Because our laws are still stuck in the days of yore, when it was presumed that a glance at the papers would send you to the polling booths in something approaching a daze, pencil poised to vote in the way I tell you, this week’s column is coming to you today, rather than on Saturday, when you will be off to the polling booths, pencil poised to vote ‘No’ to spring hunting.

You are going to vote ‘No’, aren’t you?

You’re an intelligent individual, you read this column, and you are also astute enough to look beyond the attempts at humour and instead see the deadly seriousness when it’s meant to be seen. And I’m deadly serious about this: hunting in spring should be banned once and for all and all that needs to be done is for more of us to vote ‘No’ than the other bunch who want to carry on killing breeding birds regardless.

Remember, all that we will be doing is closing a loophole that was left in the law: properly speaking, killing birds in spring is against the law because it is downright stupid to kill birds when they are on the way to breeding.

All those apologists for the bird killers who keep saying they are going to vote in favour of bird killing carrying on need to put a few things in their pipes and puff on them.

In the first place, if the referendum is carried by us, it will not, repeat not, underline not, create any sort of precedent for banning any other lawful pursuit.

All you can do with this sort of referendum is remove statutory provisions, not impose them: you can’t remove a law that will result in a ban on fishing because there is no law permitting it in the first place.

You can’t remove a law allowing - I don’t know - car hill climbs, for example, because such things take place because the Commissioner of Police can license them. If the power to issue a licence was removed, everyone would be charging around the highways and byways like a mad creature, with the traffic cops chasing ineffectually after them. What do you mean, they do that anyway?

Kidding aside, bird killing in spring is unique because it is a breach of the law permitted by a provision of the law itself, which is why there can be an abrogation of that particular provision and why it can’t happen in the other circumstances that the apologists keep citing. So put that in your pipe and smoke it, if you think you should continue standing up for bird killers.

In the second instance, the line being parroted by the apologists and the bird killers is that, elsewhere in Europe, some derogations on spring hunting have been kept in place, so why should we be second-class Europeans? What they are not saying, true to form, is that the derogations they rely on are purpose-specific, for research, safety or health reasons and they are certainly not wholesale loopholes allowing slaughter by men in camo-gear toting repeater shotguns.

Pipe, insert, puff.

In the third instance, the whole campaign in favour of spring hunting is based on misdirection, misinformation and thinly-veiled threats and no right thinking opinion maker should be associated with this sort of thing.

How else would you classify a series of posters and billboards which, apart from the misdirection in the message itself, use images that are downright misleading?

Bird killing in spring is unique because it is a breach of the law permitted by the law

Young families in the countryside, with not a shotgun, arrogant macho hunter, bloodied bird or spent cartridge in sight, do not represent the reality of spring hunting. Nor do groups of smiley, happy youths looking like a bunch of high-school kids out on a hike.

The real image of a hunter, at least in my experience, is of an angry, spluttering, individual yelling at me to get off “his” land, with a shotgun propped nonchalantly against a rubble wall and a bunch of other like-minded individuals strategically placed for backup purposes. Or a howling mob, beating up photographers and stealing their equipment, just because the photographers were there, doing their job in Valletta, while the hunters were demonstrating for their ‘rights’, for which read intimidating politicians to do their bidding.

Again, take up your pipe, insert that into it, and ignite, those of you who think that hunters should be allowed to carry on with their traditional way of life.

There is nothing traditional in intimidation and threats or in actual violence and the hunters’ spokeswomen (they don’t have men acting as their public faces much, do they? Wonder why...) can try to cover that up all they like, facts are facts. Let’s not delude ourselves, of course, that illegalities will come to an end if the referendum is carried by the ‘No’ to spring hunting camp.

For a start, the ‘war, war, war’ imprecations by hunters and their promise to seek legal redress and have the result nullified, have made it clear that the result will not be accepted quietly. By their actions to date (see above), hunters have shown they will ignore the law anyway.

On Saturday, from my terrace in Xagħra, I heard at least two shots and the season - obviously - is not even open. So much for their hand-on-heart, butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-our-mouths sanctimony, these include people for whom the law is an inconvenience, something to be outsmarted and, if at all possible, ignored.

Which is why I don’t give any credence to the argument they make that so few birds are killed in spring anyway, why bother to stop it? Seriously, are people who think nothing of breaking the law to be believed when they report their ‘bags’ (itself an expression designed to euphemise the whole shooting match)? I don’t think so.

About this ‘bag’ business, you’re not the Earl of Grantham, up on the moors for a spot of grouse shooting, so you don’t ‘bag’ a bird, you shoot it out of the sky, making it crash to the ground in a bloody mess. This is why that poster of a gentleman hunter striding through the countryside with his faithful hound by his side would be so amusing if it weren’t so in-your-face misleading.

One of the self-styled gentlemen hunters, who had the nerve to put his name to a piece exhorting a vote in favour of killing birds in spring, because he eats them (big of him, that) used to hang out in Xagħra Square with other gentlemen of his ilk. I mentioned his tagging me in last week’s column, the one that was on Saturday, but I thought I’d remind you of it this week, so when you go to the polls with that false image of a gentleman hunter in your mind, you won’t find it difficult to replace it with the real picture.

Premier Joseph Muscat, for reasons that are various and obviously need not be analysed again at this time, has eschewed the opportunity to make it clear that this is a matter for us, the people. Astutely, his opposite number reacted by taking the matter out of the partisan arena.

The bottom line is that it is now quite clearly up to us and there you have it: either we vote for protecting breeding birds in spring once and for all or we give way, yet again, to the tactics that have persuaded the political class to allow that protection to go by the wayside.

For me, it’s obvious: I will be putting a cross in the ‘No’ box.

imbocca@gmail.com

http://www.timesofmalta.com/blogs

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