It’s wrong to ‘hunt’ foxes but you must remember that to farmers they are a pest. Some people (city dwellers naturally) don’t have a realistic view and tend to Disneyfy these animals…

Good post though, and I largely agree with it.

Good post – agree with the whole thing about foxhunting. I seem to recall that the foxhunting issue, and its attendant legislation, was effectively a media-management ploy at the time (it obscured another more pressing and relevant issues which, heh, I cant remember just now). So yes, argue passionately against, but not make illegal.

But with the smoking ban – hmm, gotta say that on balance I agree with it. Tobacco is a vile, addictive concoction (I know, I used to be a smoker)(and am still drawn by the smell and memory of it, even tho actually smoking one is now revolting), stuffed with poisons of every kind; and is it not the case that since the ban there has been a significant reduction in smoking-related diseases?

I’ve wondered about fox hunting for some time. In sheep-rearing country, I can see the point – it is rather literally terrorism against foxes. It couldn’t be more conspicuous; a dozen or more red jackets on horseback, with a horn and a pack of braying dogs. If you wanted to send the message “Foxes – don’t even think about living here”, you couldn’t really find a more noticable method. It arguable saves foxes lives by scaring most of them away from the area, rather than them being shot to prevent predation.

However, hounds tearing a fox apart revolts me. I don’t suppose that’s any consolation to a lamb that gets eaten by a fox.

Of coures the fox hunting issue has little to do with animal suffering, and much to do with decades of tribal rivalry between Labour and Conservative.

Hi Craig and fellow bloggers. I hate animal sport of any kind.Living in Spain we know all about ‘blood sports’..I am also a non smoker but once again here in Spain people smoke in bars and restaurants. The weather is good so you may sit outside if it bothers you.

Love the way you think Craig and look out for you daily on Twitter.Just off to tweet you.

ditto illegal drugs

I agree completely. As a parliamentary candidate in Lincolnshire, my stand on hunting was: “I wouldn’t allow it on my land but it’s not a matter for legislation”. At the time my land was a cottage in Market Rasen with a small concrete yard.

I disapprove of fox hunting, but don’t believe it should be given parliamentary time. It was used by Labour as a proxy for radicalism – look at us, we’re stopping those cruel toffs from killing cute little furry things. Rather like Brown’s photo with his missus in front of Auschwitz, it was an attempt to establish a bogus identity.

At the time of the hunting ban I lived in the constituency with the highest concentraion of nuclear weapons in the UK – possibly in Europe. Had there been an accident or an attack, several thousand square miles of the planet’s surface would have been utterly sterilised for a few thousand years. The local Labour MP continued an enthusiastic supporter of nuclear weapons, and an equally enthisiastic opponent of the hunt. I often wondered if it would have been worth pointing out to him the number of foxes who would perish given an incident at Coulport, Faslane or Glen Douglas. He obviously set little value on the people.

I remain opposed to hunting because of the cruelty involved.

On smoking, if the ban is ever lifted it’s vital that no-one is compelled to work in a smoky atmosphere. That is also an abuse of human rights since people can be made ill by an atmosphere of cigarette smoke. The government’s rhetoric is still about compelling the unemployed to work, despite the lack of jobs. I remember the effects of cigarette smoke from my time working in a bar and wouldn’t wish to compel anyone to suffer it. I also recall student spaces being inaccessible to students with certain medical conditions because cigarette smoke was so damaging to them. I see your points about the dangers of intrusive government but it’s one of those difficult areas about competing liberties which sends me back to John Stuart Mill.

(Perhaps the best solution in practice is the one I’ve observed in France – smoking is officially banned so bars and cafes are more pleasant than previously and non-smokers are no longer consigned to the dingiest corner or a single table. However nobody seems too worried about occasional breaches of the ban in small bars, etc.)

Good Post Craig,

I dont agree with fox hunting, but I also dont agree with a ban. Ife we have freedom then we have freedom, and that freedom will always involve other peoples freedom to d things that we dont like. We are all different. The proper way to change things in a free society is to make the thing we dont like socially unacceptable, not use state power to do it.

