Flash with owner Sean Carr of ‘Party Animals’ and Alyn Smith MEP
before folk started geting in touch with me about Flash, and the more I heard, the more I was intrigued. Fortunately, Sean was kind enough to invite me to Livingston to see the magic for myself, so I fired up the Quatro and away we went. The Crusader Court sheltered housing complex is a regular destination for Flash and his fellow therapets, and Sean suggested my seeing Flash at work would help his case.
What I saw was Flash bringing a lightness and joy to the room simply by being there. While I’m not advocating wild animals being kept as pets, Flash is very much an unusual case. He was born in captivity and was hand- reared by Sean, who told me he was up more times in the night with the baby raccoon than with his own son!
But Flash doesn’t just work with older folk. Many emails came from parents whose children had benefited from sessions of animal-assisted therapy, where kids with autism, ADHD, cerebral palsy and so on can develop their social, emotional and cognitive skills in a calm, non-threatening environment.
These parents were literally begging me to do something to help. This was no coordinated campaign from a flashy city headquarters, but rather friends and families all banding together to show support for a local organisation that was directly helping the lives of some of their community’s most vulnerable people. The clock was ticking – could we save Flash?
Inspired by my visit, I began making a few calls and knocking on office doors. Of course nobody thinks a big grumpy rhino is a suitable pet but surely this proposal hadn’t been fully thought out? Surely my fellow MEPs agreed that
the Commission had somewhat exceeded its powers on this issue? The Parliament’s Environment Commitee certainly did, and we were about to vote on their formal resolution would send the Regulation back to the Commission. As we filed into the voting chamber in the final plenary of the year, my heart was in my mouth.
But I’m delighted to say we won! Not only was the Regulation returned to the European Commission, but we also have a grandfather clause included, meaning that alien species already here will be exempt from the new rules. Or, more simply, Flash and his friends are safe.
Flash the raccoon is no ordinary animal. He’s one of Scotland’s most- loved ‘therapets’ – an animal whose presence has a therapeutic value, particularly for older folk and chil- dren with learning or developmental difficulties.
It is a prety good example of the EU system working - we do indeed need rules on alien species across the whole of the EU as beasties cross borders, but they need to be good rules and it is my job to represent Scotland’s needs in the process of drawing them up. Folk got in touch asking me to act, I did, and the inadequate proposals were sent back to the drawing board. Me with a raccoon on my shoulder might not look like High Politics, but it matered to a lot of folk in West Lothian.
February 2016 41
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