ninme

Stupid = the kerfuffle which is (alarmingly) being taken much too seriously. The bearskin hats are beautiful.

The Times - The right to bear arms and the right to bearskins
Could it be that Britain has its priorities a little wrong? By Hugo Rifkind

In Russia this week they had the Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, boasting about shooting a tiger. In the US they found themselves a prospective vice-president who has most of a grizzly bear strewn across her sofa, including the head. In Britain we were wringing our hands because some members of our Armed Forces, the most iconic in the world, will occasionally get bits of an already dead Canadian bear and balance it on their heads.

He shot a tiger? We were watching Planet Earth before we, ah, left (that is, before the wedding, which seems strange), and all that was left was the last disk with The Future episodes on it. After two episodes of listening to them catalog the world’s ecological crises (pop quiz: what do all the governments of the locations listed have in common? they’re none of them western, democratic, or — this one might be important — not corrupt) and then dwell at length on the criminality of drilling in Anwar, we thought we’d probably heard all we’re going to hear. I thought maybe a catalog of Russia’s efforts to preserve the critically endangered Siberian Tiger might be more interesting, but obviously they couldn’t get the footage because the camera crew was in serious danger of being shot by Vladimir Bloody Putin.

…War in Iraq, 3,000 troops shuffling a monstrous dynamo across the Taleban heartlands, and still Baroness Taylor of Bolton, the Minister for Defence Equipment and Support, finds time to sit down with a group that chased the Prince of Wales around the country in a bear costume (them, not him) and pretend that they aren’t utter, screaming cranks.

This would be People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta), which is desperate for the Guards regiments to ditch the bearskin, worn for the past 200 years. …

In the US and Canada, I’m told, Peta actually does some sensible stuff. Recently, it has had battery hens in its sights. (Not literally.) In this country, it’s bears, bears, bears.

For the love of God, why? The Army doesn’t kill bears. The MoD has bought a total of 51 bearskins since 2005. The Canadian Government culls 10,000 a year, on ecological grounds. These are spare bears. They’re effectively roadkill. Why is this a priority? Why has Ricky Gervais, of all people, written to Gordon Brown about it? Did I miss the point when we all became vegetarians and stopped wearing leather?

For now, the MoD seems to be stalling. Synthetic alternatives, a press officer says, “have all flopped, literally”. Bearskin is good at keeping the rain off. That’s probably why bears wear it. But don’t think that the rest of the world doesn’t notice this stuff. In opinion pages across the globe, we are at present getting the sort of look that you might give your grandmother if you spotted her on the bus with 15 cats. The Germans in particular, the MoD says, “are distraught”. According to a writer in the Canadian National Post, “Britain’s record on the defence of cultural integrity is not a strong one these days.” Too right.

sigh