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We (the British) exterminated 750,000 in preparation for WWII. Voluntarily. "People were worried about the threat of bombing and food shortages and felt it ina

We (the British) exterminated 750,000 in preparation for WWII. Voluntarily. "People were worried about the threat of bombing and food shortages and felt it inappropriate to have the 'luxury' of a pet during wartime" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_pet_massacre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_pet_massacre

Cullinet 3y ago
Several comments have mentioned that culling cats in response to covid didn't happen but I had reason to walk the streets of London in the relevant years and I have only just begun seeing mostly very young domestic cats around the town in recent months. Like pretty much everything Boris Johnson claimed he has said, I have a very strong suspicion the culling of domestic cats did happen in London England. That, or COVID-22 is lethal to all living things. I'm going with both those statements being true on the evidence I've seen. Edit : red: " covid lethal to all living things " the insect population of the city of London vanished towards the end of the official pandemic measures. Maybe the job was considered done because only this January the most lethal covid variant was culling infants and young children in Japan killing in under two weeks through multiple organ failure and the day after NKK broke the story Rishi Sunak the prime minister of the UK ordered air routes to and from Japan to be fully opened up from lockdown rules completely without any review.
- cameronh90 3y ago
  Are you implying that there were secret cat death squads roaming around London during COVID and somehow nobody noticed? I would imagine it's more likely that people kept their cats indoors or stopped feeding ferals.
  - lostlogin 3y ago
    Or are they claiming that covid killed cats?
  - justanorherhack 3y ago
    Yes
Grimburger 3y ago
Question for anyone: Do you see this as a bad thing? It's simply the nature of war isn't it? Humans can shoot guns back at invaders, dogs can't. I'm an animal lover and conservationist but don't disagree with this decision, it was reasonable in a food shortage.
- mynameishere 3y ago
  Guns would not have been relevant in the defense of the UK. The danger was that of a calorie shortage caused by U-Boats.
- qwytw 3y ago
  > it was reasonable in a food shortage It's not like anyone was starving, there were of course shortages of certain products but the daily calorific from rations was 30-50% higher than what is recommended today. I don't think anybody had to resort to eating dog food?
  - cjrp 3y ago
    Indeed, rationing is often seen as people having to cut back on their food intake. In fact, its aim was to guarantee a decent minimum for _everyone_. The people working in factories making vehicles, munitions, ball-bearings, etc. needed to be healthy enough to keep churning them out.
  - tialaramex 3y ago
    At its worst the UK was estimated to be less than one week from being unable to supply the civilian population with their rations. The British mainland isn't anywhere close to self-sufficient on food, and wasn't during WWII. So it needed shipments of food. Literally shipments because it's an island. Now, under ordinary rules of war ("Cruiser rules") you can't just blow up civilian transports moving food, you need to search the ships, find illegal shipments and then you can sink them after making their crews safe. But that's not how you win a war quickly against people with more resources than you, so Hitler ordered instead "Unrestricted submarine warfare" which is if you see a merchant vessel, attack and destroy it, they all drown, too bad. There's a down side to unrestricted submarine warfare of course, unlike wearing badges with skulls on them (like the Mitchell & Webb sketch, but something elite military units on every side in conflicts have tended to do) blowing up unarmed merchant ships and killing their crews in order to starve civilians is clearly something that bad guys do, so, no moral high ground for you. However in terms of starving Britain it was close to success. And the British government of the day assumed that, if starved, the civilians would demand their government surrender to Hitler to receive food. Would that have happened? We don't know. The Japanese experience suggests that civilians might just accept starving to death rather than surrender.
BoxOfRain 3y ago
I wonder how well Matt Hancock's supposed discussion during the pandemic about having the government kill all British cats would have gone in practice? I suspect it would make Partygate look very tame in comparison, not least because Hancock is no Churchill.

Cullinet 3y ago

Several comments have mentioned that culling cats in response to covid didn't happen but I had reason to walk the streets of London in the relevant years and I have only just begun seeing mostly very young domestic cats around the town in recent months. Like pretty much everything Boris Johnson claimed he has said, I have a very strong suspicion the culling of domestic cats did happen in London England. That, or COVID-22 is lethal to all living things. I'm going with both those statements being true on the evidence I've seen. Edit : red: " covid lethal to all living things " the insect population of the city of London vanished towards the end of the official pandemic measures. Maybe the job was considered done because only this January the most lethal covid variant was culling infants and young children in Japan killing in under two weeks through multiple organ failure and the day after NKK broke the story Rishi Sunak the prime minister of the UK ordered air routes to and from Japan to be fully opened up from lockdown rules completely without any review.

cameronh90 3y ago
Are you implying that there were secret cat death squads roaming around London during COVID and somehow nobody noticed? I would imagine it's more likely that people kept their cats indoors or stopped feeding ferals.
- lostlogin 3y ago
  Or are they claiming that covid killed cats?
- justanorherhack 3y ago
  Yes

Grimburger 3y ago

Question for anyone: Do you see this as a bad thing? It's simply the nature of war isn't it? Humans can shoot guns back at invaders, dogs can't. I'm an animal lover and conservationist but don't disagree with this decision, it was reasonable in a food shortage.

mynameishere 3y ago
Guns would not have been relevant in the defense of the UK. The danger was that of a calorie shortage caused by U-Boats.
qwytw 3y ago
> it was reasonable in a food shortage It's not like anyone was starving, there were of course shortages of certain products but the daily calorific from rations was 30-50% higher than what is recommended today. I don't think anybody had to resort to eating dog food?
- cjrp 3y ago
  Indeed, rationing is often seen as people having to cut back on their food intake. In fact, its aim was to guarantee a decent minimum for _everyone_. The people working in factories making vehicles, munitions, ball-bearings, etc. needed to be healthy enough to keep churning them out.
- tialaramex 3y ago
  At its worst the UK was estimated to be less than one week from being unable to supply the civilian population with their rations. The British mainland isn't anywhere close to self-sufficient on food, and wasn't during WWII. So it needed shipments of food. Literally shipments because it's an island. Now, under ordinary rules of war ("Cruiser rules") you can't just blow up civilian transports moving food, you need to search the ships, find illegal shipments and then you can sink them after making their crews safe. But that's not how you win a war quickly against people with more resources than you, so Hitler ordered instead "Unrestricted submarine warfare" which is if you see a merchant vessel, attack and destroy it, they all drown, too bad. There's a down side to unrestricted submarine warfare of course, unlike wearing badges with skulls on them (like the Mitchell & Webb sketch, but something elite military units on every side in conflicts have tended to do) blowing up unarmed merchant ships and killing their crews in order to starve civilians is clearly something that bad guys do, so, no moral high ground for you. However in terms of starving Britain it was close to success. And the British government of the day assumed that, if starved, the civilians would demand their government surrender to Hitler to receive food. Would that have happened? We don't know. The Japanese experience suggests that civilians might just accept starving to death rather than surrender.

BoxOfRain 3y ago

I wonder how well Matt Hancock's supposed discussion during the pandemic about having the government kill all British cats would have gone in practice? I suspect it would make Partygate look very tame in comparison, not least because Hancock is no Churchill.