[Mr T.]

Scouting around in yesterday's Telegraph (and everyone's at perfect liberty here to post both their own and views from their choice of paper which they might find thought-provoking or worthy of comment/debate), I found these views - from those with whom I might not ordinarily agree or indeed bother reading - quite an eye-opener.

It would appear that, on this occasion, Blair has made a monumental booboo on his fox-hunting crusade - no shock there then. A purer case of 'townies trying to teach a farmer how to milk a cow' you'd be hard-pressed to find.

Scotland - after two years of a hunting ban being place, and having replaced the dogs killing the foxes with marksmen on quadbikes shooting them - now sees more foxes killed than at any other time in its history. Even the hunters admit that, previous to the ban, 90% of their trips out they saw no foxes; let alone a kill - and yet Blair see fit to tell them they can't do it?!

'Never before has the Prime Minister so brazenly put party before country'; that, and the view that 'the battle between red coat - the hunting dudes - and the red flag - the Labour Party - bores the vast majority of voters. And how he intends backing up this ban - by 'putting cameras in the trees and having roving patrols of police to 'seek out the criminals' - has just about confirmed him to exercise the biggest ego this side of General De Gaulle (who, incidentally, allowed hunting - as France still does; European union?)!

And, in the general scheme of things, we've only got a war on terrorism to fight - but hey, that's nowhere near as important as a bunch of townies telling the countryside dwellers how they should conduct matters. Twat. I understood a long time ago just how important the House of Lords was: this country now needs them - non-elected as they are (thank God) - more than ever.

So just as the PM admits that the war in Iraq never finished (although he calls it a 'new war' - bollocks) and the fact that our lads out there struggle for body-plates in which to put in their body-armour (which might actually save their lives - obviously foxes are more important), and with 10,000 people a MONTH dying in the Darfur region of the Sudan - Blair whines on about fucking fox-hunting like it's of major importance or a world issue; which it patently is not. Get the Spanish to stop bull-fighting and we'll have the debate again. Until then, please stop whining about a 'non-issue'.

Finally, it's no small irony that yesterday MPs (including those who'd voted for the bill) 'failed to turn up' for the gala-opening of the 'Right to Roam' [across the countryside] day - the 1932 mass-trespass at Kinder Scout apparently meaning nothing to them...even though this right was won by the 'workers' 70 odd years ago. In an added irony, the pro-hunt lobby stayed away too, in an observation of these folks' rights to roam. What a complete shower this government is.

Cop for these two articles:


It's ludicrous to say this is about animal welfare
By Lembit Opik, MP.
(Filed: 19/09/2004)

'This is about the miners," a veteran Labour MP said to me as we entered the chamber together last Wednesday for the fox hunting debate.

A moment later, the Speaker's chaplain encouraged MPs in the daily prayer to "never lead the nation wrongly through love of power, desire to please or unworthy ideals but, laying aside all private interests and prejudices, keep in mind their responsibility to seek to improve the condition of all mankind".

Especially with that prayer in mind, it is hard to overstate how depressing I find it to hear other MPs using the fox hunting debate to settle old scores and to pander to old prejudices.

I have always tried to promote the "Middle Way Group" proposals as a workable, regulatory answer to animal welfare questions. Our cross-party group has sought solutions, not victory. Sadly, it seems that other Honourable Members have taken the reverse approach.

To link the miners' strike with fox hunting hardly launched the Hunting Bill on a note of high principle. It is absolutely true, however, that many Labour MPs cite a range of reasons to be cheerful about the ban which do not relate to animal welfare in any way.

I have heard innumerable Commons speeches about the "barbarism" of dogs tearing foxes to pieces. Pro-ban MPs regard their own description of hunting as fact when it is obviously opinion.

Often their motivation has no bearing on animal welfare at all. The contradictions were highlighted by a pro-ban Labour MP during the committee stage of a previous hunt ban Bill. As Ian Cawsey outlined his opposition to chasing and killing animals for pleasure, I asked him about fishing.

According to the RSPCA, fish feel pain, so what's the difference? Dr Ian Gibson, the Labour MP for Norwich North, responded: "Fish are not mammals." To which Mr Cawsey replied ". . . at least not yet." The mind boggles.

I guess birds don't count, even though they are warm-blooded, because they lay eggs and have feathers, one or both of which exclude these creatures from the protective cuddle of the League Against Cruel Sports. Perhaps huntsmen could colonise the British countryside with emus, which could then be chased with hounds because they are excluded from the ban.

It gets madder. Apparently, merely being a mammal is not enough for protection either. Rabbits and rodents can still be legitimately hunted with dogs, even after the ban Bill goes through. It gets harder to see the logic, on animal welfare grounds, of protecting Basil Brush when you are prepared to throw Bugs Bunny to the hounds.

Another mantra of the pro-banners is the moral unacceptability of deriving pleasure from chasing or killing an animal.

Yet, one of the main proponents of a fox-hunting ban, Mike Foster, has been happy to win prizes for angling. I have asked Mr Foster, the Labour MP for Worcester who started all this with a Private Members' Bill seven years ago, why it is all right to hook a fish but not to hunt foxes with dogs, especially as fish are not pests and foxes are. He has yet to respond.

