Apropos nothing, I would welcome any suggestions from people on what would add more to the 'reader experience' in regards things like, having a best of the comments round-up? Some sub stackers even have best of readers articles. I haven't really had any time to do that on top of the writing which already takes up six days a week, but I might be able to afford to pay a part-time admin person which will help. But any suggestions welcome
Britons only kept the cute animals and this has something to do with these attitudes, I think. Just look at your badgers. They look like they want to come over for tea, what ho old chap. American badgers look like they desperately want to eat your face. No one here cares if a badger dies.
Sentimentality and psychopathy go hand and hand and so the Nazi gotcha might not be as low IQ as it seems. Mussolini apparently described Hitler as, " an old sentimentalist at heart".
And then there's the tendency of pet lovers to prefer animals to humans.
Whereas, millennials In the US seem to treat pets as a proxy for the children they are failing to have. Owning (soon to be an offensive term) at a higher rate than any other generation and spending more too.
As a lifelong baffled canine sceptic this article resonates so much with me. The British obsession with dogs knows no bounds.
One thing that could've been added further is the rise in human deaths due to dog attacks in the UK - purely as a result of our inability to stop devil dogs and their owners. Where's the memorials to young children savaged by 'Rufus' or 'King' and the like? I recently was on a train journey where a young girl was bitten by a huge dog and was very visibly terrified after. The dog owner did barely anything and was asked to get off with his hound at the next stop and that was it. Not sure if there were any later fines for this. I
It would be really neat if our empathy declined reliably and consistently the more distantly related, genetically-speaking, we are to an object but that clearly isn't the case. I prefer dogs to urangutans and bananas to Piers Morgan. So though my circle of empathy may be expanding it may be less like a circle and more like the Norwegian coastline.
The British attitude to foxes may change if ever rabies reaches these shores. In July 1980 I visited Burgenland, Austria, which had just suffered a major rabies outbreak. It crossed the entire country in two weeks, and scientific opinion at the time, I read, was that foxes were the main conduit of the disease. I was advised locally that if I were to go walking in woodland I should carry a big stick, as although the outbreak was officially over, caution was advised. There is the odd video online of rabid foxes.
Prior to an earlier visit to Istanbul I had read up on the symptoms of rabies in humans which, if you are caught too late for innoculation, are horrendous. A notice in my hotel there stated that 15% of all dogs and cats in Istanbul had rabies, which didn't register unduly until we saw the numerous large heaps of street corner refuse, which were literally crawling with both. Apparently during a later political coup the army shot most of them.
I'll quote an old Jewish acquaintance of mine from a few years ago regarding dog ownership:
'My great-grandparents didn't leave the shtetl so I could share my living space with an animal.'
One of the policies I would enact immediately if made dictator/Divine-right King would be the banning of pitbulls and similar breeds, but my guess is that would win me a trip to the guillotine given how soppy people are about canines.
Re: negative externalities for non dog owners—the bushes in our front yard, which are a preferred target for dogs out for walkies and are consequently browning on one side, would heartily agree. People around here mostly clean up their dogs’ poop, at least, but I’ve found the occasional unpleasant surprise on the bottom of my shoe after mowing the yard. The worst for me, though, is dogs off leashes in places where they are very explicitly meant to be either on-leash or entirely banned. I’ve been nipped more than once by dogs who weren’t under control, and charged by large dogs that had friendly intent but could easily have bowled over a small child or wobbly older person. Had a fascinating conversation with a guy whose dog crashed our picnic in a park with All Dogs on Leashes signs everywhere. He explained to us that it was OK for his well-behaved dog to be off the leash, because he used it as an opportunity to strike up conversations with less responsible dog owners about the importance of…keeping their dog leashed. Totally incoherent but delivered with great earnestness and self-satisfaction.
There are too many cats. Ours is an indoor one (although we take her out on a lead in the garden. Don't ask. Our various neighbours find it hilarious). And they are indeed a menace to the bird population. Owners of outdoor cats should be mandated to put bells on their cats' collars, to at least give birds a fighting chance. Failing that, a limit of one per household? A curfew would be funny. Never going to happen.
Cats on leads not as uncommon as you think. She appreciates it! (Eccentric owners.) Saw a man out walking a ferret last weekend. At least I think it was a ferret.
We are nuts for out pets. I think it's actually a lovely thing. But, we do treat them better than kids. Your point about factory farmed chickens is very true.
A few years ago I was working for a national charity that you will have heard of and seen the work of, and had existed for more than a decade. For some reason when I was there, I looked at the accounts of The Donkey Sanctuary, and realised they got more money from legacy donations *every year* than my charity had raised from all sources combined since they began.
There was the story about Keir Starmer owning a big plot of land that he'd inherited from his parents. Turns out they'd used it to look after donkeys; he sold it, but should have kept it and used it in every Party Poltical Broadcast. "I'm here at my family Donkey sanctuary." It would have been a Labour landslide to make Blair jealous.
