Andy Duncan decries the bigotry of Members of Parliament in persecuting a minority.
Backbench Labour MPs have voted for a total ban on hunting with dogs. What remains very unclear, however, is what happened to the government’s murky ‘compromise’ option, to allow licensed hunting to continue.
This disappeared due to a mysterious House of Commons drafting error, and a warning to Labour whips, that the Parliament Act could not be used with a total ban. But for a government of control freaks, this seems a mere fig-leaf covering over the traces of some kind of deal between the backbench and the executive of the “You support us, when we need you, and we’ll give you the Ban” type.
Or does it? Could it be even more labyrinthine than this simple conspiracy theory? You may remember last week Mr Peter Hain, our friend from Wales, attempting a complex manoeuvre to kick the Hunting Ban into the long grass. The last thing New Labour needs, with the Tories moving into a fragile lead in the polls, is to cement this lead with a class-war move highly unpopular within Middle England. With the Countryside Alliance able to get 400,000 people to march down Whitehall any time of their choosing, my guess is Tony Blair would rather this problem went away, until he is at least dealt with Iraqgate.
Time will tell what this über-manipulative government is up to, but my guess is that the ban will fail again, in this session of Parliament, due to some “technical error”, and we will be back to where we started, next year, for the whole sorry mess to begin again. You would think they had a majority of ten, the way New Labour carry on, rather than over one hundred. It must be terrible being a socialist back-bencher lion, being led by such donkeys. Excellent.
So fox hunting is brutal… so is boxing and any game hunting… so it’s elitist… so is golf. The politically correct decided to ‘show those lords’ and strike a blow and can run right over the House of Lords as the peers lost their controlling veto on legislation some time ago. So hey… why not?
This is a classic case of tyranny of the majority. This is exactly why the UK is sliding backwards into the septic hole of the EU taking their socialist welfare state with them. So really… what’s next. Smoking? Sure. Eating meat? Why not? You think I’m exaggerating but who cares if a bunch of people that can afford it run around with packs of dogs on horses and hunt a fox. It effects no one. Banning it betters no one. But it’s a real charge to stick it to the rich huh?
Yea lefties… saved a fox. The world is such a better place that you can tell some folks what to do.
I wonder how much of this is a Labour backbenchers snub and challenge to Blair who probably does not want to risk the political fallout from an outright ban.
Will he now try to step in and thwart the will of the House? Maybe those enraged backbenchers can smell his blood.
Whichever way this breaks, we win. Either blair annoys the public, or his own party. Labour without blair would have the life expectancy of a mayfly in a blast-furnace, and a public hate-on for blair could force them to drop him just as easily as a backbench revolt.
“Maybe those enraged backbenchers can smell his blood.” But surely for them to pursue Blair in this way is cruel, elitist, primitive, reactionary, and politically very incorrect? I don’t see why they can’t have Prescott running around Whitehall simply dragging a pair of Blair’s trousers for them to pursue, instead.
I think hunting with hounds will be banned; shooting will be next, then fishing, then eating red meat, then…..inappropriate laughter.
I jest – a bit.
Those MPs who voted for the ban, no doubt most of them opposed the war. Marvellous, they probably regard foxes as being in more need of protection than the people of the Middle East from Saddam Hussein. But then they think foxes are cute, rather like dear old Saddam with his moustache.
What a bunch of assholes.
If the Countryside Alliance can keep the hunters and their supporters as mobilised and as willing to campaign as they have done so far things can only get worse for the government.
The CA are a new kind of country group. They are more agressive in their campaigning than the traditional country sports groups such as the British Association for Shooting and Conservation and members respond to them.
Continuing the animal theme, you finally push a little too far and the whole thing goes ape shit.
Let’s take a few moments to hear what Blair has to say:
“I wish I had never heard the word hunting. We are in such a mess. I do not know how we are going to get out of it.” – Blair, talking to the late Lord Jenkins.
DANEgerus writes:
Yea lefties… saved a fox. The world is such a better place that you can tell some folks what to do.
Well, this is the strange irony. Because although most socialists may think they’re saving a cutey, wutey lickle foxy-chops, all they’re doing is saving it for a far worse fate; lamping.
This is where an experienced marksman goes out at night with a bright lamp. Foxes freeze, when they stare into the lamp (as you may have seen with rabbits, when driving). The marksman then aims into the chest with a “stopping” shot, and then finishes the animal off some time later, if it doesn’t escape with a bad gangrenising wound, with one to the head.
Given the choice, being ripped to pieces instantaneously by bloodthirsty hounds, or being shot in the chest, or badly wounded, and then shot in the head some time later by a cold-blooded marksman, given that it has to happen, give me the hounds every time. At least I have a sporting chance of making it through to another day.
