BALMORAL - ROYAL GROUSE SHOOT CANCELLED

WILLFUL BLINDNESS IS NO LONGER AN OPTION THE PETITION STATES

This should be a ‘call’ to everyone that is a decent person. It is a call that should have the volume of a scream. Allowing the killers to have their own way for centuries is coming to an end, The monied that have the power, but not through their power only have been allowed to maintain that position because of history, tradition and culture. The mind-set needs to be changed!

Today at 2.45pm 22,859 names were the total of people that added theirs to a petition to BAN DRIVEN GROUSE SHOOTING. The target is 100,000 names so that it can be heard in Parliament.
We have organizations fighting hard to safeguard our wildlife and not allowing the good and the beautiful to be slaughtered at the behest of landed aristocrats, grouse moor owners and other shoot organizers. Their need to supply game birds is to the detriment of indigenous species.

There are killers out there who do it wantonly. Guns in the hands of game keepers and vicious traps make it deadly for any natural predator. On Thursday we saw a first year Golden Eagle flying with a trap on its leg. That was no accident, I believe, because in April two young Golden Eagles disappeared in the Crathie area of Deeside. The same area where the ‘trapped eagle’ was flying. It has not been seen since and what death did it suffer?

I spoke of the need for a change of mindset in an earlier paragraph. This is what we need to change not only for a group of people, but in the way that it is reported upon. The following is a straight lift from The Telegraph Newspaper. It says it in a ‘matter-of-fact-way’ that makes it sound so correct and proper. There is no balance in it that goes anywhere near to show how moors are mismanaged for the sake of the grouse industry.

The Guardian states
“It has long been one of the highlights of the royals’ calendar but it will be a less Glorious 12th for the Queen this year after grouse shooting was cancelled at Balmoral due to a shortage of birds.
The extreme weather and an outbreak of heather beetle, which has decimated food supplies in the Scottish Highlands, has been blamed for the decision to cancel all grouse shooting on Her Majesty’s estate in Aberdeenshire.
It comes after many moors in the north of England and the Scottish borders had to abandon planned events last year in order to allow the grouse stocks to recover.
But they have not recovered enough at Balmoral, where the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York shoot regularly during the grouse season from August 12 to December 10.
A royal source said: “It is a real blow to the royals’ summer holiday plans because grouse shooting is usually the main activity for the royals and their guests”.

Now it's me and I want to ‘spit feathers’ at this guff! To make any suggestion that it is glorious to kill defenseless birds on any day makes me angry. Do the people in the circles of royalty not know that there is a ground swell of opinion objecting to this antiquated ‘sport’. And if they did know it; it shows their arrogance in letting it continue.

For me, the quote from a royal source, - hopefully accurate - makes it plain that there is bugger all to do up there except carry on the Victorian habit of shooting birds. Come on, get real and move on. The visit of Boris will no doubt lift the gloom and boredom when he arrives later!