Smoking…. the governemnt has the right to ban it on government property, but I dont believe it has the right to ban it on private property. If the owner of a business wants to make it a smoking zone then thats their choice and the choice of the employee’s and customers to work / visit that place.

Let people decide for themselves…. Nulabs nanny state was a nightmare.

No need for the blue touchpaper – I agree with you and so, it seems, do most people here. I don’t smoke, and hate the smell of it, but I thought banning it wholesale in pubs was an outrage. It’s like banning praying in church. Although I might approve of that

Brilliant, and as a true liberal I’d like to see dog fighting & bear baiting back too. The way they’ve oppressed our freedom to torture animals is disgraceful.

“New Labour convinced me that excessive state power is a real evil”

And there was never any excessive state power under the tories. Oh No!

I don’t know chemicals they sprayed on you LD membership card Craig, but tell them form me, it’s damn fine stuff.

What about Hunting UK weapons inspectors? Will the COon/LD govt spend any time investigating the legality of that?

Yes, children of the countryside should be instructed to hunt the hunters, shooting them with the guns of tom foolery and ensnaring them in traps of ridicule. Gangs should congregate in the forests and run hither and thither, shouting LA LA LA LA LA to warn the foxes of impending peril. Groups of youth should be brought in from inner city areas and brought drinks in their local pubs, disrupting their quiet sanctuary. Kebab eating contests should be held in their peaceful village greens.

Tally-ho! Madam, render unto me my red cape, my hunting-horn and my whip!

Good on you, Craig – I’m sure you’ll make sure that Hague (a very intelligent man and an excellent writer who ought to know better than most the lessons of history) gets the message. I hope he/ they will listen and act accordingly. Let’s not hold our collective breath – but it’s crucial that your letter is on the record.

David, I think your suggestion (12:38) represents a good balance. These ethical matters often entail seeking a balance between different people’s rights and the societal parameters within which it becomes feasible that individual freedom be realised.

Re. smoking, I’m well aware of the toxic dynamics of the tobacco companies – if we rail against drug companies and (sometimes reflexively, it seems to me) against everyone associated with them, should we not also rail against Big Tobacco?

I think that the ban in public indoor places was reasonable – apart from the long-term passive smoking argument, if you know anyone with brittle asthma, you’ll know how hellish it could be if someone lit up at a table adjacent to you. But I think that David’s suggestion of their being indoor places where people who want to smoke can go – and not dinghy Prohibition-era sites, either! – is a reasonable one. I think there needs to be flexibility and balance.

I think, for instance, that banning smoking on-stage was an utterly ludicrous act. Artificial fags look like… artificial fags. In any case, the idiocy of it stained the entire exercise, revealed the lumpen-mentality of those who insisted on its implementation and was emblematic of the oppressive architectonic of their philosophy.

A large element of that ‘philosophy’ arose from a tactical need to divert attention from the active and systemic criminality in which the government was engaged in relation to arms dealing and war.

And so, a la rock music circa now, we have a behavioural politics obsessed with tokens, gestures, persiflage. This manifests – as Galton might have hypothesised – primarily through the use (or rather, misuse) of language. It becomes a crime to take a photo of an old engine on a station platform but not a crime to arrest someone for taking such a photograph. It becomes a crime to kill a fox, but not a crime to gun down an electrician.

I second technicolour here, and think you’re all rather getting carried away on a “true liberal” bandwagon. Craig’s comparison with the outlawing of protest outside parliament, or the taking of pictures in public, is bloody daft: these are +democratic+ freedoms, essential to the lifeblood of our democracy. They harm no-one, and they are also of no lethal harm, given that the suggested connection between photography and the planning of a terrorist atrocity was plainly ridiculous from the start.

But what is the freedom to set a hound upon a fox, to force it to exhaustion and then heart failure, and then to have it torn limb from bloody limb? Is that a +democratic+ freedom? I think you’ve lost the plot on this one, or perhaps you’re just slowly turning into Tories!

You appear to propose that if Labour passed a law, it was necessarily authoritarian. Blair was an abomination, as were a number of his inner sect. But this is an assumption too far.

