The Cruel Season

Saturday the 29^th of October is the start of the new Fox Hunting season and perhaps we should perhaps pause and reflect as to what foxing hunting is today in the modern countryside. This is where vehicles, riders and hunters are all wired with salient navigation and robust mobile communication providing detailed terrain mapping and route management.

Guardians of countryside traditions you will often here the hunters call. But with all these modern trappings the terrier men, sometime called countrymen, will be out driving there Kawasaki Quad bikes adored with boxes of terriers, spades, metal rods and root cutters ready to unearth any fox who dares not to play ball with the hounds and seeks refuge underground. All these facilities together with dozens of dogs and human followers to persecute a defenseless wild animal in a one-sided ritual to titillate sadistic humans out for a days so called hunting. 

The Countryside Alliance will again be promoting hunting and all its positive attributes to the general public, media, politicians and rural communities. The spin will go along the lines of “Fox hunters are the true representatives of rural England, binding the countryside together as farmers and landowners unite in a common cause.” But in reality they are as representative of rural England as Eton and Harrow Colleges are of our education system.

Publicly the hunts will be saying that they meet 'with organizers laying a scent for the hounds to track. Monitors nationwide, however, testify that for most Hunts this is merely a charade, designed to thinly disguise the fact that they are carrying on hunting as if the ban didn't exist, with the same callous disregard for the welfare and feelings of their animal victims and with many individuals appearing to arrogantly consider themselves above the law. Time and time again reports emerge of the chaos caused as hounds riot and trespass, attack livestock and peoples pets, stamping over gardens and damaging property.

Journalists are apparently consensually beguiled by the Countryside Alliance, while the few Monitors beat desperately on the door of the media, which is rarely opened. 

The current Police Minster Nicholas Le Quesne Herbert (Nick Herbert) was a former Public Affairs Officer of the British Field Sport Society (BFSS) which is now the Countryside Alliance. This may explain why police forces up and down the country do little or nothing enforcing the Hunting Act. The same parallels exist between the Metropolitan police and the early days of the phone hacking scandal by News International; phone hacking, what phone hacking!

The ban on hunting; including stag, hare, fox and mink, or is it otter now, is overwhelmly supported by the general public, but the hunting traditions of the heredity privileged and landowning elite who have always acted outside the realms of any government seem to have played heavily on the police for any enforcement of the ban as the hunters riot around the countryside; the untouchables in full purist of the inedible.

The National Trust AGM

As we enter the autumn is must soon be time for another National Trust AGM; and this years its on the 29th October 2011 at the Royal Concert Hall in Nottingham. The pro-hunt group strangely name FONT; Friends of the National Trust via the Countryside Alliance web site always provides voting information to ensure that the pro-blood sports agenda remains in place within the trust, however this year you have to register to view the information; yet more secrecy! 

This is rather sad and as the National Trust have over 4 million members, but sadly only around 35,000 bother to vote.

The vast majority of NT members are interested in visiting the many stately homes, rolling estates and gardens during the spring and summer months. But come the darkness of autumn and winter the hunters and shooters come out to play. The National Trust openly states that the greatest danger to the trust is from climate change, but I believe that another danger exists and that is the stranglehold that the blood sports fraternity has on the National Trust which is after all a registered charity setup to preserve the gems of our countryside and the variety of wildlife that live on it, not for providing fairground stalls for the shooters and live prey for the hunters and hare coursers.

But to return to FONT, I have always been amused regarding this group, located deep in hunting country in the Exmoor on the  village of Crowcombe in  Somerset. It’s rather like a group of pedophiles setting up a charity called for example the New Children’s Society; where they offer help and assistance to schools, clubs and parents at sporting and social events. People would naturally assume that here was a wonderful helpful group of nice people devoting so much time and effort to be with our young children!  Then the cruel dark side would emerge, but alas far too late to prevent the damage.

Sometimes when the label states this product may contain nuts, and we are initially dumbfounded and confused – then later much later we stumble across these nuts in most unexpected of places!

Long Live St Paul's Tent City

I think it is rather a cheek that Liam Fox should portion any part of his demise on the hounding of the press. Now we all have some idea of what was going on and he had to go and one wonders why he did not go sooner?

We just need to look back of the Tory press hounding of the last governments ministers; in particular the series of Home Office ministers; David Blunkett, Charles Clark and Jacki Smith. The current Emigration minster Damon Green was apparently behind so many of the stories appearing on the front pages of the Daily Mail and Express regarding the job he was emigration job he was shadowing at this time.

Rather interestedly if it was not for the efforts of some journalist we could be subjected to a Rupert Murdoch Fox News channel delivering a rather right wing bias on the news. But alas the Murdoch’s News International group was out foxed by good journalism. We still don't know all the details of the Dr Fox case and the money men who back him, directly or indirectly. Also it is rather pathetic to offer the feeble excuse or get out clause that he did not make any financial gain from this situation.

He proved himself to be untrustworthy and still does by his recent statements. 

