Let’s not have any more hypocrisy from the Government, from the Federation of Conservationist Hunters Bird Killers and Trappers and from the St Hubert’s Apologists for Hunting or whatever pompous title these people give themselves.

It is simply not acceptable for protected birds –for any birds, for that matter - to be slaughtered.

That is a simple proposition that cannot be diluted any longer by mealy-mouthed statements of condemnation by the so-called associations of serious hunters. The notion that a few (a few??? Yeah right) renegades have tarred serious, law abiding, hunters with their criminality is not relevant, hunting is not an acceptable activity any longer. The Court has already characterised hunting as an activity that is no longer acceptable in civilised societies, what are the rest of us waiting for?

So the Government has called yesterday’s slaughter “barbaric”, has it?

So flipping what?

The Labour Party, now in Government, had sucked up to the hunting lobby, as it did with any other motley bunch that could land it a few more votes, before the election and its first actions after being elected were to give the hunting thugs a clear and unequivocal signal that the countryside was theirs now.

It’s useless doubling fines or whatever stupid measure is being mooted now: the fact is that hunters think they can do what they like and, damn it, they’re doing precisely that, what they like. Last week, I witnessed a hunter shooting firing from an alley between houses, completely in breach of the law. The valleys of Gozo sound like a war-zone, though frankly what the idiots are firing at I can’t see, butterflies for all I know.

Statements of condemnation are even more empty when they come from the associations, whether they are the oxymoronic “conservationists” (please stop making us laugh, why don’t you?) or the pompous St Hubert’s Posers or from any other apologists for out and out thuggery and barbarism.

Read our lips, us the Great Unwashed: you’re making us sick and it’s about time you were stopped, once and for all.