When they come home again to whales

Before I start with tonight's post, I now have enough information to clarify part of last night's post - more specifically, the part where a Facebook user complained about suspected theft from donation boxes at a McDonald's in the lower North Island. McDonald's have responded to Jessica Hemi's complaint, and it turns out that cash handling protocol and security (plus the fact that the boxes aren't bottomless) means that large amounts of cash for Ronald McDonald House Charities are not always stored in the boxes. Donations are consolidated so that one big donation is made to RMHC every month. Last year, McDonald’s restaurants in New Zealand donated just under NZ$1million to RMHC. If you contributed to that total, keep up the good work. Now for something not so good - the resumption of so-called "scientific" whaling in the Southern Ocean has been condemned by Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully. Anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd said it was pursuing the Japanese fleet after finding all five of its vessels in the Southern Ocean, along with evidence of whale kills. The Sea Shepherd fleet - comprising the Steve Irwin, the Bob Barker, and the Sam Simon - was now trailing the Japanese ships in a bid to disrupt or shut down their whale-killing operations.The Steve Irwin's helicopter first spotted the Japanese vessel, Nisshin Maru, in what the organisation said was New Zealand's sovereign waters in the Ross Dependency Antarctic region and inside the internationally recognised Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. The Sea Shepherd group said it had footage of three dead protected minke whales on the deck of the Nisshin Maru, taken when the factory ship was first found. A fourth whale, also believed to be a minke, was being butchered on the deck. That is not cool. Whales are an endangered species and we can't just make up some stupid excuse to wipe every last one off our planet. Commercial whaling belongs in centuries past and should NOT be allowed to continue in 2014, and neither should Downton Abbey. Thankfully, Julian Fellowes, the creator of Downton Abbey, gives his clearest hints yet that the show will end after one more series. It is Downton Abbey’s biggest cliffhanger, but for once, it does not involve any of its long litany of characters. Instead, it concerns the future of the programme itself. In an interview, Fellowes admitted there was no way he could continue to write the show’s storylines at the same time as working on his next major project – to create what has been described as an American version of the series. The Gilded Age, to be set in New York in the late 19th century, has been commissioned by the US network, NBC Universal, but its production is being held up by Fellowes’s continuing commitment to Downton, which is due to return for a fifth series later this year. But seriously, don't watch The Gilded Age should it ever come to fruition. It won't be worth it.