Side note: I don’t think Cameron is much bothered either way on fox hunting, but the countryside set are natural Tory voters, and he is not sufficiently concerned about animal cruelty to stand up to an “important” voting group.

Thank you for that. I agree with all of it. Heavy-handed legislation has been the ‘legacy’ of New Labour, as I was witnessing yet another liberty disappear (it felt) far too frequently. Appalling.

Mike Cobley – your last sentence requires at least a link. I proffer it’s far too early to see any evidence like that! Plus, it’s beside the point – loss of freedoms and the making of second-class citizens out of a huge swathe of over-taxed society. The total ban is not only wrong, it is unnecessary. Many options could have satisfied all – those who smoke and (safeguarding) those who don’t. Smokers KNOW the arguments. It is about freedom to choose. Enough proscriptive ‘it’s for your own good’. Enough!

The Druid,

Not sure if you were being sarcastic, but that is in fact precisely what I think we should do!

I was being kind of tongue in cheek but i do completely agree.

Sounds like a treat. If and when you make any plans for any of this, count me in.

Jon, I don’t think Craig was equating it; I sense he may have been suggesting that it was emblematic, in the end, of a certain type of thought-process that manifested malevolently in the political sphere.

So,, in my view, if they’d just banned fox-hunting but had been libertarian in other aspects (by libertarian in this context I simply mean respecting our democratic freedoms, such as they were), I don’t think many people except the hang ‘em, flog ‘em bods would’ve been too concerned. It turned out differently, though, didn’t it. New Labour was partly about pandering to populist sentiment and fox-hunting gave them an opportunity to demonstrate ‘liberal’ credentials which, in retrospect, had no subtsance. So, they let Pinochet go. All style, no substance.

Re: Hunting UK weapons Inspectors, is Norman Baker an embarrassment to the Con/LD alliance?

In January this year Lord Hutton agreed to allow the doctors to see the post mortem report on David Kelly but they have not had it yet, four months later. When will Cameron/Clegg release the evidence I wonder?

Dr. Kelly article: http://www.redress.cc/global/cking20100520

The supposed CCTV of what’s the greatest terrorist act in Britain (7/7/05) and a independent public inquiry is also eagerly awaited. When will they address that I wonder?

Furthermore, that there are other ways of disrupting the execrable fox hunts; through local civic measures, protests and much else; as with a number of ‘evils’, it doesn’t necessarily require overweening state legislation in order to render it impractical/ socially unacceptable. Banning it turns the hang ‘em flog ‘em brigade into ‘libertarians’, which they most certainly are not! And so the High Tories have been able to masquerade as liberals and divert attention from far more pressing concerns.

lwtc247

Is Norman Baker an embarassment? Not in the least, he is deputy minister for transport – something in which you ought to rejoice.

Oh, but I forgot, you think we are all Zionists in control of Cheney/Bilderberg/Rothschild or something!

Pleased to see that men accused of rape, will now be given the same anonymity as their accusers… unless proven guilty of course.

I hope that this will be followed by the law of exposing all those proven to be false-witnesses; as well as penalising them to the same extent that the crime would have received.

The logic being, that if the sentence fits the crime, then a false-witness intends to commit a crime of ‘fitting’ magnitude.

@Suhayl – but if the examples were “emblematic”, and not comparisons per se, then given the balance of harm, surely the correct response is: banning protest is generally bad, and outlawing unusual cruelty to animals is generally good?

I just don’t see the point of the “freedom” discussed here. It is a freedom to carry on a tradition of causing huge unnecessary suffering to animals, with no significant benefits to take into account. If foxes are pests, they should be killed as painlessly as possible, which I think can only mean shooting.

Personally I rank animals by how good they taste.

What, Craig, you mean you eat foxes?

Incidentally, I had a tuna sandwich today and last night I ate a part of a chicken.

Both of these animals had been killed as part of organised systemic killing on a mass industrial scale.

Where does that place me on the morality/ ethics scale?

But I take your point, Jon. I just agree with Craig that everything that we abhor and that is bad does not necessarily require state legislation, that once you start to use the blunt machine of the state in that way, it can be a hiding to nothing.

