Much fun was poked at the promotional picture of a gentleman hunter with his Barbour jacket and four gorgeous hounds, on a lead.Much fun was poked at the promotional picture of a gentleman hunter with his Barbour jacket and four gorgeous hounds, on a lead.
 

It was The Evening News and Southern Daily Mail that came out with the portentous headline above on September 3, 1939, when Neville Chamberlain’s efforts at appeasing the Nazi scum petered out and war was declared.

Equally portentous, though perhaps a tad less significant in the greater scheme of things, was Joseph Perici Calascione’s remark that, for the federated and united bird killers, the April referendum was not simply a battle, it was a war.

Exactly what possessed Perici Calascione to conjure up the image of war, considering he represents a bunch of macho boyos who delight in sporting camo-gear and carrying guns, is not entirely clear to me but, hey, who am I to gainsay the PR gurus who are running the pro-bird killing campaign?

I mean, isn’t it exactly what you want, if you’re trying to promote the cause of people who shoot living creatures for fun, getting people to think of war and bloodshed?

What were we supposed to do, quake in our boots at the prospect of bands of discontented hunters roaming the land if they’re prevented from killing birds in spring, letting off their frustration and coming over all vengeful? And, therefore, vote for spring hunting to be allowed to continue?

I know that isn’t what Perici Calascione meant - more precisely, I assume that wasn’t what he meant, and knowing him to be quite an affable sort in real life, I’m pretty sure he didn’t – but, seriously, puffing up one’s chest and thumping it while evoking the concept of war wasn’t really the best move, I’d have thought.

Not that the anti-hunting campaign hasn’t had its blasting-off-its-own-toes moments; sometimes you get the impression that, like the pro-divorce campaign, you’re going to have to vote for it despite certain of its leading lights.

The pro-bird killing lobby had to scramble to suck up the ‘war, war, war’ faux pas and they did so with quite a vengeance, with all those bucolically pretty pictures of a young family enjoying the countryside, strangely without a single shotgun or bird plummeting to earth in tatters to be seen.

But, then, since when has truth in advertising been a watchword of the bird killers?

In another section of the media, much fun was poked at another of their promotional pictures, the one of a gentleman hunter (sans shotgun, of course – we can’t have nasty weapons reminding people that what we do is kill things, can we?) with his Barbour jacket and four gorgeous hounds, on a lead.

Hunters are confirming the old adage that in war truth flies out of the window

Every picture tells a thousand stories, to be sure, and each of these pictures is doing exactly that, telling a thousand stories each, the only problem being that they are tall ones. For the benefit of those who take this stuff at face value, a tall story is a lie, just in case you didn’t get it.

Moving on, therefore, with the aphorisms that are conjured up when war and other forms of armed conflict are evoked (don’t blame me, I didn’t mention the war) it would behove us to remember the classic ‘when war is declared, the first casualty is the truth’ and the bird killers render great honour to this concept.

A main plank of their argument, one on the basis of which they are trying to drag onto their bandwagon swathes of people who would not otherwise be seen dead in their company, unless they happened to stray into the firing line, in which case, who knows, is the one that goes ‘once the minority hobby of hunting is eradicated, these do-gooders will move on to something else’.

What they’re trying to do, clearly, is rally anyone who feels that she or he is part of a minority, of a small bunch of people who enjoy doing something and would feel very hard done by if they were stopped from doing it.

The only flaw in their argument is that, legally, it crashes and burns like that ruddy big zeppelin after someone lit a match next to it because it has no basis whatsoever, however many howls and screeches are belched.

The referendum is being held to abrogate, to remove, to nullify, to render obsolete, to turn into a dead parrot, a specific legal provision, the one that derogates from the general legal principle that spring hunting is not allowed among civilised folk.

What is being proposed is not, forgive me for stating the ruddy obvious, the enactment of a law that actively bans spring hunting. Spring hunting, read my lips, is already banned and it is only a specific legal provision that allows the bird killers to benefit from an exception to the law.

No-one, except Parliament, can propose a law to ban fishing or unicycle racing or funny-walk competitions and no-one can cause a referendum to be held for these esoteric activities to be banned because that would take a law banning them, rather than the removal of a law permitting them.

Is this sufficiently clear?

Even if I were to clone myself 40,000 times (horrid thought) and sign a petition to have a referendum banning people from having spiky hairdos, this would be doomed to failure, not because people wouldn’t be stupid enough to vote for it (anyway) but because this would take the enactment of a law by Parliament, which is not something that can be done by referendum.

So, when Perici Calascione and his sidekicks try to tug at your heart strings and make you go all dewy-eyed at the prospect of your not being able to do what it is you want to do in your spare time (assuming it’s not an illegal activity in the first place) just remember that all they’re doing is confirming the old adage, that in war, truth flies out of the window.

And if you want another hoary old one about lies, recall that there are lies, damned lies and statistics and then see how much you believe the people who say they spent all spring out in the countryside and shot nothing.

In the event that you want somewhere for a good meal to celebrate the result of the referendum, here are two ideas for you.

Up North, Il Capitano in the Menqa is a new place that will bear a visit, for good Neapolitan stuff. Peperoncino, in St Julian’s, served up an excellent celebratory meal in honour of one of our number who had a man-cold and didn’t actually make it.

And then on the hill leading to Naxxar, Yue Bistro by Munchies is a pretty good spot for mid-week dinner.

imbocca@gmail.com

http://www.timesofmalta.com/blogs

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