This autumn, if my Italian translation is correct, you can travel by train around the whole of Italy for nineteen euro. Now why can’t the rail companies in Britain put out bargains like that? I know the Greek railway company is in dire financial straights (where in Greece isn’t?) but the Italians seem to be able to manage theirs most comfortably. I see also that thanks to Chinese investment, Angolan railways are being restored and updated with brand new trains and stations. It’s a terrible shame but when a country loses its rail system the chances of getting it back are negligible. Kenya I believe is a good example where I am told by those who have visited the country recently, engines and rolling stock have toppled over beside the track and are just left lying there.
Mrs Mary Bale aged 45 of Coventry who dumped a cat in a wheelie bin is being taken to court charged with animal cruelty. I still cannot fathom what could have possessed the woman in that moment of madness.
A CCTV camera in Weymouth caught a man dumping his dog in a car park. The sequence shows them both getting out of the car and walking over to a grassy area to give the dog a run. But then the man hurries back to his car alone, jumps in, slams the door and drives off leaving the dog to watch the car disappear. Call me a bleeding heart if you like but watching this act of cruelty truly saddened me. It doesn’t take much to imagine how that animal felt as it saw the car drive away.
The dog, now named Ginger, is estimated to be about eight years old. Presuming the man had her from a puppy was it so easy just to discard an old friend like that? Dogs are the most devoted loyal faithful creatures; they are emotional and have a mind. Seeing her master driving away without her must have been the cause of great distress, apprehension, fear even. So the question is why would the man behave this way? Is it because of the recession? The feeling that he could no longer afford to keep the dog? In that case wouldn’t it have been kinder to take it to the city pound where they might seek in fact are seeking a new home for it and have had hundreds of calls. At least he didn’t dump it on a busy motorway which has been known to happen. I sincerely hope a new caring loving home is found for Ginger and I also hope the man is traced and prosecuted. Unfortunately the cameras failed to pick up the car’s registration number but there are only a certain amount of cars in Weymouth that make and that shade of blue which narrows the field and surely a neighbour will wonder what has happened to the dog and put two and two together. After all, Mary Bale was recognised on Facebook; hopefully this guy will be as well.
Ex-pats in Greece are continually writing letters to the Athens News decrying the cruelty to animals they come across but a friend who worked with the RSPCA in England told us there is just as much cruelty there but it is not so blatant. The fact is cruelty is prevalent the whole world over. There are thousands of cruelly treated unwanted animals and thousands of cruelly treated unwanted children.
There is a children’s hymn I remember from being a child which goes “All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all.’ My question then to Almighty God, who Christians would have us believe is all benign and loving, is why doesn’t He take better care of his creatures great and small? And all that guff about consider the lilies of the field and the birds of the air and Jesus’ chat about the good shepherd really doesn’t add up to a row of beans.