Jon,

I agree there is a distinction – but it also seems the compulsion to make things illegal doesn’t recognise it once it sets in.

Sorry, I simply disagree. Fox-hunting belongs to a realm of pursuits whose other forms – bear-baiting, dogfighting, cock throwing – were banished long ago, in most cases, centuries ago, on the grounds of their obvious cruelty and needlessness, and in clear recognition of the fact that their mere existence is itself an indictment of the society which permits them. Fox-hunting persisted owing to privilege and class, with the handy cover of spurious arguments about countryside management in more recent times. The blood sports popular with the working classes went through exactly the same kind of vilification and stigmatisation you suggest for fox-hunting, social attitudes changed, and the result was the widely-supported decision to ban them. Fox-hunting’s adherents have simply long enjoyed the kind of privilege which allowed them to protect their own particular brand of cruelty from that same popular judgement. Banning fox-hunting isn’t illiberal, it’s progressive. I can’t connect the pattern of thought behind it to that spurring the worst of New Labour’s authoritarian policies.

As for the smoking ban, while in principle I could understand the reasoning behind smoking being permitted in what are ultimately private businesses, the ban is there to protect the staff. Without it, we would face a situation where only smokers or those strange few with absolutely no objection to the smoke could realistically apply for certain jobs, and beyond that a far worse situation where those badly in need of work are forced to put aside considerations of their own health and go to work in such an environment. The ban is a much lesser evil, I feel.

Happy to disagree, though. (He says from the obvious position of strength of the laws already both having passed, of course, but such is…)

Thank you for a wonderful post, Craig.

I have long held similar sentiments on fox hunting.

In light of your post, I may have to change my mind about the smoking ban (yuk). What other opinion might I have to rethink?

I’m somewhat ambivalent on the subject of fox hunting, inasmuch as I don’t see much difference between hunting foxes and hunting other animals. Both should be regulated, certainly, and require licensing. I think excessively cruel treatment of the animals should be prohibited and fines should be imposed upon violators.

I also think that, in the past, farmers have been too quick to blame predators and insufficiently flexible in their farming methods to accommodate those creatures who were, after all, generally there before the farmers were. So just because foxes are a ‘pest’ does not give people licence to kill them indiscriminately; there needs to be an attempt at accommodation. If such is made, and a case can still be made for killing the creatures, then a licence could be issued.

But regarding the smoking ban: I’m sorry, but that law has to stand. Eliminating smoking in public places has made it possible for me and my family to actually go out and eat, drink, and be entertained, and not feel as though I want to vomit all over my table, or have to strip to the skin and put all of my clothing in the wash when I return home. There is no equivalent hardship imposed on those who smoke; sorry, I really don’t care if you have to go outside to kill yourself. And there is, of course, the health and safety issue.

The idea of having a separate smoking (or non-smoking) section is a fine one, but in practice this is nonsense. The smoking area is typically open to the rest of the establishment, and the smoke fills the place. The only way it could be effective would be to have the smoking area hermetically sealed off, with separate ventilation.

The right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose. Your right to light up a fag ends when the waste products drift into my lungs. Perhaps If a cigarette could be invented whose byproduct was heavier than air so that it drifted onto the floor and could somehow be hoovered up, then I wouldn’t care.

If you want to smoke in a pub, I assume you won’t mind if I walk over and hurl a gutful of sick onto you.

NomadUK

Diabolical post. NO-ONE is suggesting you have to suffer the smoke of others.

Some smoke-licensed pubs would solve the issue (with staff who smoke), or a heavily ventilated separate room.

You, of course, wouldn’t bother going to such establishments, but would have the run of all the others.. At least you would still have a choice.

