Fox Hunting

Spitfireman it is not horses of bicycles that are the problem it some of the idiots that ride them!

Any more of that and you’re toast !

Naturally (and obviously) I was thinking the buns for the Dachshunds. However, my neighbor had a pure bread dog, but it died of a yeast infection.

Sorry about the e-a mixup. Spell check won’t always alert you. Lest you think ill of my word use, I’ll point out I did use “ee” later in the post.

[QUOTE=J Boyle;2240807
However, when it comes to animals, whatever you do, someone will be against it.
Horse racing, zoos, pure-bread dogs…. [/QUOTE]

JB,

What kind of pure bread dogs ? Hovis or Wonderloaf bred ?

Horse hunting……brilliant…I’m up for it, that…..and cyclists.

😀 😀 😀

…. do something useful start culling thousands of Deer that are wrecking their agriculture and forestry.

There’s a proposal to reintroduce the Lynx to Thetford Forest which would be a sensible and natural way to control the deer population. Needless to say, when I wrote to my useless MP (Elizabeth Truss) about it she came back with a load of negativity.

Moggy

And no – Not helicopters!

If the Scots want to do something useful start culling thousands of Deer that are wrecking their agriculture and forestry.

They are? I’m more concerned about the spread of lymes disease.

Probably.

Can’t say I am bothered one way or another really. I certainly wouldn’t get involved in hunting, but then I hate horses

Moggy

Horse hunting……brilliant…I’m up for it, that…..and cyclists.

The old cars of yours probably don’t need feeding John, good job, because under the hood are probably 300 to 400 “Horsepower”, imagine feeding that lot !! 😀

Jim.
Lincoln .7

I do feel a lot of the anti sentiments are more class-based than anything else.
Moggy

Quite.
However, when it comes to animals, whatever you do, someone will be against it.
Horse racing, zoos, pure-bread dogs….all have critics (to say nothing of the vegetarian/vegan crowd).

A few years ago, the people at Cruffs banned bassets (among other breeds) for promoting abnormalities. In that case, it was because of the amount of “haw” ( the lower droopy eye lids that give bassets the “sad” look) on some dogs.
Quality American breeders have been breeding out excessive haw for 20+years. None of my three former and current bassets had much at all. My current boy, a retired champion from a well respected show kennel, has virtually none. My point of this mini-rant is even animal people disagree about issues, so you can imagine when the general public and politicians…agitated by the media…get involved.

Moggy, I agree horses are strange animals. A friend’s horse raising wife was thrown a couple of years ago with serious results.
Still, some are great. A neighbor’s nanny is keeping her horse in our back pasture for the summer. A very nice animal, one of the more friendly ones I’ve encountered.
They can be a joy to watch, occasionally it gallops around the field, its hoofbeats on the grass sounding like the soundtrack to the westerns I saw on TV as a child. Other times, you’ll hear one whinny when one of their friends is removed from a pasture for a ride.

One neighbor uses hers to go riding in the nearby national forests. Another neighbor just took his two oldest sons (age 12 and 10) out for a two day trail ride in the mountains., spending the night in a forest service cabin.
So I guess they are of some use. 🙂 At least my old cars don’t require constant feeding when not in use.

If the Scots want to do something useful start culling thousands of Deer that are wrecking their agriculture and forestry.

Ah well, they’ve dropped the idea now, Cameron knew he was onto a looser.

Independence for England I say !!

There are a number of issues here.
The Tories knew, despite their manefesto commitment, that they would never get a repeal through a free vote in the commons as things stand.
So they tried to use a Statutory Instrument which many people, including at least 40 of their own MP’s felt was a bit sneaky and underhand, and so failed to get a substantial majority of their own MP’s to toe the line- it was touch and go even before the SNP put their oar in.
Even under the EVEL proposals that they have had to kick down the road because, again, they knew they may not get a majority as the proposals have at present a number of flaws that require further consultation, ALL MP’s regardless of where their constituency is, would still have been eligible to vote on Statutory instruments

Who has won on this one? Too soon to tell, but as has been said on one of the broadsheet websites, it makes Cameron’s task of bringing through contentious UK wide legislation much more tricky, and will continue to do so even after EVEL.

