The only way they could have got 100,000+ signatures is by fooling lots of people into thinking the petition wasn’t about hunting
I’ve just received this email from somebody I know:
I have a friend who was duped into signing the hunters’ petition. She was asked “Do you want to protect minorities like gays from referenda which would limit their rights?”
She signed off with a Yes to that argument.
Later on she was upset to find out what it was really about, because it was not her intention to say yes to hunting also.
Having done just a little research I cannot seem to find a definition for any kind of hobby or past-time as being a minority group. Times of Malta reported the organisers as saying that after the hunters, other ‘minorities’ may also be targeted: off-road enthusiasts, horse racing enthusiasts, feast enthusiasts, karozzini owners, fishermen and gay people.
Apart from gay people, none of those are minority groups. With their reasoning any group of people with any particular interest or hobby would be considered as minority group.
If we take their argument and put it to the test of reductio ad absurdum, it falls to pieces.
How will the state define minorities (i.e. when is a minority not a minority), and secondly, if the sum of actions of minorities affects the majority in a negative way, who will be favoured in the eyes of the law? If fishermen deplete fish stocks to almost extinction, will they be supreme over the majority who want to have a sustainable sea and marine habitat or will their “hobby/way of life” prevail?
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Yes, that’s exactly what they did. When a couple of kids (16/17) came into my local to collect signatures, and were asked for more detail and examples – you’d have thought that hunting should have tripped straight from their mouths, no?
Well it didn’t. It was ‘Bocci’ and traditional ‘ghana’ folk-singing that were offered. They easily picked up half a dozen signatures, from maybe 18 people in the bar.
PN supporters are in a minority so let’s abolish elections. Same goes for AD and the racist party.
The fundamental difference is that to form political parties is a right and the right to stand for election is protected by the Constitution.
While on the other hand, hunting is an insensitive, destructive hobby which affects nature negatively.
Your argument is invalid.
I think the government may well be shooting itself in the foot …
Apart from the obvious, the hunters do not want this referendum to take place because it will bring to light the true number of people who are opposed to their blood sport and will therefore no longer be able to hold both political parties hostage in the future.
Not many generations ago, there was a minority group (a substantial minority, it is true) of people who believed they had a right to choose the type of education they wanted for their children. And they were prepared, even if at some sacrifice, to pay for that choice.
Did Mintoff, KMB (and the Labour Party generally) support that right? We all know the answer.
The labour government simply banned schools from asking for fees. KMB was certainly not impressed by the huge crowds gathered to protest against that imposition.
That law was later changed to some degree by a Nationalist government, but the harm done by Labour has never been and can never be reversed.
Of course it can be reversed – by those with the balls to do it .
To think that Joe Azzopardi was behind getting those huge crowds there.
I’ve always wondered how he could first be adamantly one way, then the other.
That behaviour always seemed so wrong.
I could never watch Xarabank due to this. There was one exception: The Simon Busuttil Joseph Muscat evening.
Glad to see that David Thake remained true and consistent.
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Yes. The Church should set about righting this wrong.
It is high time something was done. The situation is not only ridiculous but uselessly submissive.
Perhaps it could take up the issue with Manwel Mallia who appears to manifest in favour of a choice for these schools.
No kidding.
I believe it has been changed and I believe that the school system should be left just as it is. For those who can’t afford or do not want to pay there are state schools, then for those who are willing to pay there are the private schools. Actually I believe that the best education you can get in this country is through some of the church schools where there is no compulsory fee but most of which demand a donation.
There are other things in life besides money paid in fees or donations.
Where is the free option available to all for a Church school?
Why has this become the most elusive choice of the three option types?
Why should the Church schools not revise and reevaluate how things are done?
Why is the lottery system still imposed when a means test would be more equitable and valid as a determinant to free Church school education in today’s world?
I believe there are stronger factors in favour of such a revision than against.
The Hunters Federation/FNKK or whatever they are called couldn’t give a toss about minority rights.
People should see their ‘petition’ for what it really is which should read:
We are scarred shitless about a referendum on spring hunting because we know that we are going to lose BIG time.
Sign here so that we can push the government to block the referendum and keep on practicing our primitive and barbaric hobby.
Sure, let’s draw redundant comparisons between hunting and off-road enthusiasts to undermine the Referenda Act.
