Harry Kills Harrier?

The legally-protected hen-harrier is a rare and endangered bird in England, two of which were killed on the Royal Estate of Sandringham last week. Prince Harry and a friend were the only two people out shooting on the estate at the time in question which means, as to finding the culprits, we can probably file Sherlock Holmes' and Hercule Poirot's business cards back into the drawer.

I have always liked Harry, enough to forgive him his endorsement of that idiot Kanye West at the concert he arranged for the memory of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales. I admire him for his determination to be deployed in Iraq and he did have a certain down-to-earth consternation about him when England were denied a cast-iron try against South Africa at the Rugby World Cup final (even if his bar-tabs are less earth-bound and more stratospheric).

Still - and whether guilty or not of killing the hen-harriers - 'gaming' is atavistic and, no matter how much of a bubble the Royals may live in (and it can't be so much of a bubble that it prevents a white British Royal's exposure to black American street culture) there is nothing about gaming that can be justified in this day and age. It's atavistic, pure and simple.

The diversity of Britain's wildlife is already depleted enough that these - surely sensitive and educated - members of the upper-echelons can curb their preoccupation with shooting stags, hunting foxes and taking aim the odd rare bird.