What about the environ mentalists? I’ve never seen or met a true one yet. Whats that a brand new car, that really helps the environment. Comments not in any way related to the fox story incase anyone gets the howitzers out.

wow what hypocracy you state in your article that new labour went a step too far when it stopped protests in and around parliament etc ,how about the protests by the countryside alliance then were they acceptable or otis ferry and his chums bringing parliament to a halt when they broke into the chamber was that ok or perhaps you suffer that rare political disease selected amnesia only remembering what you want to ,i will agree with the ban on smokeing the minute they pass into law a total ban on drinking and driveing its quite simple if you drive dont drink alcohol or is that a problem ,yes it is isnt it the countryside alliance backed the torys by financeing seats where a candidate from any of the main partys was anti hunting and i know of at least one brewery shepherd and neame that backs the torys

Liberty is not at risk. It is not a person’s basic human right to hunt and I really find this utterly ridiculous to suggest this when there are people being executed for being homosexuals in Iran, China is allowing total fascism to control, Mugabe is having opposition killed in an instant. You are not hard done by if a past time you enjoy is made illegal because it is found to be cruel. Absolutely ridiculous argument. Fox Hunting SHOULD be banned, and the very fact that people have continued despite its illegality just proves that these people believe they are above the law and our ridiculous new PM suggesting that because people have broken the law it doesn’t work. Does that mean because I chose to break the law and steal someone’s car, or set my dog on another dog, it will be made legal again because I have chosen to break the law and therefore the law hasn’t worked. You strengthen laws, not allow them to wither away because you don’t agree with them. Why should people who support the ban have to suffer the arrogance and ignorance of those who have broken the law? What about the rights of animals? what about the rights of those living in the country who hate hunting and have been subjected to misery at the hands of hunters? Liberty is never at risk over this issue.

Craig

You’ve got the balance right where Nu Labour got it so badly wrong. Parliamentarians have a lot of calls on their attention, from providing good national government to fighting to correct individual injustices. The time even to discuss fox-hunting in Parliament is when you’ve dealt with torture, made sure that taxes are fair, supported the poor and disadvantaged at home and abroad (mainly in areas where we carry historic responsabilities).

And let’s not have MPs discuss fox-hunting until they have discussed battery-chickens and pig-factories.

What ho! Top hole, old chap! None of this “unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable” nonsense.

I’m also quite keen on bear-baiting. If only those zanuenulibourbliar fascists hadn’t stopped me.

Doesn’t relative sentience come into it. A bear is an intelligent mammal that should only be killed as a necessity, where as j c @ 3:27pm is obviously finding the greasy pole of evolution a little to slippery to master.

A strange thing happened the other day. I was enjoying an afternoon tea in a friend’s back garden. Her house is opposite Crystal Palace Park.

There was an almighty noise as about a dozen crows appeared over the roof from the direction of the park.

They were literally hunting a heron. The hapless creature flew into a large oak at the end of the garden. The crows kept squawking and taking it in turns to dive and peck at the heron. Within seconds the heron took off again in the direction of the park pursued by the murderous crows.

I still feel shocked and sickened but nature can be brutal.

However, to manipulate nature in the form of fox hunting or bull fighting is sick.

I used to ride a lot and went on one hunt – to try and understand the pro-hunt’s perspective. The riding was magnificent and wild but a drag hunt would have been every bit as exciting. Although I was told beforehand that it’s quite unusual that a fox is cught and killed, sure enough our hunt killed a young male.

I felt sorry for the heron and impotent that I couldn’t come to its aid but the fox was different. It was cruelly frightened out of its wits and savagely killed for “sport”.

No Craig, I disagree with you on hunting but you are spot on regarding smoking. Tolerance, compassion and freedom to choose how we live are needed more than ever.

O/T:

@j_c and @HeidiC – paragraphing is still legal, you’ll be thrilled to know!

Don’t agree at all on this Craig.

Badger baiting and dog fighting are illegal and fox hunting should stay illegal for the same reasons – they’re all massively cruel and totally unnecessary.

Why should aristocrats’ and gamekeepers be allowed to be cruel to animals any more than city dwellers or the less well off?

Craig wrote “I don’t smoke and hate cigarette smoke, But should it be illegal in pubs and restaurants, which are private property? No.”

The staff in most of them would disagree – and at least half the people who go to them. Before the ban they were left with no choice but to get lung problems and often lung cancer from cigarette smoke.

