Monday 14 March 2011

Heck knows what the story behind this is...

From The Daily Mail:

Parents are furious after marksmen gunned down a herd of escaped cows in full view of a hospital and a housing estate.

Children fled in tears as the the animals, discovered loose in Chirk, near Wrexham, north Wales, were slaughtered in broad daylight and without warning. Nurses in Chirk Community Hospital, which borders the field where the animals were killed, were forced to close the curtains as armed police shot dead each of the 30 escapees...

The reason for the cull is not yet clear.


Your guess is as good as mine. I do like the concept of slaughtering them 'without warning', are the police supposed to call in Dr Doolittle to try and negotiate a peaceful surrender or safe passage to a third country or something?

12 comments:

Lola said...

Dear oh dear. Where is there a cowboy when you need one (or two)?

Sobers said...

WTF!!! They manage to round them up and put them in a field and THEN shoot them??? Why on earth do that? Once they are in a field they could be safe for a while until they could be returned to their place of origin.

I mean by all means prosecute the owner for letting his animals stray, and charge him for the police time if necessary, but why shoot the poor things?

Its just insane - 'We have to shoot them for their own welfare'. That's socialism writ large right there.

There is no way they couldn't have found a local farmer to put them somewhere secure until it could all be sorted out. Its rural Wales for Gods sake!

Anonymous said...

First, the came for the cows, but I did not care, for I was not a cow.

Later, they came for me, but there were no cows to stand up for me.

RantinRab said...

Reminds me of Kenny Everett. Round 'em up, put 'em in a field and BOMB THE BASTARDS!

Macheath said...

One assumes the cows were on their way to slaughter so the marksmen were effectively doing the job al fresco - not necessarily a natural spectator sport, I admit, but less of an outrageous occurrence than the reaction would imply unless the population of Chirk is strictly vegetarian.

In fact, I can think of areas where this would have meant opportunistic barbecues lighting up on all sides.

Mark Wadsworth said...

L, off on Brokeback Mountain somewhere.

S: "'We have to shoot them for their own welfare'. That's socialism writ large right there.@

Uh-huh. A bit like Blue Socialism - "We must prevent new houses being built for young people for their own welfare."

See also what McH says.

RR, it definitely worked this time!

MacH, good point.

JuliaM said...

"One assumes the cows were on their way to slaughter so the marksmen were effectively doing the job al fresco..."

The report refers to police marksmen, not slaughtermen. But it IS the 'Mail'...

Ross said...

I see Mark has now gone soft on the murdering bovine bastards who have been trampling people to death worldwide for years.

Mark Wadsworth said...

JM, needs must. I don't think there's such a thing as a specialised "police slaughterman", is there?

R, it's a numbers thing. We eat more of them that they trample to death of us.

JuliaM said...

Apparently, over at Insp Gadget's blog, it turns out it WASN'T police marksmen at all.

The police claim they took no part in the slaughter itself, and were just on 'crowd control'.

Mark Wadsworth said...

JM, as I said, I'd love to know what the real story is, it's full of anomalies.

And I'm a bit peeved that nowhere does it say "The cattle were rounded up like cattle..."

Umbongo said...

On a religious note: as I understand it - and I stand to be corrected on this because the complexities of religious slaughter weren't taught when I was at school - because these cows were shot before they were stunned, it means their meat is "halal". If so, it's not a completely bad result: not so good for the cows, of course, but a triumph for multi-culti.