Search Still Got The Fever
Paul McCartney is going postal – literally.
Just in time for holiday cards in the States, animal rights group PETA has launched a limited-edition sheet of US Postal Service approved stamps honouring celebrated vegetarians.
Macca joins daughter Stella and a host of others including Vivienne Westwood, Morrissey, Alan Cumming, Belinda Carlisle and Joan Jett.
Westwood went vegetarian because the English fashion designer believes that we should “not consume but live in harmony” with the world.
And Stella McCartney – who, like Westwood, refuses to use fur in her designs – credits her father with instilling vegetarian values in her.
“One of the things I was taught growing up was ‘Do unto others as you would have done to yourself’”, she says. “It’s a way of life.”
Manchester’s Morrissey, of course, famously titled The Smiths’ 1985 album Meat Is Murder, and he’s still playing the title track live on tour.
Cumming, who famously blasted fur-wearers from onstage in Cabaret, thinks “killing to make or eat things is horrific”.
“Rotten carcasses don’t feel good inside my body”, the Scottish actor says. “I’ve also seen some horrible documentaries about the hormones and things that go into meat. On a health level, meat is so scary.”
The new stamp sheet is available for purchase at www.PETA.org
They pulled the plug on him in Hyde Park but today Paul McCartney broke off from rehearsals for the Olympic opening ceremony – to plead for an elephant.
After hearing from pressure group PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) about the plight of a young elephant who has been beaten and is kept in chains, Macca penned an urgent letter to Indian Forest Minister Dr Patangrao Shripatrao Kadam.
The former Beatle, who first visited India in 1966, called on the minister to use his power immediately to rescue the little elephant, named Sunder, from Jyotiba Temple in Kolhapur district of Maharashtra and move him to a forested sanctuary.
“I have seen photographs of young Sunder, the elephant kept alone in a shed at Jyotiba Temple and put in chains with spikes”, wrote McCartney. “Years of his life have been ruined by keeping him and abusing him in this way – and enough is enough.
“I most respectfully call on you … to get Sunder out.”
McCartney’s plea follows PETA’s discovery that Sunder was being abused by his handler, who has gone on the run.
The young elephant sustained a severe injury to his right eye from being jabbed with an ankus – a sharp, hooked metal poker-like weapon. The animal is confined spiked chains and kept alone inside a dark shed, in which he cannot even take a single step in any direction.
“Sunder is denied all that is natural and important to him, and lives in fear,” say PETA investigators.
