Remember apartheid.And the other main difference between sport and politics is that in politics there isn’t just one big match and it’s over The situation stays the same for years and years Hitler persecutes the Jews for years. The Romans persecute the Christians, the white South Africans dominate the black South Africans, Saddam terrorises the Iraqis, and so on and so forth, and our hearts go out to the victims. So much so that – and it pains me to say this – we falsely endow the victims with all the noble virtues and their persecutors with all the wickedness of the world, as if anyone is made more noble or more moral just by being persecuted. It is a modern version of Rousseau’s noble savage, this feeling that any section of the world that is being bullied by another section is more worthy of admiration.Sadly, it isn’t so. When people shake off their yoke, they almost always become bullies in their turn. It is almost as if they were waiting their turn to do a bit of bullying. Having been a subject race does not teach them how awful it is to be subjugated, only how much safer it feels to subjugate someone else.
The Boers were the gallant little guys in the days of the Boer War. It would be hard to imagine an onlooker who didn’t thrill to the exploits of the Afrikaner seeking his own freedom from the rapacious British Empire. But it was the very same gallant little Afrikaners who went on to create apartheid and enslave someone else.The Jews went through hell in Germany before being given a homeland in the Middle East and then becoming expert at persecuting and dispossessing the Palestinians in their turn. Remember how we cursed and shook our fists at the French for their inhuman and despicable treatment of the poor innocent Algerians? Have you noticed how quiet we have been over the inhumanity and cruelty still practised in Algeria, all of it by the erstwhile victims?…A reader writes: This is all pretty solemn stuff, Mr Kington. Where are the laughs?Miles Kington writes: It’s hard to think of any.
Can you think of any victims who didn’t turn the tables when given the chance ?A reader writes: Well, when the Vietnamese threw out the American invader, I don’t think they became bullies in turn.Miles Kington writes: You may be right. Anyway, it’s the lightest note we’re likely to end on.Mr Kington is now taking his medication and will be back to normal tomorrow
More from Miles Kington. More than 8,000 dolphins are estimated to have been killed in the past 12 months around the South-west coast of England, fuelling fears that they could soon be extinct in the area. But conservationists estimate they represent less than 5 per cent of the total killed needlessly as “by-catch”.The bass trawlers, which include about a dozen from north-east Scotland and many from France, trawl the area for the first four months of every year in search of the seasonal bass fish, which can command lucrative prices.Working in pairs about a mile apart, the fishing boats drag a large net between them at high speed to scoop up the shoals of bass but often snare dolphins, porpoises and basking sharks by accident. “Whole family groups can be wiped out in a single trawl by these boats,” said Ian Findlay, head of conservation for the Scottish Wildlife Trust, a group that is backing calls for tougher safeguards.”It’s not the fishermen’s fault.
They are working perfectly legally within the parameters which are set down but there needs to be tougher legislation from Europe to deal with this very major problem.”If nothing is done we could see whole colonies wiped out – especially when you think that, in the first three months of this year, hundreds of dolphins have been washed up on the south coast and that’s only five per cent of the total slaughter.” The Wildlife Trust, a consortium of the 47 local wildlife trusts throughout the UK, is calling for mandatory observers to be put on board pelagic fishing boats and better legislation to protect the marine environment.Joan Edwards, the Wildlife Trust’s UK marine manager, said: “There are no controls at the moment. You hear it first, and a weird sound it makes: a deep resonating grunt that floats over the reedbeds in the early dawn like the boom of a foghorn – something like Ooooomph, or perhaps Unnnnngh. Mostly it stays deep within the reeds but occasionally it will come to the edge, though even then it is invisible until it moves, so perfect is the camouflage.The bittern is one of the rarest creatures in Britain, and today the European Union is making £2.4m in funding available for a project that hopes to double the numbers of bitterns in the UK within 10 years.This mysterious brown relative of the heron was driven to extinction here in the mid 19th century, not least because its fatty flesh was regarded as a delicacy (in East Anglia it was known as the butterbump) and it was hunted in organised shoots. It returned to breed in 1911 and has clung on ever since in two strongholds – East Anglia and a small corner of Lancashire – but never in large numbers.The population peaked in the 1950s with perhaps 80 pairs, but then it steadily declined until by 1997 the whole country contained only 11 “booming” males. (The male’s strange call, which is uttered to proclaim its territory and attract females, can be heard two miles away under the right conditions. It is the only reliable way of counting the birds.)The bittern was on the edge of extinction but EU emergency funding, from the Life nature programme, enabled it to be pulled back from the brink. Research by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds showed that it was disappearing because of the continuing loss of its highly specialised habitat – wet beds of the common reed,Phragmites australis, with clear water.
