Here’s the text of a letter I had published this week in the Hastings Observer about “AA Gill shot baboon ‘to see what it would be like to kill someone'”.
Local Conservative Amber Rudd can’t be held responsible for her former husband’s shooting of a baboon in Tanzania but there’s one comparison she can’t ignore. In The Sunday Times (October 25) restaurant critic A A Gill wrote, “I took him [baboon] just below the armpit. He slumped and slid sideways. I’m told they can be tricky to shoot: they run up trees, hang on for grim life. They die hard, baboons. But not this one. A soft-nosed .357 blew his lungs out. I wanted to get a sense of what it might be like to kill someone, a stranger.” Of course Ms Rudd should not be condemned by association but she might take note of what he said in his defence. “I know perfectly well [Gill writes] there is absolutely no excuse for this. There is no mitigation. Baboon isn’t good to eat, unless you’re a leopard. The feeble argument of culling and control is much the same as for foxes: a veil for naughty fun.” As the Prospective Parliamentary Conservative candidate for Hastings and Rye, Ms Rudd supports repealing the Hunting Act 2005 which banned hare coursing, fox, stag and deer hunting. A recent poll (YouGov) showed that 75 per cent of those asked opposed making fox hunting legal. Further, 62 per cent of those asked who identified themselves as Conservatives opposed making fox hunting legal. Shooting baboons may be “naughty fun” to Mr Gill. Ms Rudd needs to understand that hunting in Britain is not considered fun either naughty or otherwise.