None of those hobbies actually bother anyone, or senselessly destroy the local fauna – which belongs to us all. The only exception are perhaps the feast enthusiasts whose excesses ought to be curbed, as most people would agree I believe.
B’104,293 firma, l-FKNK ghandha iktar appogg milli ghandu l-Partit Nazzjonslista. – Cyrus Engerer
Another puerile comment by Cyrus Engerer the MLP ex-Star Candidate sentenced for 2 years suspended for two by the criminal court of Malta.
This is the same person who was heard stating that he regretted not recording one of his fellow Councillors on his mobile in order to use it against them.
If one had to think with Engerer’s shallow mentality one could therefore safely say that the FKNK obtained 104,293 votes more than Cyrus Engerer.
Times of Malta’s report from the House of representatives shows that Michael Falzon was tabling the ‘petition’ because he did what he believed in.
He is quoted as saying “I believe in people’s rights, so I have no problem in presenting a petition in the name of the 104,293 signatories… All people deserve to have their rights safeguarded… It is not acceptable that, because someone has a hobby, one is considered a second class citizen”
I doubt whether any of the Royal Marines (or US ones, for that matter) were present in the House to listen to this shit.
Falzon could, at least, have stressed that the cruel,savage and primitive ‘hobby’ of shooting innocent birds just for the fun of it is veritably a basic, inalienable, and untouchable human right infused by the Divine Creator in some of us.
That would certainly have brought the House down on his, and the hunters’, side.
Incidentally, he also mentioned that he has not handled a hunting gun for 20 years. I would say that the photos in this blog showing him in drills and having an awful time in South America in company with bird hunters was, therefore, just a ‘mise en scene’
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140603/local/parliamentary-secretary-tables-hunters-petition.521816
“Dr Falzon said that although he had not touched a hunting gun for 20 years”
Jesus, is it 2028 already!?
http://archive.maltatoday.com.mt/2008/01/20/t2.html
I hope that these 100,000 people who signed in favour of minorities will stand by their beliefs and stand up for the illegal immigrants who are also a minority in our country. Let them put their money where their mouth is.
I’m sure that this episode will come to haunt Michael Falzon the man mostly who seems to have offered himself to be used by the egoistic “conservationists” Lino Farrugia and his dumb ilk to presumably consolidate the MLP brood.
Pero bina ma tistghu qatt titnejku.
I wonder if it is legally (or at least officially) possible for people who have been duped into signing, to retract their name from the petition.
With all due respect, anyone who signs a petition to have a referendum to ban another referendum, no matter the topic, deserves to be duped.
When will people start thinking with their own mind and realise that everyone and their neighbour are using the term ‘minority group’ as an excuse for everything..
The point is that the petition was written in long winded legal mumbo jumbo on purpose, so that most people didn’t know what they were signing.
Some colleagues inform me that they were harassed at petrol stations to sign this petition.
The Maltese people have always known kacca as part of Maltese tradition but unfortunately have been persuaded by foreigners
that kacca=illegal hunting? THIS IS NOT THE TRUTH AND IS FAR FROM REALITY. Probably those who are against kacca do not know all the arguments. I will explain in lenght if requested.
You stupid man. “Kacca” as you understand it has never been part of Maltese tradition.
You’d hunt rabbit with a ferret, and that was it.
Shotguns and bird shooting are a modern hobby, which you people shove down the nation’s throat, claiming it’s a “traditional pastime”. Liars.
Trapping is surely not modern though.
Those who hastily call other people stupid are stupid themselves. You are wrong to say that kacca for turtle doves, quails in spring has not existed since time immemorial.
You seem to voluntarily mingle the true and traditional kaccatur with the dilletant tas-senter. So please be more considerate to others. What is lacking here in Malta is civic education.
Baxxter, you’re arguing with a stone.
Most traditions world-wide are fabricated.
What true and traditional kaccatur? Don’t you realise the vacuity of your words? Am I to assume there is a fake and progressive kaccatur?
Time immemorial? Sure. When an arquebus took one minute to load and fire, cost a fortune, and Malta’s population was ten thousand.
Now it’s four hundred and twenty thousand plus, and I’m sitting here having to listen to your bullshit.
Shooting with automatic shotguns, having five or more cartridges in the magazine is surely modern. Traditional hunting was carried out either with one or two-barrelled shotguns (or muskets in the older days) having one cartridge per barrel. It was also meant to be hunting for game birds.
