Kittens spared but foxes to die?

by Greg McDonald

Health and safety officials are right to block Mariah Carey’s demands for 20 white kittens and 100 white doves when she turns on a London shopping centre’s Christmas lights. Animals are sentient creatures, not toys, and our society must stop abusing them.

When it comes to treating animals ethically, Britain is some way ahead of the Far East, where “delicacies” like the still-wriggling, still-suffering live fish meal in today’s headlines still prevail.

Yet modern Britain has not travelled this far from its cock-fighting, bear-baiting past without brave legislators having the courage to lead public attitudes to the treatment of animals.

It’s essential that today’s law-makers continue their forebears’ good work by outlawing cruel practices. Yet tragically next year precisely the opposite may happen - for Mariah Carey is not the only photogenic star whose entourage threatens Britain’s animals.

Hug-a-hoodie image or no, David Cameron plans to overturn the fox hunting ban, and Brits proud to be a nation of animal lovers must not allow the seal of approval to be returned to this most revolting symbol of cruelty.

Officials are right to place animal welfare before Mariah Carey’s vanity - we must be equally firm in refusing to tolerate the abuse of any sentient creature.

Not-so-dumb blonde

by Alan Tyers

My favourite ongoing news story at the moment is that of the court case involving the squillionaire financier who is being sued for discrimination by a disgruntled former employee.

Jordan Wimmer, you may recall, claims that her mega-rich hedge fund boss Mark Lowe humiliated her by turning up to business events accompanied by scantily dressed hookers.

The case has now moved on with the news that Ms Wimmer is upset that he made a “dumb blonde” joke in a round-robin email. Even worse, she was suffering from depression at the time.

Mr Lowe doesn’t really seem like the sort of bloke a gal would be dying to take home to mum - and, judging from his picture, he might be well advised to keep his comments about other people’s appearance to a minimum.

But Ms Wimmer, for her part, sounds like she might be on shaky ground. How can you work in an environment like private equity - where short-term, aggressive, uncaring machismo is the name of the game - and not expect a bit of rough and tumble?

In an ideal word, we’d all treat our co-workers with respect and kindness at all times. But that’s a pipe dream, especially in a job that involves seeing the naked face of capitalism right up close and personal.

Jordan Wimmer joined Mark Lowe’s company in 2004 on a £50,000 salary; within four years she was making the best part of 600 grand a year. For that sort of money - and incredible salary increase - she should have been able to put up with a bit of argy-bargy.

Let kids be kids

by Greg McDonald

Shame on Victoria Beckham for using her children as photo-op props - but shame on the public, too, for failing to shun child exploitation in all its forms and instead allowing children to be children.

Victoria’s willingness to thrust oldest son Brooklyn into the destructive public spotlight, with his first “public charity engagement” and gossip magazine cover splash, is deplorable, whatever spurious platitudes she may spout about children inspiring hope, promise and so on.

But sadly the Beckhams are far from alone. From Madonna’s latest designer adoption to exploitative TV circuses like Britain’s Got Talent humiliating minors in acts like Stavros Flatley, the public is happy to acquiesce in turning vulnerable children into freak show entertainment.

But while it may ever have been thus - from Britain’s freakiest show, the Royal family, downwards - it shouldn’t be. Children, as Gordon Brown noted in a thinly-veiled Conference speech attack on David Cameron’s willingness to put his own kids in front of the cameras, “are not props, they’re people”.

In wider society, children have never been materially better off, but in many ways the modern childhood experience of TV screens and Tesco Christmases is an impoverished thing.

If Victoria Beckham truly believes “every child deserves an equal start”, her charity ought to begin at home - with a press release telling the media her kids are off-limits. Children do not exist to be exploited, but to be children.

All full up?

by Greg McDonald

While the Prime Minister should have gone further in today’s landmark immigration speech and capped Britain’s population at 65 million, we should not confuse a balanced migration policy with racism.

Gordon Brown’s pledge that Britain’s population will not be allowed to exceed 70 million by 2029 is long overdue. But it at least breaks fundamentally with the sleepwalking policy of an out-of-touch political elite - typified by Home Secretary Alan Johnson’s infamously drowsy nights spent dreaming of the arrival of Britain’s 65 millionth citizen.

The balanced migration argument is not about ethnicity but numbers. Simply, most Britons believe our overcrowded island doesn’t have the space to build another Birmingham.

