Lionised

In the jungle, the quiet jungle, the lion sleeps tonight. Not Cecil though, he’s dead and dismembered, victim of another invasive species which hunted him down and rendered him irrelevant. Nature, red in tooth and claw... and bow and arrow. Daktari it wasn’t. You remember Daktari; the nineteen-sixties African bush doctor show in which everybody and all the animals lived happily ever after in peace and harmony... except when the evil hunters appeared, at which point Clarence, the resident lion king, saw them off with a cross-eyed glare. The natural order of things restored we all breathed again and waited for next episode, reassured that all was right with the world.

That’s how it was when we were kids; the world had an order. You would have to search long and hard and be heavily news-blind and truth-deaf to find much order now. The lions no longer want to stay in Africa and for some reason – maybe to avenge our exploitation of Clarence’s ocular shortcomings – they all want to leave a vast land filled with potential to come and huddle in poverty in a small, cold, damp, unhappy, overcrowded island, already full of people who don’t belong here, with nowhere to live and nothing to live on, or for. The remnants of the tribe called 'The English' pretty much all yearn to live elsewhere and the invaders are slowly taking hold just like American crayfish, grey squirrels, Japanese knotweed et al.

What do we do about Calais? Personally I favour letting them through the tunnel on foot and then selling licenses to hunters who will wait patiently in hides in the Kent countryside ready to bag a trophy or ten, but I just know there will be a tiny but vocal minority of bleeding hearts who won’t like that. At the other extreme is the Obama solution to illegal immigration: give them a passport and sign them up for benefits. But that is clear madness; already thousands want to make it to the Promised Land and making their unrealistic dreams come true will multiply those numbers a hundred-fold. Maybe we could organise a pan-African negative propaganda campaign to tell them what a shithole Britain is and how racist we all are.

You say you’re not racist? Fuck off are you! A preference for people you understand is the basis for all human society. Victory in the competition for territorial rights defines successful civilisations and to deny it is simply juvenile. If you define yourself as anti-racist I bet you are also one or more of: anti-fascist, anti-sexist, anti-austerity, anti-bigot, anti-wealth, anti-monarchy, anti-property, anti-*insert here*... a limitless list of things to rail against. Vocal anti-anything flag-wavers are simply brooding misanthropes with a far greater capacity for hatred than all who simply, quietly, avoid contact with those with whom they differ. Confrontation –violent if necessary – is frequently the calling card of those who believe they have no prejudices.

You looking at me?

Where is all this getting us? Not very far really, because the extremes are unpalatable to most so we need a half-way house; something to make the problem go away without anybody being hurt and without too many sensitivities being upset. And I think I have it, turning once again to the genius of Daktari. The show was inspired by the work of Dr. A. M. Harthoorn and his animal orphanage in Nairobi who developed a gun to sedate animals and capture them without injury. So here’s the plan: We let them all through the tunnel, sell game licenses to rich American dentists who shoot them with tranquilliser darts. Then we ship them out to the reserves in Zimbabwe and let the natural world do what it does so well.