What's so bad about killing Whales?

Jan 24 2008 By Barry Gibson

FAIR play to Leeds man Giles Lane - at least he has the courage of his convictions.

Along with an Australian environmental activist, he boarded a Japanese whaling vessel in the Antarctic last week.

The pair - members of the green campaigning group Sea Shepherd - said they went aboard the Yushin Maru No. 2

to inform the captain that he was whaling illegally.

Suspicious of sabotage, the crew held them for two days before handing them over to the Australians.

Commenting on his time onboard the Yushin Maru, Mr Lane said: "The treatment that we received was trivial

in comparison to the suffering that the whales experience at the hands of the Japanese whalers. They

may have been rough with us but at least we were not harpooned, electrocuted and mutilated. This is not

about us, it’s about the whales."

I’m a little bit disturbed that Mr Lane should consider himself lucky to have been treated better than a whale.

Any animal - no matter how rare or intelligent or even beautiful - is still just an animal. It’s not a human being.

Perhaps Mr Lane and his fellow activists would disagree with me.

But I just can’t see why whaling is so much more controversial than fishing, or hunting, or even farming.

They all involve killing animals for food.

What makes the whale so special?

Some might say that the great sea mammal must be protected because it’s endangered, but that’s misleading.

Some species of whale are certainly in grave danger, and these must be protected for the sake of the ecosystem.

But others, including the minkhe whales which the Yushin Maru is currently hunting, are not in imminent danger of extinction.

So why not eat them?

Some people believe it’s wrong to kill an animal as intelligent as the whale.

But why not extend this argument to pigs, who are killed in their millions. As George Orwell could tell

you, our porky friends are extremely bright.

But unfortunately for them they are also extremely tasty.

And no-one kicks up a fuss when they are sent to their deaths.

Of course pigs are domestic, while whales are wild.

But that is not a good enough reason not to hunt them either.

Not unless you’re also against hunting other wild animals - like the cod and the whiting.

So the only reason left why whaling should be considered especially wrong is the cruelty involved -

the agony of the great beast thrashing helplessly at the end of a harpoon line.

Now, despite what some of you might think reading this, I’m no sadist. If there’s a more humane way to

kill the whale, then by all means do it.

As I understand it, harpoons have become much more sophisticated in recent decades, giving the whale a

better chance of a quick death.

But in any case, I believe that the cruelty of the death has to be looked at in the context of the

whale’s life as a whole.

For its entire pre-harpooning existence, the whale can go where it likes, living free of the constraints

imposed by humans. Then for a few moments - or minutes - at the end of its life, it’s in agony.

Compare this to the fate of a factory-farmed chicken.

It spends its entire life cooped up, sometimes in awful conditions. But when the end comes for poultry,

it tends to come quickly.

The chicken gets a miserable life and a humane death.

The whales gets the opposite.

Which is worse?

Dangers lurk in those dark streets

SO Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is scared to walk the streets of London at night.

In a moment of perhaps unwise honesty, she told a Sunday newspaper that she wouldn’t feel safe - whether

in well-healed Chelsea or down-at-heal Hackney.

Such openness from a New Labour minister is as rare as it is refreshing. She was asked a direct question and

she answered it directly, without the normal prevarication.

But after the interview the familiar New Labour spin came back to the fore.

One of Ms Smith’s aides called the journalist who had interviewed her to "clarify" the Home Secretary’s remarks.

Apparently, London is not as dangerous as the Home Secretary seemed to suggest. We are led to believe

that just recently, Ms Smith went out after dark to buy a kebab in Peckham.

I’m not familiar enough with the capital to know which is more dangerous - Peckham or the kebab.

I can’t help contrasting Ms Smith’s remarks with those of another Labour female politician on the subject of

walking the streets at night.

At a meeting of Kirklees Council a few months ago, a speaker said it was not safe for women to walk the

streets of Deighton after dark.

Clr Jean Calvert who, as mayor of the council is supposed to remain neutral in meetings, could not bear

this slight against her own Ashbrow ward.

She indignantly informed the speaker that she often walked around Sheepridge after dark and never felt

under any threat. There was real anger in her voice, a feeling that her part of Huddersfield was being

unfairly stereotyped as "rough".

It was good to see that she cared.

It can't get worse - can it?

I AM typing this on Monday, January 21 - statistically the most miserable day of the year.

A perfect storm of Christmas debt, failed New Year’s resolutions and, er, storms, combine to make it Blue

Monday, when the nation is at its least upbeat.

The rain is lashing down outside my window and there are two flood warnings for the River Colne.

Oh, and the FTSE 100 has just lost £84bn - the worst single-day fall since September 11, 2001. So it looks

like we’re going to have a recession this years as well.

But looking ahead to next year’s Blue Monday, I believe I may be in a better mood.

It falls on January 19, which will also be US President George W Bush’s last day in office.

The following day he will hand over to the next man - or woman - to lead the world’s most powerful country.

Of course, we don’t know who this person will be yet - and there’s every chance they will be a liar or a

warmonger of some sort.

But they simply can’t be worse than their predecessor, a man who says things like "is our children learning?"