I think most people and that is a very significant majority in this country know that this Tory lead government weren't elected and are only where they are because of the LibDem collaborators. Who have turned their back on any claim to be the voice of liberalism. They have chosen to support the party of privilege and patronage over liberty and equality and they have treated with contempt the voters who chose to vote LibDem in direct rejection of the Conservatives. They have disowned those who made a positive choice to vote LibDem in order to see their policies implemented. They have betrayed the party workers who have worked hard to promote the centre left of politics by rushing to the rescue of the political right.   

Nick Clegg and his followers must take a large portion of blame for the covert policies such as the manipulation of corporation tax in the budget, the bailouts, the continued lack of controls over (now) publicly owned companies, the increasing rollbacks of worker's rights, the VAT hikes so the cost of living rises despite wage freezes. The selling off of the NHS so that if you're poor you're buggered, the increase in tuition fees so only the rich can afford a university education; so they stay powerful gaining more influential positions in society. It’s the usual divide and rule tactics and the usual portrayal of the working class in a dim light, the corruption is top down

There is hope and perhaps the activities at St.Paul's tent city which is getting an awful lot of coverage at present. This may be the emergence of real opposition against corporate greed and the failed and corrupt banking system.

Lets hope that the church does not cave into pressure from the Conservative Christians and perhaps speaks out against the ravages of the bankers and this corporation friendly government.

It was a few months ago that the Archbishop of Canterbury did try and voice his concerns regarding the actions of the governments policies but he was shouted down by the well groomed and Eton trained debater David Cameron. The Archbishop seems to be very quiet now, perhaps like one of his predecessors, afraid that he will be slain by government supporters!

I understand that there is a Conservative Christian group and that the Great Badger slayer Caroline Spelman is a member. If this government and there supporters get anymore power and control in this country you may soon need a Tory party membership card to enter a church!

A Return to Life on Mars - 80s Here we come!

So as unemployment increased to 8.1% nationally and the unemployment total for 16-24 year olds hit a record high of 991,000 in the last quarter, an unemployment rate of a staggering 21.3%.

From a personnel perspective my own son graduated in July 2005 and since then has worked in a series of part-time or temporary jobs, each and every one paying the minimum wage; typically in office administration. One job in Taunton, (a well known Department Store Head Office)  lasted 11 months, it seems the situation changes when you try and stay in a job for more than a year. As he signed on the Job Centre; staff said his job and others were being advertised; what sort of business ethics are in place when big High Street companies act like this!

Wages and job security are suffering when what is required is good jobs with good pay and conditions and ongoing training to develop a skilled workforce, not a pool of unemployed workers who are used and abused by employers, rather like raw materials in the ‘Goods In’ section of a factory. Stagnating wages and low paid service sector jobs as private business reaps the high profits from once state provided services and facilities, is this life we want for our children and our grandchildren?

The Employment Secretary, Chris Grayling, said that what the UK was now seeing was "the impact of the international financial crisis". But I believe that the Tories are using the economic crisis as cover, they are simply carrying on where Thatcherism left off; redistributing power from working people to the wealthy elite. The last Conservative government achieved it largely through many anti-union laws and suppressing workers' rights together with a massive shift of the burden of tax from direct to indirect taxation. 

Its amazing what you can get away with mass unemployment as the rich people's wealth rise over 30% in the last few years and with a top 1% lifting a hefty 23% slice of the national pie!

Perhaps we may see further reductions in company corporation tax, at a low of 24% as means to create new business incentives; sorry create more jobs!

Vince Cable seems very quiet at present, perhaps emerging as the new Mr. Bean of the financial world as Baron von Osborne runs amok with our economy!

Shooting for Fun

With the start of the Pheasant season on the 1st of October it was interesting to see that the British Association of Shooting Association (BASC) are taking the unusual line of ‘saying hey lets eat what we shoot’ for a change; in an attempt to turn the sport into a food sourcing exercise!

With the proposed badger cull trail for the West Country I was surprised that Badger Burgers were not on the menu after all they will be shot ‘free running’ and above ground! Why we could have a version of Beatrix Porter’s Cook Book with featured menus such as Water Ratatouille, Brock Burgers and not forgetting the old favourite Toad of Toadhall in the Hole!

But on a more serious note a lot of money is being used to provide live targets for the sport of shooting with little concern for the birds lifecycle as DEFRA Farming Minster Jim Paice tore up the new welfare regulations for the rearing of game birds as one of his first acts in taking office, not a wise move if its entering our food chain on mass.

Now together with the election of Simon Hart, previously Chief Executive of the Countryside Alliance this could herald in the opportunity to push forward the Countryside Alliance manifesto of countryside pursuits which includes shooting wildlife as a grant legible sport.

To encourage children to take up pursuit shooting fuels an unethical demand for the range of targets that can be shot and then this goes on to create the demand for even more live targets, which usually results in more wildlife being classified as a targeted pest.

I have no problems with clays or target shooting, but if you introduce children to shooting as a form of wildlife management it opens up the whole shooting scene for them and also to be knowingly cruel is demeaning to the person who is perpetrating the cruel act and will perhaps be diluted on children introduced to shooting live targets by there peers and does this make for well rounded adults?

I still fail to see how the double barrel shotguns are seen as the tools of the trade for many countryside people working in wildlife conservation as I have never seen any reports of our wildlife returning the fire at these shooters!