Fifty Shades Of Grey

George, the beagle with a penchant for the provocative, brings you his thoughts on fifty shades of grey and his colour-blindness.

In the canine world we judge each other according to scent, size and sex (although only the latter really matters, I guess), and whilst humans also do these things, you seem to have a particular fondness for judging each other on what particular shade of grey you are. Yes, grey. That’s how you look to me, I’m colour-blind. Not in a ‘some of my best friends are black’ way, but more like the first ten minutes of Wizard of Oz without ever hitting the big reveal.

Judging a spaniel for her (apparently) brown or black shaggy mane or a rottweiler for his black and tan short coat has never affected my disdain for either breed. Both silly creations lack the finely-calibrated equipment – the nose – that differentiates a true hunting hound from the common domestic pet. I digress. My main point today is that one’s colour has absolutely no bearing on success or happiness in life, unless one decides that it does.

You bipeds spend a lot of time talking about how ‘integrated’ or ‘cohesive’ you are, whilst prattling on about statistics concerning faith and minorities. I live down the road from a bichon frise that firmly believes that she is the canis lupus messiah reborn. Keeps barking at her owners about some impending apocalypse. But I don’t think any less of the silly bitch.

To quote just a few of your oh-so-human statistics, the 2010/11 National Citizenship Survey revealed that only 7% of you consider racial and religious harassment to be a ‘very big’ issue and 61% ‘not a problem at all’. In the same survey, 86% of your lot believed their area to be a place where people from different backgrounds get on well together.

How reassuring.

On the other hand, I imagine it to be a rather painful experience being told by a shaven-headed lager lout just how unwelcome you are – I have had similar encounters being ‘moved on’ in my local park when having a sniff around a rather delightful staffie – but these prejudiced and small-minded pockets are not Britain. If Paula Radcliffe can piss in the street – nay – if she can stop for a full on Krakatoa of a #2 in the street, well then so can I without being judged for what I am.

Take a leaf out of my book: be colour-blind, even for a day. You’ll very soon discover the sheer pointlessness of judging each other according to hue. You might even find more worthwhile ways of judging each other such as intellect. Unfortunately that excludes all retrievers, throw them a tennis ball and they’re lost to you.

But what do I know, I’m a dog.

(I bet you thought this was going to be about smut.)

Tagged Canine, Colour blindness, fifty shades of grey, George, harassment, integration, Multiculturalism, national citizenship survey, racial, religious, Social Cohesion, Wizard of Oz