My wife Linda chose to celebrate my sixtieth birthday with a train trip to Venice last week.  Fortunately, she invited me along too. 

Enjoyable though it was, the experience was marred by the sickening concentration of people wearing full fur coats, far more than I’ve noticed over here in recent years.  Once seen, it is impossible to erase memories of animals being skinned-alive for the bloody trade.  Please remember that even fur-trimmed hoods, coats and boots might not be the fake fur described on the label.

Following on from the successful – but only by way of it being supported unanimously – Stockport Council motion, proposed by the Conservatives and seconded by Labour, opposing the barbaric force-feeding of ducks and geese for certain types of pate, I was delighted to reciprocate by seconding a Labour motion last week calling for the greater use of free range eggs and highlighting the cruelty involved in the production of battery eggs. 

I heard the Labour Lord Rooker on television the other week in a House of Lords debate, covering the Japanese, so called, whaling for scientific purposes, saying, in effect, that there is no humane way to kill a whale.  In agreeing with those comments, I’d add, should we really be killing these creatures ever, if this is the case?

While progress on animal welfare issues continues to be slow, millions continue to be tortured and mutilated for human consumption and vanity.  I repeat what I’ve said many times before, and as someone who is not a vegetarian, an animal should be reared humanely and if it has to be ‘dispatched’ it should be done painlessly and quickly.

Did you know that farmers rearing bulls for the gruesome ‘sport’ of bullfighting in Beziers, the French twin town of Stockport, can apply for taxpayers’ money in the form of European Union subsidies!

And finally….along with Ben Jeffreys our Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Cheadle, I have repeatedly and reasonably requested that the local Liberal Democrats disown and desist from practising their ‘be wicked, act shamelessly, stir endlessly….don’t be afraid to exaggerate’ campaigning manual techniques. It is regrettable that, to date, they have given no such undertaking.  It would appear, therefore, that in the run up to the 1st May local elections, sadly, we can expect from them, once again, the same deplorable and negative campaigning tactics for which they’re now notorious.

 

Cllr Kenneth Holt
Bramhall North

This article, by Cllr K Holt, was first published in the Stockport Express 13/02/2008.