People can still smoke outside or in their own homes, where it doesn’t affect other people, if they want to.

I suggest that you put it very strongly to William Hague that it would be outrageous if any leading politician (Blair, Straw, Hoon, Miliband etc.) called to give evidence to the judicial enquiry into complicity in torture was offered immunity to subsequent prosecution.

Duncan,

Do you think it is right that a private members club for smokers (employing only smokers) should be illegal?

As to smoke affecting others:

(Quote from Appeals Court Ruling Striking Down EPA Report.) “In this case, EPA publicly committed to a conclusion before research had begun…. EPA disregarded information and made findings on selective information; did not disseminate significant epidemiologic information; deviated from its Risk Assessment Guidelines; failed to disclose important findings and reasoning; and left significant questions without answers. EPA’s conduct left substantial holes in the administrative record. While so doing, EPA produced limited evidence, then claimed the weight of the Agency’s research evidence demonstrated ETS causes cancer.”

Read more: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/support/smoking/part1/#ixzz0oaCXnS2K

Here in the Westcountry as far as I know not a single hunt has closed or a single beagle been put down as a result of the hunting ban, despite the scaremongering of the CA etc. before the law was passed. Hunts seem to get by perfectly well chasing a drag – or killing foxes by circumventing the ban, as the legislation was very badly worded.

I agree that Labour banned it for internal party political reasons, HOWEVER, that doesn’t mean that it was the wrong decision.

I still think it’s a barbaric activity (I won’t dignify it with the term “sport”) that appeals to an atavistic cruel streak in some people, as well as giving the opportunity for some slightly thrilling and dangerous riding. So I hope the new Government doesn’t find legislative time to put forward a bill to repeal the ban, which I believe will be a free vote? It might not even pass as very few Labour or LDs will support repeal, and some Tories are anti-hunting too. Could be close if it ever goes to the vote…

Rural pubs have been hit by the smoking ban. I don’t smoke myself and agree it should be prohibited in food areas and where children are present. But if a pub has two separate bars (maybe with 2 doors between them) I see no reason why one could permit smoking, at the discretion of the licensee. A single-clause (or at least very short) bill could change that.

It is doubtful whether the Millibands have ever seen either a dead Iraqui child or a dead fox. On what basis do they prefer to ban fox hunting?

.

We have general laws prohibiting cruelty to animals. I’ve never quite understood why we needed any special laws to cover fox and stag hunting. These practices are undoubtedly cruel, and engaged in purely for fun. If it is youths on a council estate hunting cats with air rifles they will be prosecuted. Why should the rich be allowed their ‘fun’?

If we allow deer hunting, why not allow dog fighting, cock fighting, bear baiting? Deer hunting has survived solely because it is the pastime of the rich.

I can see where Craig is coming from, but just because Labour passed a load of bad laws does not mean we should undo all of them.

Maybe we need law reform and simplification in this area. All unnecessary suffering caused to animals should be illegal.

Phil – very true – you could ban fox hunting just by enforcing the laws against cruelty to animals that existed long before the bill to ban fox hunting – which was as party political on the Labour leadership’s part as the Conservative opposition to it is.

Smoking ban in Ireland was based on the carcinogenic properties of the smoke and was really a subset of safety in the workplace legislation.

That has led to its own problems in prisons and hospitals, given the addictive nature of smoking.

No perfect solution. But smoking is in a category of its own in this area.

Polo – Carcinogenic properties?

I bet you haven’t even read Sir Richard Doll’s original research on primary smoke.

You say smoking is in a category of its own. Epidemiology cites many factors with higher risks than SHS like milk.

Please, do some research before repeating such nonsense.

Craig your obsession with the Labour Party is addling your mind. Technicolour hit the nail on the head above. Let’s bring back bear baiting, cockfighting and badger baiting while we are at it shall we? To suggest that it is more illiberal to ban these things than to allow them is just STUPID and I am sure you know it. You really are scraping the barrel in your attempts to support this fragile coalition, and selling out all your past principles in the process. There is no such thing as pure liberty. Your liberty to shout fire in a cinema, or to torture animals must be curtailed in any decent society.