Reminds me of the manifesto issued in 1999 by Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (then aged 83) in the internal House of Lords election to decide which hereditary peers should survive the New Labour cull: “I support: The Queen and all the Royal Family. The United Kingdom and not a Disunited Republic. Action against cruelty to animals, particularly fishing. All cats to be muzzled outside to stop the agonising torture of mice and small birds.”
In the crossbenchers’ poll, the cat-muzzler got just 14 votes and lost his seat in the Lords.
It's not only the Brits. When taking the ferry from Calais to Dover with a carful of kids & dogs a few weeks before Brexit, the French customs officer pleaded with me to turn back: "There's about to be a coup d'état over there, madame. Do you réalise how dangerous this could be for your dogs?!" Kids & I clearly totally dispensable in eyes of French state.
Meanwhile, one can easily find on Twitter representatives of certain other cultures killing and eating endangered giant salamanders [1], factory-farmed dogs [2] and live(?) mice [3].
As a reactionary, I'd say, "that's what separate countries are for: you can eat your factory-farmed dogs over there, we'll dedicate our swan memorials over here." But progressives seem heedless of the contradictions in their own position: "You must come to our country and bring your vibrant culture with you; we will then outlaw elements of that culture [horse tripping, steer tailing] in order to marginalize and discriminate against your people." [4][5][6]
Apropos nothing, I would welcome any suggestions from people on what would add more to the 'reader experience' in regards things like, having a best of the comments round-up? Some sub stackers even have best of readers articles. I haven't really had any time to do that on top of the writing which already takes up six days a week, but I might be able to afford to pay a part-time admin person which will help. But any suggestions welcome
Britons only kept the cute animals and this has something to do with these attitudes, I think. Just look at your badgers. They look like they want to come over for tea, what ho old chap. American badgers look like they desperately want to eat your face. No one here cares if a badger dies.
Yes badger culling vs foot and mouth disease (?) in cattle.
Sentimentality and psychopathy go hand and hand and so the Nazi gotcha might not be as low IQ as it seems. Mussolini apparently described Hitler as, " an old sentimentalist at heart".
And then there's the tendency of pet lovers to prefer animals to humans.
Whereas, millennials In the US seem to treat pets as a proxy for the children they are failing to have. Owning (soon to be an offensive term) at a higher rate than any other generation and spending more too.
https://pawsomeadvice.com/pets/pet-owners-statistics/
As a lifelong baffled canine sceptic this article resonates so much with me. The British obsession with dogs knows no bounds.
One thing that could've been added further is the rise in human deaths due to dog attacks in the UK - purely as a result of our inability to stop devil dogs and their owners. Where's the memorials to young children savaged by 'Rufus' or 'King' and the like? I recently was on a train journey where a young girl was bitten by a huge dog and was very visibly terrified after. The dog owner did barely anything and was asked to get off with his hound at the next stop and that was it. Not sure if there were any later fines for this. I
yeah we don't at all force dog laws. There should be a licence and for city-dwellers a tax.
It would be really neat if our empathy declined reliably and consistently the more distantly related, genetically-speaking, we are to an object but that clearly isn't the case. I prefer dogs to urangutans and bananas to Piers Morgan. So though my circle of empathy may be expanding it may be less like a circle and more like the Norwegian coastline.
The British attitude to foxes may change if ever rabies reaches these shores. In July 1980 I visited Burgenland, Austria, which had just suffered a major rabies outbreak. It crossed the entire country in two weeks, and scientific opinion at the time, I read, was that foxes were the main conduit of the disease. I was advised locally that if I were to go walking in woodland I should carry a big stick, as although the outbreak was officially over, caution was advised. There is the odd video online of rabid foxes.
Prior to an earlier visit to Istanbul I had read up on the symptoms of rabies in humans which, if you are caught too late for innoculation, are horrendous. A notice in my hotel there stated that 15% of all dogs and cats in Istanbul had rabies, which didn't register unduly until we saw the numerous large heaps of street corner refuse, which were literally crawling with both. Apparently during a later political coup the army shot most of them.
I'll quote an old Jewish acquaintance of mine from a few years ago regarding dog ownership:
'My great-grandparents didn't leave the shtetl so I could share my living space with an animal.'
One of the policies I would enact immediately if made dictator/Divine-right King would be the banning of pitbulls and similar breeds, but my guess is that would win me a trip to the guillotine given how soppy people are about canines.
I agree. pitbulls are actually illegal but it seems to be ignored. I regularly see them or similar breeds which are too big to be regular staffies.
I think dogs generally bring a lot of negative externalities to non-owners but this could never be tackled.
Re: negative externalities for non dog owners—the bushes in our front yard, which are a preferred target for dogs out for walkies and are consequently browning on one side, would heartily agree. People around here mostly clean up their dogs’ poop, at least, but I’ve found the occasional unpleasant surprise on the bottom of my shoe after mowing the yard. The worst for me, though, is dogs off leashes in places where they are very explicitly meant to be either on-leash or entirely banned. I’ve been nipped more than once by dogs who weren’t under control, and charged by large dogs that had friendly intent but could easily have bowled over a small child or wobbly older person. Had a fascinating conversation with a guy whose dog crashed our picnic in a park with All Dogs on Leashes signs everywhere. He explained to us that it was OK for his well-behaved dog to be off the leash, because he used it as an opportunity to strike up conversations with less responsible dog owners about the importance of…keeping their dog leashed. Totally incoherent but delivered with great earnestness and self-satisfaction.
