So he got the dogs out and left the people behind?!

[Sillysuzie]

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/30/britain-dogs-afghan-people-pen-farthing

@TheFairyCaravan

If I hear “the animals were in the hold…” one more time I’m going to combust. Who put them there? Not Pen Farthing by himself, it would have been the British Military. There was no baggage handlers or any other staff at Kabul airport, it wasn’t bloody Gatwick.

I think he and a lot of his supporters have behaved terribly. At a time when the MOD needed to be completely focussed on the job in hand they had people phoning leaving abusive messages and death threats.

NB. I think the Govt have been shit, too.

Well that and the fact that people where taken out in cargo planes. Sitting on the floor with their luggage.

I have no idea why people think this was an issue to lobby on. Total distraction created by the Pen man. Who is a man who won’t accept any way but his way. He would have been at home with the Taliban

Convenient ‘look over there ‘ distraction from the Govt , their pet papers and social media bots.

Whilst everyone is arguing over Dogs & cats no one is asking why this evacuation didn’t start in May when they were warned to & why it’s such an appalling shambles.

brokenbottleboy.substack.com/p/the-animals-of-pen-farthings-hood

to quote the article:

As The Times, Telegraph and Daily Mail turn their fire on Farthing, The Observer reports that thousands of emails to the Foreign Office about the evacuation from Afghanistan went unread. That’s the story that should be getting the most attention today but the Tory-supporting press is putting the blame on one annoying bloke rather than a whole government of incompetents and grifters.

Pen Farthing left himself open to being framed as a villain by the papers and hero by his social media fans. While Ben Wallace rages and the right-wing newspapers smear, Dominic Raab will be absolutely delighted that he’s no longer the only one in the dog house.

[quote Bogofftosomewherehot]@StepAwayFromTheEcclesCakes - you're talking shite. Is this your expert opinion formulated as you drink your morning coffee whilst reading some crap online from the comfort and safety of your comfortable life?[/quote]
Wow so much vitriol because i quoted something i read, not my opinion at all, and yes a very comfortable life thank you.

He didn’t leave people behind. The Taliban stopped them leaving and let him thru as he was a foreigner with his animals. Apparently he was on his hands and knees begging them to let them thru. He also offered the UK forces the remaining seats on his flight for others and they declined and he was only person on the flight.

The only thing I’m a bit about is that he is now in Oslo and his animals are here. Why isn’t he overseeing their safe quarantine and rehoming?

They were checked by vets on arrival and that doesn't tally with what has been said. Plus, they'll be isolated for 4 months.

Great, hopefully they will be ok then, the travel alone must have been a shock for them all.

@GreatEelRun there won’t be much for him to do- they are in quarantine kennels with the staff there. And sourcing homes etc can obviously be done remotely.

JFC.

The guy is ex-military and therefore has contacts. He has also made a life in Afghanistan, working with people he probably knows and loves dearly. His mission while there has been super-important to very many people all over the world.

Then he was stuck in a complete life or death crisis. He sent his wife and manager ahead to safety and refused to leave, to fight for his staff until the last conceivable second, putting himself in massive danger.

He (of course) uses his contacts, and social media. Of course he does. These are the TOOLS he has at his disposal. In this very white world we live in in GB, who are the government, and indeed the general public and the media going to listen to - Pen Farthing, man with 22 yrs army service who has rescue dogs at his side or Afghans who happen to work for an animal charity? I'm pretty sure you'd all be yelling about how unimportant their roles are compared to the interpreters who are still stuck. How were they supposed to be seen or heard otherwise? Be honest with yourself - did you know they existed before he brought them to the fore?

Let's face it, our government had to pick and choose who got out, and Pen was doing his damndest to make as loud a noise as possible for those he worked with and cared for to make sure people gave a shit about them, using every tool he had in his box, all while the Taliban was breathing down his neck.

And it's worked - well, for now anyway until the next cause celeb comes and you all decide to target them with your ire for dealing with a situation that you personally haven't had to deal with or go through.
The fact he took the dogs with him, is very probably of comfort to those he had to leave.

He runs a blimmin animal sanctuary - if you think that means he can just discard his feelings about the animals, who he has worked intrinsically with, that's a hard no.

He's probably dealt with some really hairy situations in his time in the military and knows exactly what should be happening. He understands the Taliban, the government and the way things were going.

Just remember and keep up your rage, you know, in 2-3 years time, when it comes to how these poor folk are supported as refugees here and that the people Pen left behind, along with thousands of others, still very much need to get out.

Dogs don’t generally ‘die of shock’ with things like this- not like a bird or something might. They are being cared for. Plenty of dogs travel and there are lots of rescue organisations that rehome dogs from abroad. They’re very resilient. My friend has a gorgeous Thai street dog who flew over here with about 50 others.