Will they force through an upgraded version of EVEL and then win a free vote on repeal of hunting in England and Wales? If the polls are right, most of the UK population do not want a return to Hunting as it was pre the Act, and those with slim majorities may do the right thing.

The biggest loosers may well be the hunting lobby in Scotland who are probably seething, as it may well be that the law there is amended to fall in line with England and Wales, thus removing one of the arguments for the Statutory Instrument that just failed to take off.

Then your lot shouldn’t have done such a good job of convincing us to stay in the union. :stupid:

Nothing to do with me. I was encouraging a ‘Yes’ vote.

Next time maybe all the UK will get a voice?

Moggy

And now the bloody SNP are cynically using the vote to demonstrate their new-found ‘muscle’

That referendum result was an unmitigated disaster for England.

Then your lot shouldn’t have done such a good job of convincing us to stay in the union. :stupid:

In fairness, the SNP must be enjoying their muscle down South, as they are doing a dismal job up here. Hospital waiting times have increased under their rule and school attainment levels have gone down. The new centralised police force up here carry out stop-and-searches four times more frequently than the UK average but fail to report to a serious car crash, allowing two people to die as a result. The SNP’s firebrand ‘cybernat’ trolls are slowly turning in on themselves as well. Despite all of this the SNP claim, somehow, that all of this would be solved if Scotland was granted FFA, despite the abhorrent maths that littered the white paper.

No wonder Nippy was stuffing her face with Strawberries at Wimbledon this week… anything that happens down south is a nice distraction from the bickering up here. Scoring a point against the pro-hunting crowd will no doubt further fuel the anti-English mob.

And now the bloody SNP are cynically using the vote to demonstrate their new-found ‘muscle’

That referendum result was an unmitigated disaster for England.

Moggy

The Tories know very well that the only chance they have of repealing, or amending the act is to jntroduce it as soon as possible whilst their support is at its strongest. If, as is likely, it doesn’t get through, it will be dropped and we won’t hear of it again in this parliament.

However, looking at the mess that is the current Labour Party, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a higher majority next time round, at which point they may well go for a full repeal.

I was a horseman and have owned a couple of horses. I kept them at a riding school and they could use them to ofset my livery charges(which were not insignificant) on the understanding they were not used for hunting. Two reasons,one I am violently opposed to hunting and two if you saw the way some of them came back it was an eye opener. Cuts from barbed wire and falls,lame and completely worn out. Who got the vets bill yes the owner.

Who said “The unspeakable pursuing the uneatable”?

I think if I were a fox I’d rather take my chances with a pack of dogs than with a farmer and his rifle.

Something else that occurs to me from the pest-control point of view; wouldn’t the fox population have been controlled, to a certain extent, by the wolves that used to roam Britain; until these were hunted (culled?) to extinction by man?

As for the ‘pest-control’ activities of a hunt, I’d say these were negligible, and not a good justification for continued fox-hunting. And some of the existing laws seem a bit strange to me; only two dogs can be used (in England) to flush foxes but the dogs mustn’t be allowed to kill the fox…

…but hunts can use a bird-of-prey to kill a fox once it has been flushed into the open!

How long does it take a bird-of-prey to kill a fox? Is that somehow more humane?

I do feel a lot of the anti sentiments are more class-based than anything else.

Moggy

This is not my personal experience, but may be true of others I can’t really comment on that. In my experience many of the hunt supporters where I grew up, perhaps even a majority, are not ‘posh’ people, and many of those who oppose hunting with dogs on their land are what would probably be called upper class, certainly upper middle class.

It is more a case that those who know about countryside matters are aware that the vermin control element could and should be done much more efficently and humanely by alternative means. Some ignore this evidence and want to enjoy the chase.

Edit: as I suspected, I have just had an email from my MP who has said he is going to ignore me, stick to the Tory line and vote for the statutory instrument. I have informed him, politely, that I am hugely disappointed but not surprised.

I don’t agree with fox hunting, though I am all for humane culling if it is necessary.

However, this issue is tiny compared to the one of Halal and Kosher slaughter, which sees thousands of animals killed in a brutal fashion every day just to satisfy a superstitious bunch.

I wager many of those against fox hunting on animal welfare grounds have no issue with Halal or Kosher slaughter.