Ah, Peter Singer--the man who endorsed infanticide while also celebrating the expanding circle of empathy. Talk about pathological empathy!
Repaganisation is real.
Many people are unaware just how weird Christian morality really is.
(But I'm happy for Singer to suggest these ideas, I'm very pro-thought experiments and people being able to say anything.)
In my opinion, people who believe they are "empathetic" should often be viewed with caution.
Agreed. Empathy can really be a disguise for zeal and fanaticism.
There are too many cats. Ours is an indoor one (although we take her out on a lead in the garden. Don't ask. Our various neighbours find it hilarious). And they are indeed a menace to the bird population. Owners of outdoor cats should be mandated to put bells on their cats' collars, to at least give birds a fighting chance. Failing that, a limit of one per household? A curfew would be funny. Never going to happen.
you take your cat on a lead? that *is* hilarious
Cat curfew would be a great idea, don't imagine it would 'focus group' well. Maybe they should all have to wear leper-bells to warn the birds.
Cats on leads not as uncommon as you think. She appreciates it! (Eccentric owners.) Saw a man out walking a ferret last weekend. At least I think it was a ferret.
We are nuts for out pets. I think it's actually a lovely thing. But, we do treat them better than kids. Your point about factory farmed chickens is very true.
A few years ago I was working for a national charity that you will have heard of and seen the work of, and had existed for more than a decade. For some reason when I was there, I looked at the accounts of The Donkey Sanctuary, and realised they got more money from legacy donations *every year* than my charity had raised from all sources combined since they began.
the blackest of all black pills. British people love donkeys!
There was the story about Keir Starmer owning a big plot of land that he'd inherited from his parents. Turns out they'd used it to look after donkeys; he sold it, but should have kept it and used it in every Party Poltical Broadcast. "I'm here at my family Donkey sanctuary." It would have been a Labour landslide to make Blair jealous.
550 seats at least
Reminds me of the manifesto issued in 1999 by Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (then aged 83) in the internal House of Lords election to decide which hereditary peers should survive the New Labour cull: “I support: The Queen and all the Royal Family. The United Kingdom and not a Disunited Republic. Action against cruelty to animals, particularly fishing. All cats to be muzzled outside to stop the agonising torture of mice and small birds.”
In the crossbenchers’ poll, the cat-muzzler got just 14 votes and lost his seat in the Lords.
to quote Private Eye letters, time to end the disastrous democratic experiment.
It's not only the Brits. When taking the ferry from Calais to Dover with a carful of kids & dogs a few weeks before Brexit, the French customs officer pleaded with me to turn back: "There's about to be a coup d'état over there, madame. Do you réalise how dangerous this could be for your dogs?!" Kids & I clearly totally dispensable in eyes of French state.
Literally reported today: https://news.sky.com/story/man-dies-after-attack-by-dangerously-out-of-control-dog-in-leigh-12884560
I want to bring back hanging so bad, my dudes.
This report is interesting reading in this regard
https://ifstudies.org/blog/pet-owners-are-less-happy-than-americans-without-pets
Pet Owners Are Less Happy Than Americans Without Pets
And that of which this is a symptom most parsimoniously explains at least 95% of the culture war
“Women under 65 with no children are by far the most likely to report spending time with a pet”
Meanwhile, one can easily find on Twitter representatives of certain other cultures killing and eating endangered giant salamanders [1], factory-farmed dogs [2] and live(?) mice [3].
As a reactionary, I'd say, "that's what separate countries are for: you can eat your factory-farmed dogs over there, we'll dedicate our swan memorials over here." But progressives seem heedless of the contradictions in their own position: "You must come to our country and bring your vibrant culture with you; we will then outlaw elements of that culture [horse tripping, steer tailing] in order to marginalize and discriminate against your people." [4][5][6]
[1] https://twitter.com/insectbrah/status/1628153941983899648
[2] https://twitter.com/WeAreNotFood/status/1634111000222785538
[3] https://twitter.com/Byron_Wan/status/1220169398192889857
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/us/12charro.html?pagewanted=all
[5] https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/local-las-vegas/clark-county-commissioners-say-no-to-rodeo-horse-tripping/
[6] https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/2009/08/01/horses-found-slaughtered-but-who-is-killing-them/28880906007/
"After his death, it turned out that Geronimo didn’t have TB, after all"
I'm afraid you have bought into pro-alpaca propaganda Ed. He had TB lesions and the test that was inconclusive was not for *if* he had TB, but what strain: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/culture-results-for-geronimo-the-alpaca
no way! Big alpaca got to me. I might edit that