Comedian and conservationist Bill Oddie: disgracefully dismissed as out of hand by the hunters’ federation. Photo: Featureflash/Shutterstock

Back in Beck’s day, I had got moderately hot under the collar about hunting and the need for it to be banned. Nothing has changed since then, in fact, I’m even more eager to see the day dawn when shooting live animals from the sky will be consigned to the dustbin of history – and yes, I have a personal grudge against hunting, stick that in your left barrel and pull the trigger.

With a bit of luck, and if Joseph Muscat’s party doesn’t find a way to snooker the referendum movement in order to keep on currying favour with the hunting lobby, spring hunting will be banned relatively soon. The Federation of Hunting Conservationists, oxymorons to a man (funny how you never see women sticking up for hunting much) are confident that they will prevail when it comes to marking an “X” where it counts, but I suspect they’re doing quite a bit of whistling in the dark on this one.

Roll on the day.

Banning spring hunting – for hunting, read indiscriminate massacre of anything that flies – for a start will at least give birds a sporting chance of breeding to the north of us, which is where they’re heading provided that they can get past the guns of Malta’s finest. This, of course, is why hunting is not simply a local issue; what the bird-killers do here affects the rest of Europe.

When it comes to the horrific statements stakes, the hunting conservationists take the biscuit, and the figolla and the full flipping bakery

It certainly hasn’t remained a local issue, anyway, because the foreign media is taking an interest and a half in the subject: only last Tuesday, I was listening to the Jeremy Vine Show on BBC Radio Two and it was blush-inducing and no mistake. The government’s enforcement guy, Sergei Golovkin, tried manfully to show that Malta is a fine upstanding European citizen, but through no fault of his own, I don’t think he quite pulled it off.

After all, what use is it having all the fines in the world when you get the Boys in Blue detaining people who have the temerity to film them, and then compound error worse by calling them names that, how should one put this, would not endear them to the people celebrating on Palace Square last week?

And then to put the cherry on the cake, you get the Police Commissioner himself, no less, mumbling stuff about Birdlife being in breach of the law themselves because they find themselves in possession of protected breeds when they gather up wounded specimens to take to the vet.

A heinous crime, that, almost equivalent to beating a policeman’s fist with your mouth or trying to assault a couple of rozzers with a wet spaniel, disguised as a little old lady.

When it comes to the horrific statements stakes, though, the hunting conservationists take the biscuit, and the figolla, and the full flipping bakery. According to them, Bill Oddie, a Brit of no mean repute in the comedy scene and a (genuine) conservationist, should be discounted as a serious voice in the debate because (forgive me) “he’s a mental case”.

In fact, Mr Oddie suffers from bipolar disorder and because of this, the FKNK dismiss him out of hand, seeing fit to let the press know of this by sending out a clutch of cuttings.

Great, we have a policeman calling Birdlife activists “faggots” because, you know, being gay is contemptible, and we have the FKNK calling someone else “a mental case” because, you know, being bipolar makes you fit only for the scrap-heap. Disgraceful is too mild a word for these people.

Another benefactor who, like the hunting lobby, keeps on showering me with gifts is the Labour party in government. I don’t mean gifts of the lucrative sort, I mean nice little pressies that I can wrap up in this column for your enjoyment.

For instance, consider the breathtaking audacity of Minister Joe Mizzi, who spent all the time Arriva were running the buses moaning and groaning about the generally abysmal level of their contribution to the national weal. No sooner had they got out of here, with hindsight no doubt breathing a sigh of relief of cyclonic proportions, than not only did all the whining stop (amazing, that) but we suddenly had to put our hands into the national back-pocket and haul out many, many euro, to subsidise Minister Mizzi’s efforts to keep the buses running.

Imagine, if you would, the cacophony that would have met this manoeuvre had the stroke been pulled when the Nationalists were in power, but now the silence, pretty much, is deafening.

It’s on the same level, truth be told, as the volume of protests that greet the measures that this government takes to “protect” the environment: the tree-huggers will surely tell us that they are standing up to be counted but I trust they will forgive me if I fail to be impressed by the noise they’re not making.

What price Muscat’s characterisation of George Pullicino, formerly responsible for the environment, as “the worst minister” in the previous administration, then?

Quite apart from the cheap and nasty nature of the comment in itself, provoking a tit-for-tat “Muscat is the biggest liar” from Pullicino, what about Muscat’s own Minister for the Environment, Leo Brincat, confessing that he doesn’t know what’s going on in an area that concerns him directly?

What does that make Brincat, not fit even to be called a minister, or what?

And then we have Evarist Bartolo, who put it in black and white that he “feel[s] privileged to be part of the party re-writing history”. Yes, well, we needn’t have had it confirmed that Labour is re-writing history, we figured that out for ourselves, what with their sudden enthusiasm for Independence Day and Joining Europe Day an’ all, but did our Minister for Education have to put it so succinctly?

What he meant, of course, was that his party in government is writing history, not re-writing it, but sometimes it is in these Freudian slithers that we discern the truth, don’t you think?

As when, for instance, Helena Dalli blew the cover right off another little trap Muscat would dearly love to set the Nationalists. Coming straight after the juicy plum he pulled out for the (so-called) liberals with civil unions and same-sex adoptions, he’s already baiting the next one, legalisation of drugs.

After that little trigger is pulled, we should prepare for the next series of slogans, the ones about women’s bodies being their own and how only they can decide what happens to them and so on and so forth.

According to Dalli, if you take her words to their logical conclusion, it’s only a matter of time, because it is only at this point in time that abortion is not on the PM’s agenda.

Muscat pooh-poohed the reaction to Dalli’s little slip by pompously decreeing that the Nationalists were scraping the bottom of the barrel.

His silly crack was turned right back on him by Simon Busuttil, who insouciantly put it that “we will rely on the PM’s assurances that abortion will not be introduced”, presumably in the same way that same-sex adoption wasn’t introduced after Muscat had said he was against it a few years ago.

There’s so much more, like the threat of Chinese medicines spreading like Chinese software or presidential put-downs of ministers, but there’s only so much space available and I have to tell you about a couple of good meals we had over the weekend, apart from the treat of visiting Casa Rocca Piccola.

Chez Philippe, in Gżira, remains excellent, while a new place in the Menqa (Marsalforn) is well worth a try, this being Storie e Sapori. It’s virtually the last one along the row of rather good places and it’s good too – must try the pizza soon.

imbocca@gmail.com

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/author/20