As for trapping, it is even more modern than hunting.
How would anyone imagine that people had so much spare time in the old days to stay sitting idle on a field, for days on end, waiting for song-birds (finches, mainly) to fall into the trap so that they could keep them locked in cages (or even more realistically, sell them)?
Please note that no-one is actually interested in the trapping of game birds for food.
A Stone, I am all for retaining traditions.
So may I suggest Mr. Stone, that you do everyone a favour, live up to your name and buy a sling.
That is what hunting as a tradition is all about.
No need to explain AT LENGTH. But there is a need for you to stop imagining that you’re addressing a nation of mindless fools, when trying to pass of your ‘hobby’ as a quaint Maltese tradition, when it is clearly not.
No we do not request your explanation in length. The short cracks of your automatic shotguns is already too much.
My dear Baxxter you seem to be ignorant about Maltese traditions. Both my grandfathers were hunters, incidentally both MDs, and they hunted in spring.
I have old hunting items in my collection that were used long ago. The Maltese-Neapolitan artist in his genre, Maltese tradition, depicted various scenes of local hunting. In my next I will explain what is stupid.
[Daphne – I’m afraid Baxxter is correct. Bird-shooting is not a Maltese tradition but the sport of the privileged (hence your grandfathers the doctors), just as it has tended to be throughout Europe. The difference elsewhere in Europe is that farmers tended to have guns for practical purposes (shooting injured cattle/predators) and so shot for sport too. In Malta, the average rural person who did not have money for shoes would not have had money for a gun or ammunition. Guns became widely available with increased affluence post WWII, and then again, mainly as recently as the last 30 years.]
Most ‘hunters’ in the 80s were actually gun-collecting enthusiasts, who applied for hunting licences because, due to the archaic restricting laws of the time, it was the only way they could own a gun.
It was also a time when, if you wanted to shoot clay pigeons, you had to have a hunting licence.
Times have changed, and the laws have been updated to reflect the times, and most of these people have moved on to sport (the real thing) shooting to practise shooting on the range, with no harm to the environment.
Of course, some have been left behind.
If I were a spokesperson for the LGBT lobby, I would strenuously object to the comparison between gay rights and a pastime or hobby, irrespective of whether it is hunting or some other pastime / hobby.
I am sorry to say that you are also wrong. Hunting, and this always meant spring hunting, was in fact more practised by farmers and rural people. I have had contact with hunting since I was a kid and can vouch for what I say.
The argument is hunting in Malta and not who practised it. It is definitely a Maltese tradition. Baxxter is wrong. It is too long to recount stories by farmers that came by descent and which happened more than 100 or 150 years ago.
[Daphne – Yes, using nets, not guns. Trapping, not shooting. You’re talking about people who didn’t own shoes and who slept on earth floors. Why would they then spend money they didn’t have on a gun? Your narratives are unreliable evidence. Stories told by farmers about things that happened ‘100 or 150 years ago’ are 100% tosh. They have no way of knowing. And when people have been illiterate for generations, their concept of time is vastly different to what yours would be.]
Baxxter cannot be wrong because Baxxter knows history a great deal more than you. Is that enough? I mean you’re challenging someone who’s written a treatise on ferreting.
Let us first define “hunting” and then we can talk. Until then you are just an ignorant, bigoted man trying to take on a goddamn Giovanni Bonello.
Traditional is it.Well if A Stone or any other macho hunter can hit a flying bird at 50 metres with a muzzle loader firing one bullet I’ll vote in favour of spring hunting.
The hunters’ petition is not about protecting hunting, it is about protecting minorities.
Hunters are as much a minority as serial killers are a minority.
What we have here is, in fact, a very public admission by the hunters’ lobby that they are aware they cannot obtain enough support if pro-hunting concessions were the only question put to the electorate. They are aware that surrogate support can only be obtained by subterfuge – an own goal if there ever was one.
Do you believe what they’ve done? They got on board the petition horse enthusiasts and others promising that when they are under fire like hunters are they will sign their petition as well. Disgusting!
I tried to stimulate a debate on spring hunting and subject whether voluntarily or otherwise was deviated to something else. We finished up with calling other people names, trying to ridicule with unwitty jokes those who do not agree with you, etc., it’s all up there. I am more convinced than ever before that the anti-spring hunting lobby is completely hollow. This is my last contribution on the subject.