Letters - September 30, 2019

Working donkey in Botswana
Working donkey in Botswana
Share this article
Have your say

Recognise important of all world's animals

With almost half of adults owning a pet, Britain is truly a nation of animal lovers – and the benefits are clear.

New research shows that 83 per cent of pet owners in the UK believe their animals help reduce their stress levels and improve their emotional wellbeing.

However, few people are aware that working animals are vitally important to the health and survival of people in the world’s poorest communities.

These horses, donkeys, camels and other animals help provide millions of impoverished families with a basic income for food, transport to hospital, and other necessities for life, such as water and firewood.

Just like pet owners in the UK, the owners of working animals would be lost without their animals.

But hardworking animals in developing countries often have no access to vital veterinary treatment when they are sick or injured.

This World Animal Day (4 October), I’m asking everyone to recognise the value and importance of every single animal, be they the ones we share our homes with, or working animals overseas that support the livelihoods of over half a billion people worldwide.

Please help us to give working animals the care they so desperately need by visiting spana.org/worldanimalday

Geoffrey Dennis

Chief Executive, SPANA

(the Society for the Protection of Animals Abroad)


Being used to front someone’s agenda

I totally agree with Ruth Sellers (Your Say, September 26) and share her concerns for the well-being of Greta Thunberg.

The whole climate change agenda is being pursued with an extremist zeal. Anyone who dares to question the official narrative is systematically attacked and ridiculed in the mainstream media, finding themselves labelled a ‘denier’ or in other words put in the same bracket as someone who denies the Holocaust happened. More often than not by people who spout endless nonsense about freedoms of speech whilst at the same time seeking to remove everyone else’s freedoms.

I find it extremely disturbing that a young girl is being exploited in this way. Ms Thunberg is clearly being used to front someone else’s agenda. Without some heavyweight backing it would simply be impossible for her to have garnered global media attention, let alone secure an audience with the Pope or to address the UN.

Whoever is driving this, they would not do so unless there are some serious big bucks in it for them further down the line.

What better way to do this than to ‘use’ Ms Thunberg - not only will she heavily influence her own contemporaries and their impressionable young minds, but because she is so young it is simply unacceptable for anyone to criticise her motives. All very clever and cynical.

As Ruth Sellers points out, there is no evidence to support the claim that climate change is man-made. The climate has always been in flux due to solar activity. Global warming was shown to be a false premise as the data used to support it conveniently started after the last mini ice age in the 16th/17th centuries and ignored the fact that in the 11th/12th century the climate in the UK was decidedly Mediterranean and if anything hotter than it is now. But, after a nifty bit of re-branding the whole agenda was back on track. Amazing thing re-branding - just ask the House of Windsor.

I sincerely hope Ms Thunberg emerges from this media maelstrom with her sanity intact. By the same token I equally sincerely hope that the evil cabal driving this and all the other agendas afflicting mankind will receive their long overdue comeuppance sooner rather than later.

Tim Kennedy

via email


Make youngsters

walk to school

I would be more likely to take notice of the climate change protesters if these young people creating mayhem actually did something useful. How about proposing all children, wherever possible, walk to school?

Just think how different the roads are during school holidays – children around our area are driven to schools which are only a short distance away.

Just think how much healthier both they, and their parents, would be.

Mary Wilcock

via email