DON'T SMACK THAT BABY SEAL, HAND ME THE CLUB

My position on clubbing baby harp seals has changed after reading the transcript of Paul and Heather Mills McCartney on Larry King Live: it's time to stop clubbing seals and start clubbing McCartneys:

KING: Heather, who are the sealers?

H. MCCARTNEY: Well, you said earlier in your introduction that, you know, people have to survive on this and we really researched this because, you know, we did not want to come out here and start, you know, cuddling up to seal pups and saying "It's terrible that you do this" if people are totally surviving on this.

But it's just not a fact, you know. It's less than five percent of their annual wage. There are many other ways of earning it, you know. People once had Apartheid that was traditional, you know, slavery, putting children up chimneys. It's totally inhumane and they could have ecotourism here.

The federal government used to make subsidies of $20 million. You know it adds up to about $5 million income a year. America has boycotted. People have boycotted all over red lobster and many other chains and they're losing $139 million in snow crab sales anyway. So, there's just no economic viability on why this is going on. There's just absolutely no reason whatsoever.

P. MCCARTNEY: And, if the seal hunt was to be stopped that boycott would be lifted immediately. The only reason it's in place is because of the seal hunt. One of the very first things, Larry, we saw when we came here because, as Heather said, we came with an open mind and we understand, you know, the economic issue and sympathize greatly with that.

But one of the first things we saw was a quote in the newspaper from one of the fishermen themselves who are the sealers. They are off season fishermen. And, this was a 70-year-old gentleman who said, "Oh, we don't want these do-gooders to come out here cuddling up to the seals, saying they're beautiful."

He said, "They are beautiful." He said, "And then the next thing they'll do is they'll say that the seal hunt is cruel." He said "And it is cruel." So, by this own man's admission he said "But we've been doing it 500 years." We believe that 500 years is no justification for cruelty.

H. MCCARTNEY: And these are commercial fishermen. We haven't got any issues or arguments with, you know, the Aboriginal people using it for subsistence and everything. It's the commercial fishermen who do this in the off season and earn between $1,200 and $1,500 a year and, you know...

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KING: We're back with the McCartneys. Heather, you were going to say something before you were so rudely interrupted.

H. MCCARTNEY: Well, I was just going to -- I was going to go back to your question of why are they clubbed to death? The reason they're clubbed to death, so people really understand this, is because it's less damage to the skins. The reason they're killed, you know, between the ages of 12 and 24 to 30 days is because their skin is fresh. It's unmarked and it's going to be used for the fashion industry for seal skins. You know when they kill them later on, always generally under the age of one year because then their skin gets too marked, they shoot them from moving boats and most of the time they're not great shots so they lie there, you know, in agony for, you know, Humane Society U.S. filmed a young pup dying for an hour and a half before it choked on its own blood.

So, the fashion industry don't want a marked skin and that is why they don't put the second bullet hole in because every second bullet hole reduces the pelt or the skin by $2.

So, when you imagine within five days 80 percent of these 250,000 to 300,000 seals are clubbed and hacky-picked (ph) as in a hook and slain around to death and that is not humane, you know. Humane means kind and, you know, with compassion. It doesn't mean that at all.

For a minimal off season income that the federal government could make a hugely clever economical decision to actually, you know, put the money to the licensed retirement program for the fishermen.

Most of the hunters are actually desperate to retire and 15,000 to 25,000 of them have licenses and 4,000 of them still seal every year and the rest of the, you know, most of them find it very difficult to do. And they would love to have, you know, the licensed retirement program put in place.

There's plenty more, including a stoush with Danny Willaims, Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador if, you know, you're a, you know, glutton for, you know, punishment.