THE word I would choose is “weird”, but you might prefer “unfair” or “prejudiced” or even “twisted”. We are now in the situation where a group of people shooting birds from the sky is not a breach of the new rules on coronavirus, but a group of children having a birthday party in the garden could be. How on earth did we get to this point?
I think the answer comes in three parts – all of them fairly disturbing – but first, a reminder of what the new rules say: social gatherings in Scotland are now limited to a maximum of six people from two households. The official justification is that there has been a rise in the number of coronavirus cases, but there are certain exemptions and it turns out grouse shooting and hunting is one of them.
The fact that the Scottish Government has consented to such an exception is strange to say the least. Nicola Sturgeon has demonstrated lots of times that she is willing to take a different direction in Scotland if she wants to and mostly the differences have been more cautious, or slower, than the policies in other parts of the UK. But not, for some reason, on grouse shooting.
Why should this be? Well, firstly, the Scottish Government has shown absolutely no inclination to do anything about grouse shooting and has dragged its feet in the face of public pressure. It commissioned a report – itself, often a tactic of delay – but the report was based on the flawed premise that driven grouse shooting can be made acceptable. It looked for ways in which grouse moors could be a part of the economy instead of questioning whether we should tolerate a business that harms the countryside – through the burning of heather, for example.
The Werritty report’s conclusion on licensing also ended up being pretty limp and useless because the group that led the report was divided on its conclusions, which meant they came up with a compromise of suggesting a licensing system but only if there is no improvement in bird of prey populations. What this means is that the Scottish Government can delay any action indefinitely while it allegedly investigates whether there has been an improvement or not. Do not, whatever you do, hold your breath.
But the grouse shooting exemption is curious for another reason. When the UK Conservative Government announces a restriction or a rule, in Scotland it is generally denounced as incompetent or reckless, but when the Scottish Government announces similar restrictions or rules, it is generally praised as cautious and sensible. It’s hard to know exactly why this mis-match happens but it does and it applies to grouse shooting as well: the UK Government got pelters for it whereas when the Scottish Government confirmed it was doing the same thing, it barely registered.
Which brings us to the final part of the problem with the grouse shooting exemption. Governments cannot, and should not, come down hard on a practice such as shooting just because it’s mostly posh people that do it – there are better reasons for banning driven grouse shooting than that. But the fact that the shooters will be able to carry on regardless is unfair when people are being told they cannot do less posh things – such as a children’s party in the garden for example, or a game of rounders in the park.
The differences are not surprising, however. People of all classes, incomes, and walks-of-life have been affected badly by coronavirus, but the effects have been particularly bad for those who were already struggling, a million miles away from grouse moors. For months, it was government policy to actively depress the economy and we know from the 2008 financial crisis that it’s the poorest that bear the brunt of that.
The young are also suffering. For a lot of young people from deprived backgrounds, school is the only chance they have and the fact that schools were closed for months will have damaged their prospects. They then leave school, but beyond the gates is a landscape where there are fewer jobs and opportunities. This is what the response to coronavirus has done: it is widening a gap that already existed.
The point about grouse shooting is that shooting and hunting is on one side of that gap – the wealthy, privileged side – and it should be making sacrifices in the same way as people on the other, poorer side of the gap. God forbid that I should agree with the Scottish Greens but their health spokeswoman Alison Johnstone put it rather well. The tiny minority who derive pleasure from killing wildlife, she said, are not more important than the thousands who are being kept apart from seeing their friends and family.
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