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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jos Stratford" data-source="post: 1314831" data-attributes="member: 12449">Please read the post, I quoted persons that were clambering over cliffs at night trying to shoot roosting Black Storks and that someone saw fit to add Greater Flamingo to the shooting list, these persons I described as scum. Do you have a better word to describe these persons, these persons that are destroying birds that elsewhere in Europe we are striving to protect? Scum suits them I say, sorry if it offends.Yes, until Malta cleans up its act, it will be treated as such. All countries have a degree of illegal persecution and it should, and is, criticised in all cases. However, in the case of Malta, the persecution is endemic, the government is doing what exactly to limit the illegal persecution? It seems next to nothing. NO country in Europe has such an appalling record of persecution, no country has such an appalling record of government inaction.  Until the government acts, until society as a whole demands it, and until 'responsible hunters' actually do something to oppose it, then the nation of Malta will be blighted. It is not I, it is not conservationists, that are leaving your country looking like a backward nation, it is the continued disregard of European norms and legislation that is doing it.Mr Gallina, look at your government's balance sheets, it is awash with European Union funding, money that is from the pocket of European taxpayers. I think European taxpayers have every right to demand in return for their money at least a modicum of respect of European legislation.Yes, maybe a surprise to you that many other Europeans don't want to support a country that blasts the birds out of the skies that we could otherwise enjoy in our own countries.If it is actually of interest to you, most European nations do strive to 'clean out their closets', nobody on this forum is claiming persecution doesn't occur elsewhere, but you are somewhere up in the clouds if you think it is even close to the scale of what occurs in Malta. Additionally, whereas the government and much of society seem to turn a blind eye to events in Malta, it is not the case elsewhere in Europe.And if you have 'done just fine for the last 44 years' and want us to leave you alone, why exactly did your nation join the E.U.?</blockquote>

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