The story seems to be dying down a bit (not much, but a bit) in the press so lo and behold here we have another shill whipping up the hysteria again, and a whole thread full of misconceptions, distorted facts and - again - distraction from the main issue, being UK Gov's miserable handling of the withdrawal.

@SpindleWhorl

Can we add Piers Morgan to the list? No real reason, I just loathe him. Oh and ditto for Dominic Cummings

I'll put them on a subsidiary list, @BanditoShipman, of people who can inflame any situation without breaking a sweat.

You've left out the......Royal Family. Ooops, sorry, that just slipped out.

I think the kindest thing would have been to put all the animals to sleep in Kabul and save them the trauma of botched evacuations and god knows what else they have been through. Wasn’t one dog stabbed in a crate on the way to the airport?! And some died in transit. We humanise animals to a worrying degree, and sometimes the best decision is the hardest. I am a huge animal lover, dog owner and lifelong vegetarian btw.

I don’t understand the human priority argument as he did all he could to get his staff out as well. At least the guy is out there making a difference in the best way he knows how…unlike many of the middle class sofa keyboard warriors on this thread.

My concern is that any one who adopts one of the dogs is going to have to speak, or learn, Pashto or Dari in order to get it just to sit.

It doesn't matter for the cats as they will just ignore you no matter what language you speak to them in.

They had already euthanaised the animals they didn’t thing would survive.

What a pile of complete and utter crap!
Again, which of those were untrue?

They flew into Heathrow - SO many military troops there - not!!!!
Before the plane took off, they had to unload then reload the plane when it was discovered there wouldn’t be 130 passengers on board.

The Taliban wouldn't let his staff through.
He went to the wrong place. But this was the second time the staff were about to leave. They were previously cleared for a British Military flight and Farthing refused without the animals.

@BoredZelda clearly need a new hobby - she's bored and spreading incorrect shit.
I say again, support him if you must, but at least do it with the actual facts. All of these come from reports made by either him or his supporters.

I'm fairly neutral on this as I understand Pen was trying to use the animals as an umbrella to get his staff out which sadly failed. If I were him I would want to save my own staff from the Taliban if I could. Obviously now the Taliban now have pictures of who exactly they are should they wish to capture them, equally the whole execution has been a humanitarian disaster.

What has distressed me most is on Facebook specifically there is a lot of thinly veiled racism/that brown people's lives don't really matter when you compare them to a floofy dog. I see it all the time, but it's just disheartening...

Once again I see that Pen Farthing is fair game as far as MN is concerned. If I was to start a thread slating certain other people no doubt it would be pulled but once again posters can say what they like about Pen.

I wonder why staff didn't get out when they could?

Or did they all want an "all or nothing" approach?

(I use "brown person" as a descriptor of myself, but also how a of racists seeing people from Asia, hence using that language)

What has distressed me most is on Facebook specifically there is a lot of thinly veiled racism/that brown people's lives don't really matter when you compare them to a floofy dog. I see it all the time, but it's just disheartening...

I can't say I've seen much of that. I donated to the Nowzad appeal to help get the animals and staff out and I'm sure a lot of people did the same.

They were previously cleared for a British Military flight and Farthing refused without the animals.

I'd really like to see a source for this - is this true? I think there are multiple versions of what happened in the few days before he left. It sounds like you know this for certain so would be interested to see where you've read it?

Any resources at all being used for anything other than getting people out is shameful and the mawkish crap surrounding pen what’s it makes me hang my head in despair

@NailsNeedDoing

The man shouldn’t have been put in the position he found himself in in the first place.

There was no need for the evacuation to be the shambles that it has been, that is entirely the fault of western governments. Whether you think the man handled the situation well or not, he was in a situation that the vast majority of us will be lucky enough never to find ourselves in, so it might be worth holding back on the judgement. I’m sure not everyone on here will be able to handle every difficult situation they face in life perfectly, and to the satisfaction of everyone who wants to shout an opinion.

If he’d abandoned the animals he would still have received criticism, especially considering how many people donated money in good faith to help the animals as well as the people.

So what if he took up a landing space? He had a right to get out of there the same as everyone else and it wasn’t his fault that our government hasn’t made proper arrangements to ensure that everyone is out.

Yes. The whole thing has been used to distract from the staggering mismanagement of the evacuation.

I would like to know too. It can't be that hard to link to a source.

@snowballer

They were previously cleared for a British Military flight and Farthing refused without the animals.

I'd really like to see a source for this - is this true? I think there are multiple versions of what happened in the few days before he left. It sounds like you know this for certain so would be interested to see where you've read it?

Previous post referred to this one.

He was their sponsor so they couldn’t go without him and he used them as bargaining chip to get his animals out .

Honestly this is definitely being used by the government as a distraction but this man is also not the saint people are making him put to be .