Stop giving the stamp of approval to cruel ‘sport’
AS THE biodiversity crisis deepens, it’s hard to fathom why the Government continues to allow persecution of creatures that are supposedly protected as treasures of our wildlife heritage.
The magnificent golden plover, though red-listed and deemed to be of ‘highest conservation concern’, can still be shot for several months of the year, thanks to exemptions in the Wildlife Act, inserted by politicians in response to lobbying by the shooting fraternity.
The bird, with its distinctive plumage, is celebrated on a stamp authorized by the same political establishment that lets gunmen blast it out of the sky.
The Irish hare fares even worse. This ‘protected; mammal can be shot, coursed and hunted, despite being in steady decline as a species for the past half century.
A number of stamps issued over the years highlight its place in our great Carnival of the
Animals, but the State that honours its mythic status and conservationist priority via the postal system also allows people to set dogs on it for fun.
And this gentle creature can be turned into a lead-riddled carcass for even more ‘sporting’ days of the year than the golden plover has to put up with.
If the Government is serious about addressing the everincreasing threat to all wildlife and eco-systems on this island, it should stop giving its stamp of approval to organized cruelty dressed up as ‘sport’!
John Fitzgerald, Callan, Co. Kilkenny.
A definitive answer
WELL, it seems it’ll only cost €20bn a year for 20 years to satisfy the Sinn Féin goal of everyone in Ireland becoming united, in the territorial sense. If we say it quickly perhaps it doesn’t sound as being an impossible economic dream?
But is anyone with a working brain taking into account that we in the 26 counties (including Sinn Féin) voted in favour of giving up our constitutional claim of sovereignty over Northern Ireland through ditching Articles 2&3 of the Constitution which laid out Irish jurisdiction over the six counties?
Who is asking the British Unionist/Protestant people of Northern Ireland, which numbers 1.5million in population, whether they are as enthused as – as RTÉ news told us – ‘we’ in Eire, who are allegedly contemplating this ‘study’? When we here in this glorious republic thankfully voted to give up on the united Ireland fantasy scenario,we also gave up on the unsavoury beliefs that warring factions and skewed nationalist ideologies are somehow still relevant.
Sinn Féin does not hold the key to what constitutes peace; our constitutional vote on the erstwhile ‘national question’ did this, definitively.
Robert Sullivan, Bantry, Co. Cork.
PRESIDENT Michael D. Higgins was so right in telling the public at last Sunday’s 1916 Easter Rising commemoration that the values of the proclamation still remain true today. One senses that our 1916 patriots would not be best pleased with the flagrant inequality that many of our politicians show to the electorate.
We live in a democracy and yet 49 of the Sennad’s 60 members are elected and 11 are nominated by the Taoiseach.
Of the 49 elected members, 43 are elected from panels of candidates representing special vocational interests.
The remaining six members are elected by university graduates from certain universities.
I am aware that this is the way it’s configured but I still find it gravely undemocratic.
Politicians then wonder why people are angry?
John O’Brien, Clonmel, Co. Tipperary.