As for banning protest outside Parliament I seem to recall that there has been a permanent protest encampment there for the past decade. Perhaps you would tell us how many countries in the world would have permitted such a thing?

@eddie agrees with @technicolour – my, my! Things +are+ strange in a coalition world.

Not sure about that bit about ‘permitting’ the peace protest, though. The govt won the right to apply their anti-protest legislation retrospectively upon Brian Haw from the High Court, and officers came in the dead of night to take away most of his posters and placards. That is an attack on the freedom to protest, however you dress it up. Ditto the special permissions now required to hold a protest in Parliament Square Mile (“permission must be granted but restrictions may be placed on the size, duration (etc ad nauseum) of the demonstration”).

Jon

Technicolour is one of the very few who speaks sense here. The freedom to protest is one thing. What about my freedom to walk around London without having to view the eyesore created by that damaged man? It’s a minority sport and one that says more about his self obsession and attention seeking than any legitimate right to protest. The British state is probably one of the most tolerant in the world of such behaviour.

@ Craig.

Re: your May 21, 2010 2:09 PM post.

It’s surprizing how you lapse into the kind of ad hominem behaviour that others (previously governmental and civil servants under that last govt) falsely buffeted you with on occasions.

Turn a blind eye to the high degree of British pro-Zionism and pro-NWO forces if you will {Is Camerons advocy of a NWO incidental to you?}, but please, avoid giving false summations of those that don’t. Your responses to my recent criticisms of this new govt which now contains a weak LD element have not been to your credit.

Re: Norman Baker. Time will tell whether he’s an embarrassment e.g. If he no longer talks about the extraordinary MURDER (murder being Bakers conclusion) of a top British Weapons Inspector on British soil, involving a wholly dodgy autopsy and inquiry – then he’d likely be silent on instruction.

Do you know when the LD’s will re-pursue the Dr. David Kelly issue? and the 7/7 bombings? Lets see what the LD’s do about torture, rendition, ‘black sites’ and illegal wars of aggression as well. I think you know I have a strong point about all my points of late, whether you will openly admit to the fact or not.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The LD’s hold on power isn’t absolute.

Lwtc247,

yesterday’s BBC News UK front page was about new investigation into the 7/7 bombings, with three pages linked from there, including that the intelligence agencies misled MPs. Here’s one I just found:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8696179.stm

So, should the state not pass laws making racism illegal, Craig? Or racial discrimination? Or gay-bashing? Or……..

Oh, you know: lots of instances. An actual legal ban is often a necessary foundation for getting rid of foul evils that come easily, and perennially, to some people — as long as they’re legally permissible.

Solidarity with a fellow sab, by the way Craig. Good man you!

OK – can’t resist.

But frankly I’m weary as hell with the sheer purblind bloody ignorance on display over hunting. I had five solid years trying to combat it in an official capacity – seemingly to avail whatsoever.

The plain unarguable fact is that on aggregate there is a lot more fox suffering as result of the ban than there was or would be without it. Hunts used to account for a high proportion of road traffic and shot gun wounded foxes which produce the overwhelming majority of premature wildlife death anyway (but that’s OK it was an accident eh?); but no longer. They now have extended deaths from gangrene and starvation. It is plain ignorance and a warped sense of what they believe (quite falsely) motivates those who follow hounds, that drives people like Craig and it says a lot more about their own mindsets than ever it does about those they so sanctimoniously disapprove of. Its peoples’ behaviour in other words and to hell with genuine wildlife welfare about which they know diddly-squat, much less care a toss.

Pissing in the wind I know but just remember the so called ban on FOX hunting does not contain the word fox at all. It is the ‘Wild Mammals (hunting with dogs) Act, and it makes hunting squirrels, mice, moles etc equally illegal. Rats and rabbits are somehow exempt – not cuddly enough I guess.

ScouseBilly – go and talk to your doctor or pretty much any doctor or healthcare professional – inhaling cigarette smoke causes lung diseases – it’s a fact, no matter what tobbacco firms’ lawyers or pub landlord associations’ lawyers try to argue.

