We're going slightly mad...

Is it just me, or has this country started turning into an extended remix of Queen’s greatest hits ever since that Brian May concert last month?

Either we’re all going slightly mad, or there’s a kind of magic in the air: the sort of magic that makes people do and say remarkably stupid things… especially as they vow, like Freddie before them, to ‘keep fighting till the end’.

OK, a small disclaimer before proceeding. I know that ‘saying stupid things’ is not exactly a novel phenomenon in this country of ours… or indeed anywhere else. And yes, I am also aware that people have (or are supposed to have) a right to say whatever they like, regardless how potty or nonsensical. Freedom of expression, after all, also means the freedom to talk out of one’s backside. I would be the last person to argue against this right… partly because it would also be a case of arguing myself out of a job.

But there are reasonable limits of decency to take into account. And besides: there is only so much bullshit that can actually be put up with, before we end up with a situation where the law exists only to uphold insanity, and only to defend the indefensible.

OK, now onto the matter at hand. As some you might have guessed from the constant sound of gunfire in the distance – or from the dead or injured birds landing in their backyards – the spring hunting season is currently in full swing. And along with the usual assortment of migratory birds, this year we have also had an abnormally high influx of foreign busybodies telling us what to do.

First it was former Queen guitarist Brian May; then BBC journalist Chris Packham; now it’s former ‘Goodies’ comedian Bill Oddie. All these people, and a few more beside, have flocked here from northern Europe to complain about or local tradition of killing birds in spring… specifically, as they migrate northwards over Malta in order to nest in their home countries of northern Europe. 

Yes, you read right. Filthy, pesky foreigners, coming here and presuming to tell us all what to do. Informing us – like they have any authority in the matter – that it is neither nice nor neighbourly of us to carry on decimating their own countries’ native wildlife at its most vulnerable stage of its reproductive cycle.

I mean, honestly, whatever next?

The same hunters who had tried to tug on our heartstrings with their own sob-stories about depression, now openly deride and mock a single individual over the exact same issue

But in this case, the crime has been greatly aggravated by an extenuating factor. According to the hunters’ federation, these people are not merely ‘foreign’. They are also (shock, horror)… English. And that fact alone, of course, should put a permanent lid on the entire issue. They’re English, for crying out loud! They should be too busy eating fish and chips with mushy peas to trouble themselves with the goings-on in a tiny former colony of their long-forgotten empire.

But no! Not only do celebrity English rockstars and comedians have nothing better to do than interfere in Malta’s cherished traditions – ‘cherished’, that is, by around 5% of the population – but they even send infiltrators to occupy such ‘local’ posts as Birdlife Malta director… who also happens to be an Englishman named Steve Micklewright. And what is this, if not a blatant conspiracy to undo some 50 years of Independence, and simply turn the clock back to Colonialist times when ‘the Inglizi’ decided everything on our behalf?

Of course, there is a tiny little fly in that particular ointment. One of the more regular visitors among these flocks of busybodies is something called the ‘Campaign Against Bird Slaughter’. And it isn’t English. It’s actually German.

But that’s OK, because the hunters issue separate press releases about that lot. In their case, the argument becomes: they’re Germans, for heaven’s sake! Shouldn’t they be busy invading Poland or something? Don’t they have anything better to do… like drinking Pilsener, or administering the occasional concentration camp?

And on it goes. I imagine if the next foreign busybody happens to be Japanese, he or she will be curtly reminded of Pearl Harbour (or, more pointedly, Hiroshima) and likewise advised to drift off and commit hara kiri somewhere. If American, they will be reminded of the Iraq or Vietnam or Korean war, and told to stuff their face with a Big Mac and simply shut up.

This, you see, is the extent of what passes for an ‘argument’ among the hunting community. And I say ‘hunting community’ because these arguments are not floated by the occasional, random hunter of the ‘Rubber Jollies’ variety (in which case it would normally be quite entertaining). Oh no. This sort of argument comes directly from the official hunters’ representatives themselves, who are also lobbying at both government and European level. It is, in fact, the FKNK’s official stand to simply lay into anyone or anything who dares criticise spring hunting… and, in true blunderbuss fashion, they will discharge everything they’ve got in their double barrels, in one fusillade of unmitigated nonsense.

But there is more. Apart from being foreign – bad enough as it is, I would have thought – these trespassing busybodies are also 100% right. And this, of course, makes it so much harder for the hunters to endure their interference. One can, after all, always find an excuse for not being Maltese (‘hey, it’s not my fault my parents were filthy disgusting foreigners’, etc.). But to be foreign and right, when the hunters are Maltese and wrong? That is both intolerable and unforgivable.

