Myriam Kirmond (January 14) criticises my letter in defence of animal circuses and claims that it is written from “a selfish human perspective” and that circus animals live “in a continual limbo made unending with the constant reminder of prods, chains and an artificial life they are forced to endure by their trainers.” I remain sceptical.

I’ve visited the circus four times in the last month and I have yet to witness one single infinitesimal act of animal cruelty in all the performances that I was present for.

Animal rights groups can only afford to get wound up about these hipster, decaf-latte boutique issues because the rest of the world is subsidising the decadence of their activism with their destitution, starvation and indentured servitude.

While a spoilt, bratty and wealthy few are cementing themselves to the tarmac to protest the fur trade or invading school cafeterias to protest the drinking of milk (Peta does these on a regular basis), the rest of the world are too busy worrying where their next meal is coming from or how to feed their children to waste too much time trying to win lobsters the right to vote.

Closer to home, the interconnector cable between Malta and Sicily, which Malta urgently needs to shore up and stabilise its electricity supply, may now be put on hold because of the Movimento Territorio Ragusa, an environmental group that would rather have its neighbour and trade partner experience blackouts than risk displacing a family of mud crabs.

Time and again we are witnessing this wicked reversal of the social contract, putting the imagined rights of insensate beasts ahead of those of our kindred. If there is method to this madness, I have yet to make sense of it.