ANIMALS. They’re everywhere. You see them in the streets and in the hills, with their daft wee legs and their pointless tails.

Tales about animals are everywhere in our newspapers these days, so much so that it is difficult sometimes to find an item about humans. This week, we had the Boxing Day hunts, or faux hunts at least, where severe-looking people and their torn-faced hounds are pictured bouncing or scurrying along lanes, bringing entirely justifiable terror to the countryside.

Many sensitive people find such pictures disturbing. They think the horse-riders look insufferably pompous, which is undoubtedly unfair, if entirely understandable. It’s a good rule to guide you through life: never trust anyone on a horse. Far-right activist Hermann Goering believed it taught the rider mastery over another human being, which was a bit odd as most people looked down on him as a fat turd.

All the same, to be up there, master of all you survey, might be accounted marvellous by anyone who doesn’t think he looks a perfect fright in a prissy wee protective hat and a tweed jacket that fails to cover the lower buttocks. Sadly, having failed to evolve, the onward march of civilisation has left the fox-manglers on the brink of extinction, with almost all decent ratepayers in opinion polls welcoming their demise. Such a shame. Human beings can be so cruel sometimes.

Speaking of ratepayers, decent or otherwise, and foxes (which are largely exempt from rates), a clash between these took place in rural London this week. In a case that the RSPCA is investigating, an alleged human, Jolyon Maugham, battered an alleged fox to death with a baseball bat while wearing a kimono (the human not the fox).

To be clear, the kimono belonged to the man’s wife. It was made of silk. The man is himself a silk or QC, a Remain-obsessed barrister opposed to beastly migrants entering his garden illegally. To be fair, he thought the fox was after his chickens – you townies just don’t understand the reality of country life in London. And anyway, most of you will have done something similar over the festive season, though few would be so imprudent as to publicise the achievement on social media.

I think it’s fair to say that many Earthlings get a bit soppy when it comes to animals. I’ve seen YouTube videos where people recount terrible things that have happened to them and, in the comments below, people say: “But was the cat all right?”

These beasties are often referred to as “fur babies” and videos of them when young get hundreds of thousands of views, even though, while other animals do genuinely seem to be playing, the average kitten’s every move mimics pouncing, slashing, eviscerating and killing. All together now: aaaww!

But I must admit I’m as soft and goo-goo-ga-ga as the next grown man when it comes to baby animals. And my attitude to cats is the same as it is to humans: I deplore them as a species but count many as individual friends.

A major story in the papers this week involved a cat that had been missing for six or seven years (depending on which paper exaggerated it the most) and came home on Christmas Eve. The amazing thing was how unfazed it looked, just carrying on as normal, licking its posterior and so forth.

As if that weren’t enough, many papers filled their festive pages with the most spectacular pictures of wildlife taken over the year, usually featuring flying, leaping, faffing aboot in the sea or having a square go with other beasties. Life of Reilly by the looks of it.

It’s amazing to think how our attitude to animals has changed in the last 150 years. We used to want to blooter them all with extreme prejudice. Now we try to protect them. There are mutts and moggies everywhere you look. A horror of both commitment and poop means I can never have a pet, and I sometimes envy those who do, even where they have clearly taken leave off their senses and mollycoddle the beasts to within an inch of their lives.

But better mollycoddled than mangled in my view.

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IF I might paraphrase John Lennon: imagine there were no bagpipes. The nation was shocked to learn this week that bagpipe tuition is on the wane despite a healthy interest in the instrument from young persons with bags of puff to spare.

According to the Scottish Schools Pipes and Drums Trust, while between 30,000 and 54,000 pupils want to blow into the bag, only 6,000 in state schools get the opportunity to do so. The trust hopes to change that, partly through community initiatives and the revival of bands.

Although other countries lay claim to the bagpipes, as they do with haggis and whisky (yeah-yeah; yawn), the instrument is most widely associated with Scotland, whose patriotic minority of people find their blood stirred best by a bit of skirling. Some have even been so moved that they have taken temporary leave of their senses and shouted as follows: “Hooch!”

Well, there are worse things to shout. And worse instruments to play (I’ve had a guitar for years and still can’t figure out which bit you’re meant to blow into). Yonder Hittites may have provided the first archaeological evidence for bagpipes but, lo, the instrument is Scotia’s noo – and ever will be so.

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MORE and more people are starting to live in vans. This is nothing to do with the great British tradition of homelessness. It’s a lifestyle choice. They’re no’ mad. They’re nomads.

It’s the old story: the mortgage, suburbia, the job getting them down. They want to do something with their lives, which is never a good idea in my view, and, worse still, they want to travel, which can only ever lead to trouble.

It’s the Good Life without having to grow veg, and it popped up this week in the popular prints, with more experiences recounted on YouTube and pictures posted on yon Instagram. This appears to be an ulterior motivation for many: becoming a star on social media.

This is, I’m sure, a noble aim, particularly among those who make the more educational films that deal with the vexed subjects of how to keep yourself clean and where to have a wizz or worse.

The more irresponsible take their bairns with them, rearing them as rootless waifs, who look oot the windae and never see the same thing twice. Doubtless, they’ll grow up to be criminals or estate agents, as they learn the lesson of life: all is vanity.

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LIFE in the ghetto is hard, as many Edinburgh residents can tell you. I’m thinking in particular of those living around the central areas of Rose Street, Hanover Street and Frederick Street. Quite posh, and not your normal idea of a ghetto, but thus it’s been dubbed after residents were gubbed by the controversial capital’s Hogmanay party.

They’ll need to wear special wristbands if they want access to their own homes during the disgraceful Bacchanalia. The development has led to further accusations that the city is becoming a “theme park” for touroids.

Residents are also having to “register” guests attending their own parties. Why anyone would want to (a) live in the centre of Edinburgh, or (b) attend the city’s Hogmanay revels, or (c) attend any sort of party, is beyond me.

I didn’t know that many people lived on those streets – it’s all shops and pubs. All the same, what kind of liberty is it, readers? Correct: diabolical.

One resident said they were being treated “like criminals”, with their details passed to the police for checks. Of course, if people were sensible and just stayed in their own homes and went to bed early on Hogmanay, the problem wouldn’t arise.

Read more: Rampant narcissism, gruesome deaths and pachyderm posteriors ... but that's enough about me