Re: Hello Again

nigel <useweb@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rowland McDonnell wrote:


Bollocks: there's nothing about fox hunting that counts as torture, and
New Labour has done nothing to stop it.

If anyone has an open mind on the subject, track down the internet
videos of what happens when a pack of hounds catch up with a fox.

I know what happens. I'm not interested in propaganda films. Of course
it's violent and very bloodily messy; it's also almost always so quick
that the fox can't possibly feel any pain.

And it's a lot more respectful to the fox than shooting it. That is
*MY* opinion, formed by myself without any input from any pro- or
anti-hunt propaganda when I was a very young child, okay?

There's no room for that in a civilised society.

Why not?

> There is more fox hunting going
on since the ban on letting the dogs kill the fox the respectful way
with more people signed up to the hunts than there have been for ages,
in some areas at least.

Most of your spiel is straight out of the pro-hunt lobby propaganda
sheets,

Never seen any of 'em, so you're wrong.

However, your spiel is straight out of the anti-hunt propaganda sheets,
isn't it?

although you've missed the bits about the 10,000 lost jobs and
all those cute little doggy-woggies that had to be put down.

I don't give a damn about that.

Could it be that people are finding hunting more attractive now that it
doesn't involve the torture or wild animals.

Two points:

1) All the hunting people I've heard have explained that hunting is less
attractive now. 100%. The hunt numbers are up simply because of rural
anger at the ban: it's a protest.

2) The `torture' that the anti-hunt people winged about is still
happening: if they are to be believed, it's the chase that is the
torture, and more fox chases and more fox killings are going on than
ever before.

The kill at the end of the chase is not torture and never has been and
the anti-hunt lobby has never tried to claim that is is torture in my
hearing.

Of course, there will be a few hunts deliberately breaking the law -
after all, laws are for little people.

Ah! Now we get to your real objections.

I think you'll find that what's happened is that the hunts that have
grown have done so because lots of `little people' as you sneer have
joined 'em.

I'm guessing you can recognise
them because they have the words 'Royal' or 'Old' in their names.

So you're an anti-upper-class bigot, yes?

You do know that Dublin still has a Royal Yacht Club still? I've not
actually checked, but I've sort of assumed that that don't give a loyal
toast to QEII every evening, y'know?

This stuff is usually just decoration, nuffin' else.

What New Labour has done is demand that the fox be shot at the end of
the hunt rather than given the respectful natural death of being ripped
to shreds by the hounds at the instant

No! watch the videos.

What, the videos that were carefully selected as anti-hunt propaganda
from the end of hunts where it's gone a bit wrong?

You've never witnessed the end of a hunt, have
you.

Of course not - but I've read plenty of descriptions of exactly what
happens. You get a pack of hounds descend onto one little fox, and they
tear it into little bloody shreds, throwing this `rag doll' shredded fox
corpse high into the air, spraying blood and guts and whatnot all over
the place.

Am I right?

And that is NOT TORTURE! It is a fast, painless, natural, respectful
death.

New Labour has made it illegal to hunt foxes with more than one hound.

So what?

the chase ends; for sure it's a
violent, bloody, messy process: but it's natural,

It's not natural. Foxhounds have been deliberately bred and trained.

Erm, what? Okay, in which case everything that goes on in the UK is
unnatural since 100% of this land has been managed by people for
thousands of years.

Which is craziness.

and what I've seen
makes it look too fast for the fox to suffer at all.

No! watch the videos. You've never witnessed the end of a hunt, have you.

Not unless you can give me a set of videos that are representative of
what happens. I have seen anti-hunt still photographs of the end of a
hunt purporting to show cruelty to foxes, and I saw no cruelty at all.

Lots of very messy blood and guts, yes. Cruelty? Not a shred.

Keeping the beast
captive until it's shot - that's cruel, that is, even if it's only for a
short while. Horrible, foul - make my stomach churn in a way that
seeing a fox torn to shreds by dogs does not.

So when you eat meat, your stomach churns because it has been shot with
a stun gun first. You rather your food animals were ripped to shreds
while still alive?

I'd much rather they were treated with more respect. I think the way
food animals are bred and reared and treated in general is appalling.

But animal husbandry is a different kettle of fish to our relationships
with wild animals. Quite a different matter, so don't conflate the two.

Chasing an animal down in a hunt is normal life for wild animals, and
they get killed in a timely and fast enough to be painless fashion if
the dogs do it. Shooting them as they do once they've been caught now
does nothing to reduce the stress of the chase - you're allowed to hunt
a fox with hounds still, and that continues. So I don't see any
problems: Cameron's talking about making fox hunting more respectful to
the foxes again, and removing the disrespect for life that Bliar's lot
decided to enforce on the country.

Cameron is talking about pissing on the grave of democracy.

*** off. We don't have democracy here, and Bliar's never given a damn
about it. If he'd cared about democracy, he'd've listened to the
democractic voice of the people concerned and, if he were a true
democrat, he'd not have introduced the hunting ban.

But of course New Labour is a fascist party, aren't they?

There has
been a majority against hunting wild mammals with hounds virtually since
the end of world war 2.

Oh yeah? Where's your data?

There is still a majority in favour of hunting with hounds - in those
areas of the country where people actually know about what it really
invovles.

That majority has slowly grown until the
percentage is now approximately 75%.

According to your propaganda sources, that is.

To re-introduce hunting when less
than 25% of the population is in favour would be an absolute disgrace.

What about the percentage of people living in hunting districts, where
they know what hunting actually involves?

Foxs hunting is in any event a much more respectful way of treating
foxes than killing them with poison and traps, which is how they are
killed in non-fox hunting areas - where fox numbers are very low.


So Swiss assisted-suicide clinice should show respect for their patients
by ripping out their insides while still alive, because killing them
painlessly makes your stomach churn?

I don't think you've quite understood my point here.

The stats I've seen show that fox hunting areas have more foxes in them
than other areas.

Actually, many urban areas have higher concentrations of foxes than the
countryside.

Quite - exactly the point, innit?

There's quite a large population where I live. They're a
bit of a nuisance when they 'dance' in my rhubarb patch, but my
neighbour says he stays up at night to watch them sometimes.

This is because foxes are vermin, and if you've not
got payment for letting the hunt use your land, you've no incentive to
let the foxes live, and they don't.

Typical pro-hunt lobby rubbish. I bet you support hunts breeding foxes
deliberately so there are more to be hunted. Foxes are vermin, but they
also prey on vermin - less foxes, more rats.

Bollocks. Bugger all foxes when I was growing up. No rats, either.
Cats deal with rats as well as foxes. But feral cats, foxes, and rats
are all vermmin.

You keep the rats down with good civic maintenance.

So if you care about animal welfare and having wildlife in the
countryside, you'll be in favour of removing the requirement to shoot
the fox at the end of the hunt which is all New Labour has done `for'
foxes.

Untrue and without foundation.

Utterly true and that is exactly what the situation is. You're made
claims with no foundation.

Rowland.


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