One of the most troubling statistics from the UK economy is this: in the year to June of this year, customers of Nationwide, the UK’s largest building society, spent £51.8m on pets and £37.1m on childcare. As a nation, Britain appears to spend more looking after the children of other species than it does on its own offspring. The roughly £10bn a year the British public spends on dogs is ten times what the government spends tackling homelessness.
Pets are also over-represented in how people think the country should be run, as evidenced on Bonfire Night earlier this week by the delivery to Downing Street of a petition, containing more than a million signatures, requesting “an urgent review of firework regulations” that includes “restricting private use” and banning any public display that doesn’t have a licence. The petition was started by a woman who owns four horses and two cats, and is illustrated by a picture of a dog looking nervous. “Around 40% of dogs are fearful of loud noises,” it warns. The petition has the support of the Scottish Greens, who support a “nationwide ban on the private sale of fireworks”.
The message is clear. In recent years British children gave up large chunks of their education, their social lives and their mental health so that the nation’s retirees could potter healthily in their gardens. However, that doesn’t mean the nation’s retirees are going to allow them to enjoy the wholesome outdoor activities they enjoyed in decades gone by. Instead, as in the pandemic, the kids can make do with a technological solution that is nothing like the real thing, such as a silent drone display or some laser pointers. The loud bangs, you see, interfere with retirees’ other interests: birdwatching, pet ownership, and sitting at home.
However carefully worded the petition, the intentions of the people signing it are clear. In one supporting video an older woman says: “Ban fireworks, ban fireworks. I don’t like ‘em. Never have.” Another signee writes: “we need to get rid of them in totality” because they “disturb the peace”; another, “My village was like World War 3 last night.” This is the voice of an ageing society, the entitled grumble of a generation that makes more from not working than the rest of the country does from working, and doesn’t want to be bothered by a load of noise on behalf of small children.
The other signees mostly refer to their pets. Pet ownership is a consumer choice, one that is grossly over-indulged in Britain; one woman writes that her five pets, four dogs and a cat, are “badly affected” by fireworks. “Pets are important,” writes another; “we don’t want them to be scared.” No mention is made of the noise and stress imposed by pet owners on other people, who have to put up with pavements and parks constantly littered with faeces, or the biodiversity that is wiped out by dogs and cats, or the impact of farming other animals to be eaten by household pets, or the millions of birds killed by cats, or the livestock killed by dogs. The people who want to ban fireworks believe they have a right to buy and keep five animals, and this right trumps all such concerns. Their sense of entitlement cannot accommodate the idea that children might also have a right to enjoy fireworks displays.
Part of the reason for this is that people having too many pets is a big business. The petition is also supported by the RSPCA, which makes millions of pounds a year from making people feel better about devouring the young of other mammals. Pigs are thought to be about as intelligent as dogs, and would live to about the same age if they weren’t slaughtered before they reach six months, ground into paste and sealed in plastic packaging that is marketed with an RSPCA logo. The charity made £4.3m from the licence fees on its RSPCA Assured logo (plus £1.3m from RSPCA Assured membership fees) last year, because supermarkets know the logo makes shoppers feel better about the products it’s attached to. This makes for some tasty salaries – the RSPCA Assured CEO is paid more than £130,000 a year, about £40,000 more than the average pig farm makes – but it entirely removes the RSPCA’s right to lecture the nation’s youth about making dogs nervous.
There are already laws against antisocial behaviour that cover setting fireworks off at night or in a dangerous manner. It’s not like the antisocial behaviour enthusiasts would stop being antisocial if they couldn’t get their hands on fireworks. They’d find something else that was loud and annoying to do – like buying a dog, perhaps.
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