But that’s not what this is about. This is about Marxist class hatred. This is about “the working class” spoiling the fun of the “upper class”, and getting one over on them. Or to put it more simply, one group of men tyrannising another group of men. You’ll notice there’s no mention of banning angling, in which most coarse fish are often killed, or at least tortured, purely for pleasure; you wouldn’t eat the damn things. But the primary purpose of fox-hunting, to eliminate foxes, will still be continued by these lampers.
I have no truck with fox-hunting, I will probably never in my life go on a fox-hunt, and from the accounts of some country folk who I live near in Oxfordshire, some fox-hunters are the most unimaginably arrogant people in the UK. But what right do I have to stop them pursuing their interests? It’s not harming me, it’s not harming anyone; it’s just some do-gooders don’t like it, and mostly because they hate the people who do like it — the foxes are just the excuse, as is the power-crazed case with most do-goodery.
We should also interfere with traditions at our peril, and only when there are absolute clear benefits in doing so, because traditions contain stored knowledge, sometimes accumulated over centuries. Unravelling them can cause far worse repercussions than may at first appear, because of the many different strands of thought, settled conflict, and societal balancing, which created them, the causes of which we have forgotten. These often flood out of Pandora’s box once we re-open the original wounds which caused the healing traditions to form in the first place.
Everyone, including the government, admits of the need for fox culling. I hope by attempting to unravel this ancient British traditional way of removing them, in such a cack-handed way, a major repercussion is that they’re kicked out of office, and the sooner the better.
I heard on the news today that this may be a piece of political log-roling – Tony Blair has relaxed the government position on fox hunting because he has some proposals for hospitals that will piss back benchers off and wants to curry favour.
You’ll notice there’s no mention of banning angling…
Not now my friend but one day it will happen.
There will be more studies such as the recent one from the Roslin Institute showing that fish feel pain.
More animal rights groups will be persuaded to follow the arguments of PETA
to ban fishing (hey, eating fish is BAD for you).
If hunts can be disrupted, why can’t anglers enjoying their sport be “disrupted”. How long before we hear of anglers being assaulted (perhaps it has already happened)?
Given anough time and “education”, people will be convinced of the cruelty and suffering caused by anglers.
You’d think there weren’t more important thing to worry about in our society. Pathetic.
Dead right about the crappy class war stuff, Andy Duncan, but shame about the comparison of hunting with hounds, and shooting. I’m afraid you’re repeating what often seems to be the CA party line about a fox shot with a rifle tending to suffer a lingering death compared with the blissful instantaneous lights-out of having its neck busted by a hound… It’s important to remember that the CA is a rebadged BFSS (British Field Sports Society) and is still dominated by the fox-hunting fraternity, despite its claims of inclusivity: many of its members remain deeply ignorant about shooting foxes with a rifle, and are very often hostile to it. A friend of mine near The Fens suffered persecution by fox hunters jealous of his success at shooting foxes (record 16 in one night) – they set the police on him, spread nasty rumours, etc. I’ve shot a great many foxes, lamped & otherwise. People who do it regularly (which is quite a few) use high velocity calibres, and varmint bullets that fragment explosively on impact: a fox hit anywhere in the torso suffers massive shock & tissue destruction, and dies instantly or within seconds.
Alan – you haven’t been paying attention! “How long before we hear of anglers being assaulted” – ? Campaigns of violent intimidation against anglers go back at least to the 1980s when there were lots of instances – Hunt Sab types throwing stones, bullying lone anglers etc. If they try it on me they’d better wear flak jackets and water wings…
Hi Tony H,
Thanks for putting me right on real-life lamping. It’s always good to learn something new, every day! 🙂
Still, as you agree, this is mainly about class war, not fox culling. Though I suppose with Ms Widdecombe weighing in, and the late, and very much lamented, Alan Clark also being very anti-hunt, there is some conservative mind control mixed in there as well.
Once the do-gooders have got their way on the thin red line of fox-hunting though, I do have to agree with Alan, that other things will come next, if only to give the Hunt Saboteur tendency something to do, of a weekend.
With your fragmentation bullets, you may be last angler still fishing, in 20 years, but I’m sure they’ll try to ban it (assuming they can get hunting banned first).
