Blair To Ban Fox Hunting!

This debate has been raging for a long time. Not being British and certainly not of the upper-class, I really don't have any strong emotional connection to this tradition, but it has always seemed to me that a fox hunt had to be on the low end of the hunting sports. I mean, I really don't know, but a bunch of blue-bloods on horseback accomapanied by a regiment of hounds chasing a fox doesn't seem to be too much of a challenge. Maybe someone can explain it to me.

news.com.au...

September 6, 2004 BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair will invoke rarely used parliamentary powers to ban fox hunting, according to local media reports.

Mr Blair will use the Parliament Act to enforce a ban on the hunts - seen by many of their upper-class followers as traditional sport - by early next year, the Mail on Sunday reported.

Facing resignations from senior ministers and a rebellion in the ruling Labour Party over the issue, he will seek to distance himself personally from the move and will ask the Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin, to invoke the act to quash opposition to the ban in the House of Lords.

We have similar sports here in the US. Rabbit hunting with beagles usually results in the rabbit being torn to shreads by the dogs. Those guys take the dogs up into the mountains, and drink a beer or six and listen to the dogs running in the woods back and forth. You can hear the bark change and know they're onto something. The sport is all in the beer and the bark, the rabbit becomes the unfortunate consequense of a day out. It isn't anything new, or something thats going to change. I doubt the "blue-bloods" who enjoy the sport will stop their traditions with a little thing like legislation. Just pay the fine, and consider that the cost of entertainment.

Oh! I get it. It's like coon hunting, but with horses and wardrobe.

LOL! Yup - and it's not beer, its ale. Not that a Pabst Blue Ribbon is much of a beer anyway...

Basically a majority of people in the town and in the countryside want it stopped. (naturally the 'country sports' people ignore or simply deny the opposition from rural people - or dismiss them as city 'blow-ins' and not entitled to say.)

Not only are they sick of gangs of 'blue-bloods' and their gangs of hangers on riding through and damaging their property when the hunt goes off the land that it is allowed and arranged to happen on, foxes huh. just won't stick to the plan, eh?

They are also sick of the injury to pets that sometimes happens. Having your young kids watch the pet cat torn to shreds by a pack of dogs (without so much as an apology) before their eyes is hardly desirable. It has happened.

Generally speaking most people in the UK see the 'sport' as taking pleasure from wanton cruelty and see about as much place for it in a civillised society as bear-baiting, cock fighting or dog fighting.

Originally posted by sminkeypinkey
Basically a majority of people in the town and in the countryside want it stopped.

Thanks for the clarification, pinky. The part of a band of mounted bluebloods and hounds rampaging through the countryside did come to mind. Would folks be more tolerant of the sport if the participants respected private property and pet cats? What if they chased something less cuddly, like, say, a wharf rat?


[edit on 04/9/6 by GradyPhilpott]

Well they used to hunt naked peasants instead of a fox. I'm glad the aristocracy still doesn't practice that anymore. Though I'd love to see the controversy...


P.S.- J/k....I think.

Originally posted by Flinx
Well they used to hunt naked peasants instead of a fox.

Naked peasants! I never thought of that. Remember the infamous Bambi hunts?

This could reinvigorate the British Empire!

Originally posted by GradyPhilpott
Thanks for the clarification, pinky.

- No problem.

The part of a band of mounted bluebloods and hounds rampaging through the countryside did come to mind.

- Maybe you'd be surprised but it's a side to the debate that gets pretty much ignored here. It really upsets those affected though as you may imagine.

Would folks be more tolerant of the sport if the participants respected private property and pet cats? What if they chased something less cuddly, like, say, a wharf rat?

- That's something many seem to think and there may be some truth in that.

But I would also say this -

Like many other developed countries (including the US) many people are questioning the 'need' for vivisection and the various experiments on animals - even where human health issues are concerned.

......and the animals concerned tend to be mainly rats and mice.

I think they days where people can just do what they like and 'play' - no matter how cruelly - with animals lives are coming to an end.

BTW one last thing.....it won't be "Blair" that bans hunting foxes with hounds it'll be done by a free vote in the House of Commons; ie not one tied to any kind of party instruction. There are supporters and opponents of hunting in all the parties but, by far, opponents carry the majority vote.



[edit on 8-9-2004 by sminkeypinkey]