Political Beasts

Encouraging signs of Britishness are apparent in Romania's democracy, where the government has responded to the killing of a common species by a rare one with the issuing of a licence to make the rare species rarer still. Brown bears in Romania have killed and seriously injured nearly three hundred people over the past two decades, and the government has greeted the latest incident with a commemorative silence and a double-sized cull, on the principle that the best democratic answer to any problem is generally to put oneself at the head of the lynch mob. Since not even the legislators believe the cull will prevent future bear attacks, it is clear that the Romanian government has thoroughly assimilated the great British principle that "prevention and intervention" are no substitute for blood sports.