And then they’ll come after my hobbies too, such as heaping derision upon the immense stupidity of all socialists. Or maybe that will come first! 😉
Oh yes, there is of course the Campaign Against Angling (CAA) which regularly gets itself a mention in the news, despite having a tiny membership and despite there being several million people in this country who do some sort of angling occasionally. From quite a long time ago I remember hearing an interview on R4 with one of the CAA leading lights, the daughter of some well-known UK upper-class person or politician (wish I could remember her name), whose final words on angling, uttered with deadly Stalinist intensity, were, “People’s perceptions HAVE to change..” Shooters, anglers, we’re for the re-education camps if these types get their way.
Hmm… to be fair, this *is* definitely partly about class war; certainly that’s a motivating factor for some of the campaigners, but it’s also about being consistant… it’s only class war because any traditionally working class activities which inflicted similar pain or fear on animals were banned long ago. When did you last hear of badger baiting, cock fighting etc.? So fine… you wanna stop them from banning hunting, be consistant & ask for the bans on these sports to be repealed too. Fact is, letting hunting continue for this long has been a class-based action very much in *favour* of the upper classes, so don’t try & portray them as victims.
Not that i’m saying foxhunting should be banned; i think the movement to do so is extremely hypocritical, & largely motivated by censoriousness & prudishness… plus even if you take the view that foxhunting is a real problem, and have animal welfare at the core of your agenda, there are so many more important issues that should be dealt with first.
Also, if all these foxhunters are basically freedom-lovers at heart, with individual liberties at the core of their agenda, will they join me at the next legalise cannabis march?
Hmm… i thought not.
Oh, fishing has been on the animal rights agenda for a long, long time.
And even in the States, hunting is being gradually restricted. The result has been an explosion of nuisance animals in many places. In the Northeast, deer are increasingly looked on as a sort of pretty vermin (their rise in population is behind the genesis and spread of Lyme disease).
In isolated places, such as some unpopulated islands, the solution has been to allow them to starve. In municipal areas, they are often poisoned. It’s hard to imagine why an animal would prefer starving, sickening to death or being hit by a car over a nice, clean shooting (or even a sloppy, inexpert shooting, for that matter). Hence, it’s hard to see this as anything but a class issue (though in the US the two sides are more like “backward rural uneducated traditional knuckle-dragging beer-guzzling righty hunters versus modern hip urban educated vegetarian lefty Bambi-huggers” ).
Man is an important and perfectly natural predator, no matter what sort of ridiculous costume he puts while being one.
Hi A_t,
Also, if all these foxhunters are basically freedom-lovers at heart, with individual liberties at the core of their agenda, will they join me at the next legalise cannabis march?
Hmm… i thought not.
The Wiltshire-weekending City types, who go hunting on Saturdays, won’t be able to join you on your cannabis marches, I reckon for two reasons.
They’ll be too exhausted from all those house sex fever parties they indulge in, and from all that cocaine they snort, during the week, at work! 🙂
Animal rights activists will try to get angling banned.
It won’t happen.
Hunting is being banned because of the hatred of labour MPs and activists for the type of people who go hunting.It is class war ,plain and simple.
They don’t hate anglers,so angling won’t be banned.
“Is the prime Minister aware that 1500 lay down in a nuclear die-in in Trafalgar Square on Staurday”
“Is the Right Honourable Member aware that four million people went fishing?”
M Thatcher.
Tony H,
I must admit that during the more violent protests by hunt saboteurs a few years back, I remember hearing stories of attacks on anglers but I thought these were isolated cases of idiots using the actions of the sabs as an excuse to beat people up. I wasn’t aware of actual campaigns of harrassment against anglers – certainly not in the past couple of years but presumably these stories are rarely picked up by the press?
I really haven’t been paying attention because I wasn’t aware of the Campaign Against Angling. Their website may not be slick and professional but is well put together and is stuffed full of propoganda for the animal activists to march behind.
Dave said: They don’t hate anglers,so angling won’t be banned. – well they don’t hate them yet and when they do get around to hating them it won’t have to be about class. Go to the CAA’s website above and note that on the home page they talk about the fish “tortured” by Huntingdon Life Science. The use of such emotionally charged language can be used to imply that all anglers are “torturers”. Add behind that the weight and support of the RSPCA and a ban on angling is an achievable target even if it takes a couple of decades.
Mind you, I personally think that game shooting will be the next sport to be targeted for a ban – after all;
– it is usually practised by the rich and wealthy.
– anyone who gets pleasure from shooting a living being has to be “strange”.
– guns are BAD right?
Alan
“They” ,that I was referring to were the politicians.
The sabs do hate angling and will move on to it eventually,but I predict they will be unsuccessful as it requires a real animus on the part of the politicians in power – and a very large majority- to force this kind of change in Britain.
Also very important as H Williams points out is the sheer number of anglers[voters], as opposed to the tiny minority who hunt.