Hunting Repeal

Commenting on the “The hunt vote hope for repeal”, I did think that apart from all the old rubbish about hunting being ever so more popular, that the usual photographs depicting the traditional hunting scenes could have easily come from last year. In fact I thought the newspaper could have saved some money by using last years photos again, who would have known the difference! and would the majority of us truly care I wonder.

I was in Chard town centre where the Cotley rode into town. They did not publish their meet, they have gone underground with even their web site being taken down, what have they got to hide! The numbers attending yesterday outside the Guildhall I felt were down considerably as were the riders; which incidentally costs around £8000 to maintain a hunter mount and hunt subscription; but where indeed does this 250,000 number come from? Perhaps the Countryside Alliance spin factory!

However I thought the main thrust of the debate would have been the mess that DEFRA has found itself in this last year. By this I mean Jim Paice’s boss Caroline Spelman and her shambles over the aborted sale of the nation’s forests, quickly followed by Jim Paice’s own mess when he failed to deliver the ban of performing wild animals in circuses. A ban so widely supported by the general public. He was ridiculed by his own party by his pathetic performance and feeble excuses in the Commons during the debate.

With the badger cull trials scheduled to start in the South West after the summer Olympics, I am sure many commentators will be surprised that to raise the prospects of a repeal on the Hunting Act, and summarily allow the Countryside Alliance a perverted victory would be the equivalent of shooting ones self in the foot with both barrels.

A repeal of the Hunting Act is as welcome as increased bonuses for bankers or tax relief for the wealthy.

If we end up with the situation that foxes, deer, hares and soon to be badgers are to be hunted or shot in the countryside and the NFU and others support these activities then they risk driving so many more people into becoming Vegetarians or Vegans and the farming industry like the traditional English countryside may never recover.

Next year the stakes are big!