It is easy to see why, too. Arguments which are ludicrous or absurd can always be countered with logic and common sense. But when your detractors are correct – pinpointing exactly why, where and how the concept of a spring hunting season is a perversion of all known standards of wildlife conservation – it sort of forces you to confront the sheer absurdity of your own position.

And, let’s face it, that is kind of annoying. Especially when these people have also dared to actually echo what many of the rest of us common mortals out here think, and have been arguing for years.

I mean, the sheer cheek of it all. It’s bad enough that thousands of ordinary nobodies in this country have the temerity to actually disagree with the hunters’ lobby. But ordinary nobodies like you and I can always be conveniently ignored. At a stretch we can even be bullied and intimidated… sometimes even shot, as happened (twice) to a Foresta 2000 warden. And as things stand, the anti-spring hunting majority in this country has a long history of simply being by-passed and overlooked: not just by hunters, but also by governments of all shapes, sizes and colours.

But celebrities who have access to international audiences? Who (like Brian May) have worldwide followings, and who (like Chris Packham) occupy strategic positions in the international press? Those are slightly harder to ignore. So where hunters and governments feel they can trample on ordinary citizens at will, without so much as even acknowledging their existence… they also feel compelled to answer the same criticism when it comes from international celebrities.

We’ve already had the embarrassment of Gavin Gulia, the politically-appointed chairman of the Tourism Authority, telling Brian May to shut up about spring hunting… when May was actually echoing known concerns within the tourism industry, for which Gulia himself is supposedly responsible. (Note: strangely, Gavin Gulia hasn’t yet responded to Chris Packham’s argument that a spring hunting ban would bring tourism benefits at the beginning and end of the tourism season. I wonder why that is? Hmm).

Now, we have the FKNK openly ridiculing them for their specific medical conditions, too.

Bill Oddie, for instance, has been singled out by FKNK as… a ‘mental case’. Why should be bother listening to this nutter, they argue? He is, by his own admission, a sufferer from bipolar disorder (what we used to refer to as ‘manic-depression’) and prone to occasional suicidal tendencies. So, like all sufferers from such disorders, he should presumably be locked up in an asylum somewhere, where he can babble his incoherent ramblings endlessly to the padded walls of his cell.

In all honesty, I don’t think I have ever seen or heard a more utterly nauseating and stomach-turning tactic, than to seize on a person’s health issues to discredit his or her arguments (which, in turn, have nothing to do with the condition at hand). Had Bill Oddie been a paraplegic – or a sufferer from spina bifida, or some other physically degenerative disease – the FKNK would presumably have dismissed him as ‘vegetable’ or ‘cripple’ instead of a ‘mental case’. The underlying thought process is after all identical in either case: you suffer from depression, so your opinion on spring hunting doesn’t matter. You’re in a wheelchair, so you should just give up on life altogether, and keep your lousy opinions to yourself.

Well, here I feel I ought to remind the hunters’ federation – which now finds Bill Oddie’s mental health concerns so very amusing – of its own previous statements on the subject of depression, suicide and mental disorders. In 2012, the same FKNK issued a statement concerning the mental health of its own members, following the spring hunting ban in 2009.

I quote from a news report: “Hunters suffered from higher levels of depression and anxiety in the wake of a spring hunting ban imposed in 2009, according to a study [commissioned by the FKNK] published yesterday.”

And this is from another report, which also hinted that some people may even have committed suicide as a result of the 2009 ban. “Joe Perici Calascione, the federation’s press officer, said: ‘We did not have to come to this. People should not have had to lose their lives because they were deprived of an integral part of their daily lives. Many are now on antidepressants and suffering from different psychological disorders’…”.

Ah yes, of course. Because depression and suicidal tendencies are serious matters only when they affect hunters. And we should all be moved to compassion and sympathy, when it is a hunter who is forced to take medication for a psychological disorder.

When, on the other hand, it is an anti-spring hunting activist who suffers from the same condition, not only is no compassion or sympathy of any kind forthcoming… but the same hunters who had tried to tug on our heartstrings with their own sob-stories about depression, now openly deride and mock a single individual over the exact same issue.

So just in case Joe Perici Calascione intends to try that little stunt again… to once more to put on his best beaten-dog expression for the television cameras, and appeal to mass sympathy for all those poor, depressed hunters who need medication for their mental health conditions… kindly note that your last public statement on the same subject has shot down even the remote possibility of any form of empathy whatsoever.

As for myself, I look forward to expressing my full sympathy and heartfelt compassion in the polling booth of referendum day, when I will very happily vote ‘Yes’ to a total ban on spring hunting… and ‘No’ to this vile and barbaric habit of insulting and ridiculing people in the most obscene manner imaginable.

Speaking of which: the Electoral Commission should surely have verified the signatures by now. Can we have a referendum date, please?