BY JOHN NASH
The dreadful Eduardo Gonçalves, operator of the uber-deceitful and frankly political Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting (that has nothing to do with animals other than their use as a Trojan horse to access donations and influence), is in fact a trophy hunter himself – he head-hunts actors, politicians, celebrities and anyone else who makes a living out of pretence, baiting them with addictive offers of unlimited, glittering LAME (Look At Me Everyone) and copious helpings of FIGJAM (F**k, I’m Great, Just Ask Me).
Suckers for the aroma of easy piety, they take the bait. Of course, they are not his supporters – they are his victims.
Recently, this corrosive individual and Nada Farhoud, his pet eco-hysteric in the Mirror Online, have again been plastering provincial newspapers and the Internet with deceptive garbage, decorated with the hoodwinked celebrities that Gonçalves exhibits like a Texan gunroom. Of late, they have been joined by some unbelievably sad performance art from a gormless ex-marine Conservative MP who thinks he has been given a battle flag to wave, not realising that he is waving a poo bag containing an old stool voided by Gonçalves – the turd that will not flush, also known as the Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill that refuses to sink regardless of the gallons of truth poured on it. Yes, Dear Reader, it has popped up again, like one of those nasty grey jobbies in a British Rail toilet.
The Portuguese rodent’s latest “revelation” is about seal hunting in Finland, with the Mirror dutifully tearing its raiment thus: “Actress Joanna Lumley slams ‘sadistic’ Brits on ‘vile’ £700 package holidays to slaughter seals”. Poor Ms Lumley, such an excellent actress, now faithfully delivering a Goebbellian script. I often wonder if she ever even sees her nasty words before they are published.
More erudite readers of CSM might be interested to know that the “evilly slaughtered” grey seal is actually a game animal in Finland (like deer in the UK) and considered a pest by fishermen. The population in the Baltic is some 42,000 grey seals, increasing by at least 5% annually, and each one of them consumes about 6 Kgs of fish per day, making a €20,000 hole in every Finnish fisherman’s pocket. Seals wreak havoc on fishing nets and the fish caught in them. The result is that many inshore artisan fishermen are giving up fishing entirely, sadly destroying local employment, culture and communities that have endured for thousands of years. One wonders if Ms Lumley might view their plight differently if they were Gurkhas.
The grey seal has been traditionally hunted, eaten and used for a hundred things like gloves and shoes along the coast there since the Stone Age and presently there is a Finland government annual hunting quota of over a thousand for grey seals. The full quota is never reached because there is little demand other than local consumption, due to a ban on commercial seal products in the EU, thanks to urban sensitivities inflamed by the kind of rabble-rousing effluvium spouted by the Mirror and splashed all over Gonçalves’ trophy celebs.
And, talking of that EU ban, The Mirror helpfully illustrated this latest seal hunting slur with its famous 1968 graphic image, taken by Kent Gavin, of a seal being clubbed to death in Canada.
One might point out that Finland isn’t Canada and hunting tourists use modern rifles (unlike seal cullers who use clubs in an entirely different commercial activity), but there is a far more important point to make here. The Canadian seal clubbing brouhaha back in the day was vital in setting up and financing Greenpeace, but Greenpeace eventually had the decency to apologise for the damage they caused to the Inuit Community with their ignorant but emotional bunny-hugging campaign, saying “And we have a responsibility — as conscious, socially responsible human beings — to right wrongs, to actively stop the spread of misinformation, and to decolonize our thinking, our language and our approach”.
Misinformation? Decolonise thinking and language? Take responsibility for hurting the locals? Ha, don’t expect any such apology from shifty neo-colonialist Gonçalves or the misinformative Mirror – they apparently couldn’t give a fecal fragment for the human and cultural rights of vulnerable foreigners – seemingly a minor matter to these scheming UK muckrakers and their willing donkey celebrities, all oblivious to the racism inflicted on Inuit communities.
Because of that “seal trophy” EU ban, created by the same deceitful antics now being used by Gonçalves, overnight, Arctic seal hunting revenues in Canada plummeted, nomadic hunters were forced to settle into fixed communities and the region’s already-high suicide rates became among the worst on the planet. “It was our Great Depression,” said spokesperson Arnaquq-Baril. It also made the word “Greenpeace”, like the UK Parliament, a virtual swear word anywhere above the treeline. Decades of animal rights activism against seal hunting has dramatically reduced Inuit income. According to the Guardian, after Europe banned seal products in the 80s, the average income of a seal hunter in Resolute Bay, a hamlet in Nunavut, plummeted from $54,000 to only $1,000, while 18 of 20 villages in the Northwest Territories lost an estimated 60 percent of their communities’ income.
One presumes that antis’ incomes rose in inverse proportion.
The odious Gonçalves and his pious puppets are giving the UK a bad name around the world, a fact repeated at home by his capture of David Reed MP, mentioned above and pictured below. Reed has now gone AWOL from sanity and is the latest in a line of nodding donkeys championing that unbelievably stupid, neo-colonialist, racist, pointless Private Members Bill to “ban the importation of hunting trophies” that will do nothing of the sort – it is a cunning stunt and a vegan brain-fart.
Reed’s rank stupidity demonstrates to perfection the reason why the Conservative Party has become unelectable – fed up with years of hard work on behalf of the nation, they retreated to the Westminster play-pen on behalf of themselves. Too many Tories left the leaderless snivel-service office shiny-bums to run the UK and instead went to play micro-politics based on political mischief, gossip and unelected false prophets like the oily Goncalves and his dim beast of burden, poor old Fingerless Fiennes. Having deserted their traditional, disciplined role as the champions of the supply side of the UK economy, the Conservatives turned to saddle-sniffing popular opinion polls and, unsurprisingly, ended up with the social-media socialists of the distribution side, fondling each other under a fluffy Westminster duvet embroidered with platitudes. Their lieutenant, Gove, even backed Harris for the last US Election!
Greenpeace and the Mirror jumped on the seal hunting bandwagon fifty years ago. Gonçalves came along to stick his little parasite beak into people’s kindness ten years ago. He in turn assembled his choir of parrots, his latest soloist this poor dimbo, Reed. The animal rights rabble all rely on deceit and subterfuge to push their political and vegan snake-oil. What have animals got to do with it?
Meanwhile, in the real world, humans have been hunters for 100,000 years. Hunting is a noble, normal and important human activity that has supplied and continues to supply the vital resources that made civilisation possible. Compared to that, Gonçalves and his assembly of cockwombles look like something unpleasant and foxy on the sole of a hunting boot.
John Nash grew up in West Cornwall and was a £10 pom to Johannesburg in the early 1960’s. He started well in construction project management, mainly high-rise buildings but it wasn’t really Africa, so he went bush, prospecting and trading around the murkier bits of the bottom half of the continent. Now retired back in Cornwall among all the other evil old pirates. His interests are still sustainable resources, wildlife management and the utilitarian needs of rural Africa. John is the co-author of Dear Townies with the Editor and his book, “Animal Rights, complete and utter bullsh*t” both available on Amazon.
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