IT’S JUST WOOLLY THINKING ON ECO-FASHION
THERE are reputedly many divisions within our British society but one that I never see mentioned is the yawning gulf between townies and country folk, born and raised. In numerical terms the balance has swerved enormously towards urban people in my lifetime. I believe it is now 80 per cent urban to 20 per cent rural.
That provokes another gulf. Those who wail endlessly about animal rights and perceived unkindness towards bird and beast are overwhelmingly city-born and raised. Not unnaturally they tend to be as consumed by ignorance about why we have such a beautiful rural landscape and what actually goes on in it as by their own virtue signalling.
Let me be clear. True cruelty to any animal or bird, domestic, farmed or wild, is disgusting and to any true countryman wholly unacceptable. But there are certain unavoidable facts about wildlife and farmed animals and some of them are disagreeable. Waving placards is simply not going to change that.
One is that Mother Nature is not a kindly old lady, she can be a cruel tyrant. Under her rule a predator that, through age or decrepitude, cannot hunt any more is going to starve. That is a hideous death. It is kinder to end the misery with a merciful end-of-pain, the coup de grâce, the shot of mercy.
It is a fact that wild foxes, uncontrolled, will move rapidly into mass-multiplication and infestation. Driven by hunger ,they will have to hunt and eat all the other life-forms they can, and thus the rural ecology. Every life-form needs that crucial life-support system and the balance is extremely delicate. It is fashionable to say, “We humans should not interfere.” But we have already interfered – with our cities, towns, roads, railways, pylons, wind farms, the vast collection of artefacts we need or want.
We owe what is left a duty of care and the method is humane care, by enlightened management which is exactly what British country folk practise.
I mention this because a company called Boohoo.com has denounced wool for clothing and stated it will only use synthetic fibres. Two inconvenient facts.
The greatest polluter of nature on the planet is the plastics industry (including synthetic fibres) and sheep at shearing time are visibly delighted to be rid of the mass of fleece they have grown to keep them warm through the winter.
Man has worn wool since time began and it is an extremely eco-friendly fibre.