Monday 28 February 2011

"Gotta stop them crazy horses on the run..."

A town is being overrun by a pack of 250 wild horses abandoned by gypsies who can't afford to feed them.
A pack..?!?
RSPCA inspectors were today on the scene at Bridgend, South Wales, after calls from worried animal lovers.
And what are they doing? Well, we’ll get to that…
The horses are believed to belong to gypsy families who have moved on from the area and were unable to pay for their feed and upkeep.

Hundreds of people have posted messages on a Facebook page set up by the Society for the Welfare of Horses and Ponies.

Chairwoman Jenny Macgregor said: 'The horses are everywhere, we've had reports of them getting onto the M4 motorway and being killed.'
Better not rely on the police to resolve that, because if they are anything like the ones in Yorkshire, the results could be horrific.
An RSPCA spokesman said: 'We are assessing the situation.'
Do you plan to stop ‘assessing’ and actually do something?

15 comments:

WitteringsfromWitney said...

You can lead a policeman to a problem but you can't make him..........

Captain Haddock said...

Turn 'em into glue & have done with it !!!

microdave said...

@ CH - what, the policemen, or the horses?

The RSPCA are "assessing" the situation to try and find ways of avoiding actually "doing" anything.

The reason? - Simple, they only go after easy targets. If they were to try and pursue "minority" groups they would be at risk of discrimination accusations....

Woman on a Raft said...

Remember when it was up in Cumbria, they moved heaven and earth to confiscate some ponies which were, according to the Paragon vets who were managing the population, in an acceptable condition.

The RSPCA then accused the caretaker, Alan ‘Tutty’ Brough, 68, of animal cruelty and the police detained him in order to facilitate the RSPCA and specialist horse charities swiping about 90 ponies.

It was true the ponies were not native to the environment. By agreement, the Paragon vetinary surgery was castrating the males so the breeding population would have collapsed in a few years with no replacements and the gradual removal of the old ponies in a poor condition. The National Park - which was the body most inconvenienced by this and had the rights to say if horses could stay or not - agreed to the reduction in an orderly fashion even though they probably weren't too keen to have them in the first place.

My guess is the ponies would have died out at about the same time as Mr Brough.

The distraught Mr Brough hanged himself.

Does anybody think the RSPCA are going to bring animal cruelty charges against gypsies?

Curmudgeon said...

The RSPCA (being such well-known animal lovers) will probably assess the situation and then decide the horses should all be shot.

Anonymous said...

I can feel a Channel 4 Sympathy TV commissioning opportunity coming on - "My Small Thin Free Range Gypsy Herd".

Woman on a Raft said...

Recall that when it was an elderly man in Cumbria, the police, RSPCA and various horse charities conspired to remove about 90 semi-wild ponies.

The National Park, Mr Brough (who owned the horses) and the Paragon vetinary practice had come to an agreement whereby the males would be gelded and the horses would not be replaced. Left alone, the herd would have died out probably around the same time Mr B did, as he was 68 at time of the events.

He hanged himself out of grief and the injustice of being accused of animal cruelty. He was no such thing.

The inquest was this month.

Anonymous said...

The real cruelty perps do not seem likely to face prosecution. One really needs to be on the register of electors and with easily accessible assets to face that.

banned said...

Travellers V. Animal Rights, classic victimhood Poker.

Fav Mail comment "Sounds like this is a prime location for some enterprising individual to open a dog food/glue factory". Sadly voted down by most readers.

JuliaM said...

"Remember when it was up in Cumbria, they moved heaven and earth to confiscate some ponies which were, according to the Paragon vets who were managing the population, in an acceptable condition."

Indeed. Not their finest hour. It's not just animal blood they have on their hands (though they have a lot of that too).

"The real cruelty perps do not seem likely to face prosecution. One really needs to be on the register of electors and with easily accessible assets to face that."

All it takes is the sort of willpower and manpower that we see overused in other areas.

Anonymous said...

One night, whilst as a passenger in my friends car we were very surprised to see two horses running down the road at us. He hit the brakes and we slid across the road in an attempt to miss the animals. Shaken we continued on out journey, to find a scene of devastation ahead of us.

The horses belonged to a family of Gypsies and somebody thought it amusing to open the gate to the field they were camped in and let the horses out.

The car in front of us had hit it square on at about 60 mph. The nose of the car was flat up against the bulkhead and the windscreen destroyed. Fortunately the driver wasn’t hurt.

Unfortunately the horse was snapped in two. Its front legs point up the road whilst its back logs pointed down the road. There was a gapping hole in its chest and every time it tried to breath steam and gurgling came out of the hole.

I come from a family of horse owners so I tried to comfort the animal, but it was beyond help. My friend was in shock, especially when he saw what he thought was broken glass, but realised it was in fact shattered horse teeth.

The police arrived and the young bobby would not go near the horse, calling for a vet, who arrived with a shotgun and put the poor thing out of its misery.

Horses are big heavy animals and you don’t want to hit one in a car!

JuliaM said...

Horrible story, and one of the few things that might make me wish we had routinely-armed police.

You don't want to hit a deer at speed either - they may be smaller, but the damage that they can do to a vehicle is just as awful.

Woman on a Raft said...

Sorry for the double comment - I had a security problem yesterday and disappeared for a while. When I came back I found the report of the inquest.

Rob said...

If only taxpayers had been forced to pay for the upkeep of these horses, none of this would have happened.

Bridgend - solid Labour area. Lap up the vibrancy and diversity, people - you asked for it and here it is.

The Jannie said...

The RSPCA will undoubtedly spring into action as soon as the camera crew arrives.