RIP Harambe

 General  No Responses »
Jun 022016
 

A bit late to comment on this, but why not?

So we have a gorilla that has been shot dead to prevent him possibly injuring a four-year old that had somehow managed to get into the enclosure. Which is obviously a shame.

Having said that, and despite the fact that I’m fully behind limited rights for great apes, I believe that shooting Harambe was probably the right thing to do. Harambe could have ripped that four-year old apart, and from the videos I have seen, he didn’t look exactly calm. And when you come down to it, the decision has to be down to the zoo keepers.

Of course you could just let the four-year old get ripped to pieces, but you would have to be a gorilla to think that was a good idea.

But how did the four-year old get into the enclosure in the first place?

There’s two parts to that. Why did the zoo not make their enclosures toddler-proof?

And why did this toddler’s mother let him get away? Admittedly controlling a toddler makes herding cats look easy, but keeping a toddler on a leash around dangerous animals would seem to be a sensible idea.

Harambe

No We Can’t Leave Europe

 General, History, Politics  No Responses »
Jun 022016
 

One of the things that winds me up about the Brexit fans is that they keep going on about leaving Europe. Which is blatantly absurd; we can leave the EU if we’re dumb enough to choose that option (you may be able to guess what side I’m on), but there is no way we can leave Europe itself.

Britain is an integral part of Europe – geographically, historically, politically, and economically. If anything this is an argument in favour of staying within the EU so we have a greater say on what happens within Europe as a whole.

Historically we have had strong trade links to the rest of Europe since well before the Roman invasion (from Europe!). The Angles and the Saxons were European migrants; many of the Celtic aristocracy from that time made their home in Brittany (Europe again).

And we had Danish raiders from Europe (sometimes called Vikings) which demonstrated that a navy would be a good idea. And Danish migrants setting up home in Yorkshire, and other places. Followed by the Normans who arrived from Europe and helped transform Old English into a new language.

Wars with the French, wars with the Spanish, wars with the Dutch, and more recently wars with the Germans. And I’ve probably skipped over a few minor wars.

Dig through the ancestry of an English person and you’ll find a European migrant.

Trying to “leave Europe” and leave Europe to do it’s own thing just won’t work. Whatever the EU does will have an effect on us whether we’re part of the EU or not; and being part of the EU allows us a voice in what happens.

Pfizer Cripples the US Execution Engine

 General, Politics  No Responses »
May 142016
 

Pfizer now no longer supplies drugs to be used in the US lethal injection executions. Which means that there is now no major pharmaceutical company prepared to supply drugs to be used for executions. Or in other words even large capitalist-driven organisations that the major pharmaceuticals are find executions so morally repugnant that they want nothing to do with them.

So those US states have a number of options :-

  1. Try to find the drugs from “unauthorised” sources, which basically translates as obtaining drugs under false pretences.
  2. Try to find an alternative method of execution.
  3. Or finally do the right thing and stop executing people.

It’s time the US grew up and joined the civilised world.

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