The solution? Britain should adopt a one-in-one-out balanced migration policy of the kind long supported by Conservative MP Nicholas Soames and Labour’s Frank Field, co-chairmen of the Cross Party Group for Balanced Migration.

But as the Government finally joins the immigration debate, the rest of us should be crystal clear that - however racist elements like the BNP seek to exploit our fear of change to stir up division and hatred - the issues of immigration and racism are wholly separate.

Britain’s 61 million citizens are richer for our cultural and human diversity, our tolerance and our pluralism. We just don’t have the room for another nine million people.

Shoplifters of the world...

by Alan Tyers

The middle-classes, when not high on cocaine, binge-drinking or being given life in prison for getting a parking ticket, are now apparently mad for the shoplifting.

A report from snappily-named security and merchandising specialists Checkpoint Systems NCE reckons that shoplifting is up 20% - costing businesses an eye-watering £4.9 billion a year.

Says that company’s spokesman: “We are seeing more instances of amateur thieves stealing goods for their own personal use rather than to sell-on.

“This is epitomised in the recent uprising of the middle-class shoplifter, someone who has turned to theft to sustain their standard of living, and this is driving theft of items such as cosmetics, perfumes and face creams, alcohol, fresh meat, mobile phones, computer games and DVDs as well as small electrical goods like cameras, iPods and personal care gadgets.”

What can be done about these crazed fiends, with their insatiable desire for meat and cosmetics?

Seems to me that this is a result in the growing sense of entitlement that we all have: everyone wants a lifestyle rich in consumer goods and nice things, and the freely available credit of the last generation made it dead easy to get things on the never-never. Now credit is harder to get, but demand is the same, so we’ll have to nick what is rightfully ours. I blame The X Factor.

Aside from inflated expectations of what is our right, or even our need, some goods are just ridiculously overpriced and cartelised. Maybe people are just sick of forking over a fortune for products that they know are massively marked-up by greedy retailers.

If I wasn’t such a chicken, here are some items I would definitely nick from supermarkets: bin bags; tissues; razor blades. The items are not, despite what it might sound like, to form the basis of some horrific murder / clean-up kit, but rather just things that always seem staggeringly overpriced.

Oh, and I’d definitely trouser a few bottles of contact lens solution if I could get away with it. Five quid for that? Come off it.

Berlin should inspire us all

by Greg McDonald

As world leaders gather in Germany today to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the miracle of reunification should embolden us to believe that bold, peaceful, democratic progress is possible when we have the courage to act as if it’s so.

For Berlin owes much of its success to precisely that spirit: manifested in the bravery of ordinary Germans who faced down a seemingly unbeatable foe, and to sage German leaders who put long-term security ahead of short-term advantage.

In Berlin today, however, world leaders should recognise that peace and prosperity in a united Germany did not happen in a vacuum - but as part of the wider European miracle, which has given an otherwise historically bloody continent 64 years of relative peace.

And, reflecting on the iconic images of Berliners’ triumph over fear and division 20 years ago, we in Britain would do well to reflect on how fortunate we are to be a part of that Europe - and, for all the European project’s defects, how essential it is that our future is at its heart.

The German miracle is so inspiring because so little is easier in life than saying “I can’t” - and, when it seems that way, still acting as if “I can”. Or in Gandhi’s formulation, to “be the change you wish to see in the world”.

Recalling the fall of the Wall, we can take heart that humanity constantly produces seemingly miraculous triumph over unbeatable odds - as anyone who saw David Haye’s Goliathan boxing victory this weekend will testify - and feel emboldened that progress is always possible if we act like it’s so.

Shame not jail

by Greg McDonald

The student caught on camera drunkenly urinating on war memorial poppy wreaths deserves the shame and humiliation he will live with for many years to come - but he shouldn’t go to jail.

Philip Laing has no excuses. His lawyers paint a picture of a student with a bright future, innocently caught up in a drinking culture and now struck with remorse. But being middle class doesn’t excuse you from equal treatment before the law, any more than downing 10 Stellas excuses you running the next-door neighbour down in the family car.

And as for remorse, it’s funny how so few of Laing’s fellow louts are as remorseful about the crimes that don’t get splashed across the front of national newspapers.

But while Laing’s misdeed is revolting, it’s also a single youthful mistake - and however disgusted we may feel, we should remember that few of us didn’t make a few mistakes of our own along the way.

Granted, many premeditated and evil crimes committed in Britain deserve a harsher punishment than our legal system has the resources or will to enforce. But as ugly as Laing’s drunken misdemeanor may be, his is not one of those.

