced to take medication for a psychological disorder. When, on the other hand, it is an anti-spring hunting activist who suffers from the same condition, not only is no compassion or sympathy of any kind forthcoming… but the same hunters who had tried to tug on our heartstrings with their own sob-stories about depression, now openly deride and mock a single individual over the exact same issue. So just in case Joe Perici Calascione intends to try that little stunt again… to once more to put on his best beaten-dog expression for the television cameras, and appeal to mass sympathy for all those poor, depressed hunters who need medication for their mental health conditions… kindly note that your last public statement on the same subject has shot down even the remote possibility of any form of empathy whatsoever. As for myself, I look forward to expressing my full sympathy and heartfelt compassion in the polling booth of referendum day, when I will very happily vote 'Yes' to a total ban on spring hunting… and 'No' to this vile and barbaric habit of insulting and ridiculing people in the most obscene manner imaginable. Speaking of which: the Electoral Commission should surely have verified the signatures by now. Can we have a referendum date, please? Download the MaltaToday App now I imagine if the next foreign busybody happens to be Japanese, he or she will be curtly reminded of Pearl Harbour (or, more pointedly, Hiroshima) and likewise advised to drift off and commit hara kiri somewhere We're going slightly mad… Bill Oddie