English hunts plan mass rebellion (fox hunting)

[Esslinger]

Riders and walkers from 250 hunts throughout England are to take part in a mass hunt on February 19 — the day their traditional sport is banned.

The intention of organisers, the Countryside Alliance, is to hunt within the law and show the absurdity of the legislation forced through last month.

Landowners have already given permission for legal hunting to take place on their property. The new-found confidence of the pro-hunting lobby comes after Trevor Adams, 46, walked free from Jedburgh Sheriff Court cleared of breaking Scotland’s hunting ban in the first real test of the new law. He was found not guilty of allowing hounds to run out of control in pursuit of a fox on farmland on October 16, 2002, three months after the ban came into force.

He was the first member of an organised hunt to face charges under the Protection of Wild Mammals (Scotland) Act 2002 and could have been imprisoned for up to six months or fined up to £5,000 if found guilty.


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1398467,00.html

[Khephra]

1. Where's a Monty Python Upper Class Twit contest when you need one?

[allalone]

6. they'll be at the gathering

geez, how many is a mass in fox hunting terms? And what an important social issue.

[Voltaire99]

2. Ours is an era in which the right wing stages mass rebellion...

...for the preservation of its sadistic privileges.

Tear gas and truncheons, please. And don't spare the rubber bullets.

[DemBones DemBones]

3. Good for them! Here's my take: if you don't like

fox hunting, don't go fox hunting.

[Fenris]

4. What an enlightened viewpoint.

God save upper class displays of "heritage."

[DemBones DemBones]

7. Don't like it? That's what the pro-choicers say -- "Don't like

abortion, don't have one."

I admit I have far less concern for dead foxes than for dead human babies. Foxes kill chickens and other farm animals, after all. They're beautiful animals and I love to see them but they're still pests whose population size needs controlling, like deer in this country.

[Spinzonner]

5. Is that your attitude towards murder also ?

It's rather condescending to assume that those who object do so out of a disinclination to participate intead of a moral objection.

[DemBones DemBones]

8. Of course not. Nor is it my attitude toward abortion, but

I borrowed the slogan from the pro-choice movement, which doesn't seem to find it condescending to suggest that those who object to abortion do so out of a disinclination to participate rather than a moral objection.

The fox also has a chance to get away.

[Stella_Artois]

12. Foxes ARE pests.

They do need to have their population controlled, that is not the debate.

The debate is how this is done. Fox hunting has been the traditional way for so long there is a very real chance your ancestors got on their horses and protected their livestock in this way.

Its far from perfect however but the problem is that science hasn't come up with a better way to do it yet.

Poison kills other animals including the protected Badger. Shooting is too hit and miss (pardon the pun) Its too easy to just wound the fox and have it die of gangrene over a period of weeks.

Traps trap other animals. They could be sterilised but how do you catch them ?

The problem is, Tony wants to ban this, but hasn't funded a different way to do it.

[Piperay]

10. Unfortunately that is not an option

for the fox. :-(

[w4rma]

9. Those laws were bound to backfire. Blair is usually good at PR, but in

this case, I think he's going to lose this one. He's picking big fights on idiotic stuff, I guess because he doen't want to tackle real problems.

[TyeDye75]

11. Personally I dont like Fox hunting

But I couldent give a toss about this new legislation I think 100,000 dead Iraqis should be at the fore fornt of the agenda.

[Mr Creosote]

13. However much Blair dislikes it

the mass-murder s in Iraq, and the lies he told to involve this country in it, simply won't go away. But the whole fox-hunting nonsense does give an insight into the priorites and efficiency of the Blair regime. 700 hours of parliamentary time was spent on banning fox-hunting, 7 hours only to the decision to launch an illegal war against the people of Iraq. A common complaint against the Blair regime is that legislation is badly drafted, so perhaps it is unsurprising that the law won't actually achieve its objective (stopping toffs have a ripping good time).