Some people suggest that fishing and shooting are treated differently because millions of Labour voters fish or shoot. Far be it for me to suggest that Tony Blair would ever make policy on such a cynical basis.

Not all Labour politicians are inconsistent. For instance, Nick Palmer, the Labour MP for Broxtowe, is true to his creed. He opposes all animal killing, is a vegetarian and has never veered from an intellectually rigorous position.

Though I hold a different view to him on the issue, nobody can accuse Mr Palmer of hypocrisy or sloppy logic. Other pro-ban Labour MPs have given themselves more latitude. Tony Banks has admitted: "The issue is not a matter of great significance in animal welfare, but it has become totemic."

During the Liberty and Livelihood march in 2002, Gerald Kaufman declared: "The people marching today didn't march for the miners when they lost their jobs under Thatcher." Dennis Skinner reckons that "there is not a subject under the sun that is better suited to the Labour Party, for raising its morale in the constituencies, than a ban on fox hunting".

But totems, miners and party unity have nothing to do with animal welfare.

To be balanced, it is unrealistic to think that all hunting folk care deeply about animals. I have long supported mandatory regulation of fox hunting because bad practice does exist, and it is not acceptable.

However, we have now ended up with an age-old dispute between two distinct groups, neither of which is willing to engage with the other. These divisions will reverberate throughout the Government's 18-month stay of execution before the ban comes into effect.

There is another division here too. The shooting and fishing folk have kept quiet, hoping they will not be next. This is naive and they should have stood by their hunting friends. For if MPs do go after shooting or fishing, it will be too late to look to the former hunts for help.

They might well consider the famous words of the Rev Martin Niemoller, who, on his release from Dachau in 1945, wrote: "First they came for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, but I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me."

Last Wednesday we failed to persuade the Commons to reconsider regulation. As the cheers of the pro-ban MPs faded into the relative stillness of the adjournment debate, I contemplated the July 2006 arrival of the ban.

If this really is about animal welfare, will they reconsider what they have done if animal suffering increases? I fear that the real motives of some of the chief proponents means that, to these people, the increased pain caused to the fox by snares and shooting is more than outweighed by the perceived victory over a group of people who "had it coming to them". So it's a class issue by any other name.

In the meantime, fish had better hurry up and become mammals - and then they, too, might gain salvation due to the pit closures of the 1980s.

* Lembit Opik is the Liberal Democrat MP for Montgomeryshire


And then we have:


Now ban this so-called field sport
By Ross Clark
(Filed: 19/09/2004)

A local worthy invited to make a speech at a football club dinner need not flick far through his books on after-dinner speaking before coming across the story of how, on April 13, 1314, Edward II made a Royal Proclamation banning the playing of football in London, with the words "forasmuch as there is great noise in the city caused by hustling over large balls from which many evils may arise which God forbid; we command on behalf of the king, on pain of imprisonment, such game to be used in the city in the future".

Oh, how they will titter, all those Garys and Waynes around the table. How they will collapse at the idea of "hustling over large balls". Then they will say to each other: "What a dick'ead! I mean, like, can you imagine anyone trying to ban the working man's pleasure today?"

Why not? There is every reason why a ban on football should follow a ban on hunting on to the statute books. Look beyond the quaint language and what Edward II observed in 1314 is equally true today: football is a foul game which encourages loutish behaviour. It is played against a background of racist and homophobic chanting. It is sexist and class-ridden, being mainly played by drug-snorting men who sleep with prostitutes.

Educated men - and all women - are excluded from professional football altogether. It is bad enough that footballers themselves engage in violent behaviour on the football field: how disgraceful that they should be introducing their children to the sport, too; sometimes from as young as three years of age, when the children are unable to see the wrong in what they do.

How can it be a sport to inflict such cruelty on animals? Huge numbers of moles are gassed every year in order to preserve the flat surfaces of football fields. They die a horrible death, gasping for air as their lungs burn. Add to this the thousands of cattle who must die every year just to provide leather for footballers' boots.

But it is the depravity to which football leads which is truly worrying: there are numerous instances of children who have been caught playing football with rolled-up hedgehogs. In New York, police even caught a group of boys playing football with a human head wrapped in rags.

I respect those who argue in favour of footballers' liberty, and those who worry about job losses if football were to be banned. But football clubs can easily convert to playing non-violent sports such as netball, where they can still enjoy dressing up in silly, brightly-coloured costumes but do less harm to others.

There are those, too, who warn that football has a large number of followers who might turn angry if their sport were banned. Yet footballers are a small minority - just ask the programme planners at ITV who thought they had hit the jackpot three years ago when they won the rights to show highlights of Premiership matches only to be met with embarrassingly small audiences.

The protests of this small group should not be allowed to frustrate the wishes of the majority, who are revolted by football.

It is possible a compromise could be reached, with football allowed to continue in certain inner-city areas where there is little else in the way of entertainment.

But I don't think it could be made to work. In any case, to borrow a phrase from John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, every time I see the contorted faces of fans on the terraces I redouble my determination to vote for the abolition of football for ever.

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Suffice to say, along with St Paddy's Day, St George's Day and my birthday, April 13th (in memory of 1314) is now marked as a day of celebration and a few sherries in my calendar.

Your liberties were hard come-by and won with lives: don't let an effete elite remove any of them by rote of class hatred!