The judge is right to hang the prospect of jail over Laing’s head for a fortnight while he awaits sentencing. But, while the student deserves his shame, in this instance – just for once – a custodial sentence would be excessive.

Mock horror

by Alan Tyers

The surprising thing about the row between Olympic double gold medal-winning swimmer Rebecca Adlington and the BBC is not that people are queuing up to be offended by Mock The Week panellist Frankie Boyle’s jokes, but that Adlington herself gives a hoot what he thinks or says.

Imagine the sheer willpower and strength of character that she must possess to get up before dawn every day of the year, train her guts out and bring home two gold medals at just 19 years old. It’s amazing that a couple of gags on a TV panel show are anything but water off a duck’s back.

Anyway, they obviously aren’t, because she has made a formal complaint about the BBC Trust’s response to the situation. Just to catch you up, the Trust rebuked Boyle for saying Adlington had a face “like someone looking at themselves in the back of a spoon” and speculating that the fact her boyfriend is much more attractive (according to Boyle) proves she must be “very dirty”. Adlington reckons Boyle got off too lightly.

The jokes were a bit mean, but I’m glad Boyle has the freedom to make them. It is, after all, only a joke, on a show that’s flagged up for having adult humour. However, the BBC Trust found that, in essence, Adlington was not fair game because she has not courted celebrity or fame.

I seem to remember Adlington appearing on A Question Of Sport and The Charlotte Church Show, and I note from her personal website that the swimmer has signed a deal to be “an official partner” with British Gas, presumably involving the utilities supplier giving her money in exchange for access to her name, image, time or status.

And why the hell not? Good luck to the woman if she wants to make a few quid after all her hard work - but it’s debatable that she has “not courted celebrity or fame”.

This stand-off is further ammunition for the BBC haters who won’t be happy until the entire shebang is shut down, and also for the country’s self-appointed moral guardians who spend their days looking for comics to be offended by.

A joke’s a joke; let Frankie Boyle - and Jimmy Carr, with his squaddie gags - get on with what they do.

The appliance of science

by Greg McDonald

Members of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs are right to resign over the Home Secretary’s knee-jerk sacking of Government drug adviser Professor David Nutt, just as Nutt is right that it is not the role of scientists to “rubber stamp” pre-determined Government positions.

Alan Johnson’s disingenuous argument that the Professor’s views amount to a campaign against the Government no more chimes with the evidence than does the Home Secretary’s backward drugs policy.

For far from the ravings of a substance evangelist Nutt’s words are not personal views at all, but the findings of a scientific study. The Professor is no more guilty of campaigning against the Home Office line by stating them than a maths teacher is guilty of railing against straight lines when explaining the definition of a circle.

Yet there is a wider issue here. It’s little wonder Joe Public, fifth Stella in hand, is shocked to hear a scientist say that “ecstasy is safer than horse-riding” - because Joe’s view of drugs, as with so much of British politics, is based more on heated headline hysteria than cold evidence.

And as one department after another backs a counterproductive policy to placate such prejudices, until the hysteria typified by Nutt’s sacking is challenged we’ll all keep paying the high price of knee jerk policy-making.

Members of the Advisory Council are right to make a stand - for until British governments are forced to confront reality, destructive policies will continue to be made not in the lab but in the pub.

Cyclepath psychopaths

by Alan Tyers

Everyone should leap for joy and hug their nearest polar bear after the news that large companies are encouraging people to cycle to work.

It’s one of the most firmly held beliefs of your average liberal that cycling is a wonderful thing and we should all do it as much as possible.

Personally, I abhor this Cycle To Work scheme, and not just because it’s endorsed by the absurd Mayor of London. Perhaps Bonking Boris misunderstood the offer of “a ride with Kelly Brook”.

London cyclists are a plague and a menace to pedestrians and motorists alike. Is there any other group in society so wilfully hypocritical, so certain of their moral superiority?

They frequently ignore traffic lights and zebra crossings, nearly running down pedestrians on a daily basis. They cycle on the pavement when they so choose; this is unforgivable for anyone old enough to have removed their stabilisers.

Cyclists, as a group - and they are a group, with their irritating little group go-slows and militant demos that slow up the traffic on a Friday - need to make up their minds if they’re road users who should be treated like other vehicles, or pavement users with no such rights.

A bike is a fine diversion for a ride in the countryside, or as a plaything for a child. But it should not be promoted as a mode of transport in a large city. These two-wheeled maniacs must be stopped, not encouraged.