Roy Castle never smoked a single cigarette – but died of lung cancer after playing in clubs where lots of people people did for decades. He’s one of millions who died due to inhaling smoke from other peoples’ cigarettes indoors.

Thanks for that Clark.

I have been following events in the Corporate press that you mentioned. I should perhaps have qualified more about what government action I’m looking for such as abolishing the Inquiries Act(2005) and establishing a proper independent public inquiry, rather than this bumfluff that’s going on now to solidify the narrative but give MI5 a public-pacifying slap on the wrist to lay the matter to rest. EVERY aspect of 7/7 needs to be fully and properly investigated including forcing Putrid Peter Power (Terror Pinp) to divulge the 7/7 information no government figure used the means at its dispoasal to expose his exact role. This extends to Zionist Prof. Ehud Keinan who “identified” TATP as the explosive used and who illegally smuggled explosives through an American airport onto planes in complete secrecy until he decided to brag about it http://www.worldpress.org/Mideast/2033.cfm (and as luck would have it he was able to promoted his device after the underpants bomber AND when Technion ?” Israel Institute of Technology apparently showed no interest in helping him to commercialize the research. Hummmm. Seems like these supposedly ‘Muslim’ terrorists want to help the good professor make a few bob, but he’s not been that successful so far. I think the helpful Muslims and TATP’s everywhere reports will perhaps change that)

If after an honest and fully independent public inquiry the official narrative of that day is established then fine; nobody could dispute that.

The BBC hasn’t been on about David Kelly though, has it?

And smoking should be allowed but only in open i.e. outdoors designatied areas i.e. not outside doorways or toilets.

Fox hunting like all these sadistic blood-”sports” should be banned. Pest control – if foxes are causing such a problem – shouldn’t involve traeing up public lands and ripping some beast to shreads and smearing it’s blood (or drinking it) afterwars. Do yourselves a favour, go find some woman whose on her period and use that instead you sickos.

I agree no more paliamanetary time to fox hunting so keep it the way it is… (supposedly)banned!

Nobody seems concerned with torts and lawsuits – including class actions – but surely they become possible once the medical evidence of lung cancer is common knowledge.

Re: the ‘Fox’ hunting…it does seem hypocritical when hunting humans is a government activity so long as it is done safely abroad.

Sabretache,

yours is the only mention of road traffic deaths of animals on this thread. I read the figues for these once; I don’t remember them but I was shocked at the huge numbers. Larger animals were given in tens and hundreds of thousands. Hedgehogs, frogs etc. were just shown as how many thousands of tonnes. Of course, not all of this car-nage is accidental.

I was asked by a neighbor to sign a petition supporting the introduction of the Wild Mammals (hunting with dogs) Act. I refused. My dog regularly caught rabbits (which I learned to skin and cook – very tasty!), and I didn’t want to read pages of legalese to find out what penalty I or he would risk. This probably explains the exception made for rabbits. The exception for rats is probably because ratting with dogs is a necessity.

In practical terms I’m nearly vegan; you’ve about a one in five chance of finding any animal-sourced food in my house, apart from the dog’s food. I don’t eat supermarket meat (what’s the point?) and I’m opposed to factory farming techniques.

There is a pheasant shoot near where I live, and deer are culled. Most of the people that oppose this are not vegetarian. I tell them that the pheasants and deer here have a far better life than the chickens and other animals they regularly buy from the supermarket.

It seems that ‘out of sight is out of mind’, and that fox hunting is conspicuous.

Many people here have mentioned bear baiting and dog fighting etc. I consider this comparison unfair; these are contrived cruelty arranged with captive animals. Hunting is a (predominantly male) human instinct, and the human alliance with dogs and horses goes back a very long time. Both species probably did more to make us who we are than most people suspect or would admit.

I reiterate that I find dogs killing a fox revolting. However, I accept that this is my personal squeamishness (I feel just the same watching wildlife programmes), that there are other valid points of view, that it is a complex issue, and therefore that I can’t support legislation.

Lwtc247,

interesting points you raise about 7/7. A (reliable) friend of a friend told me a story that indicated foreknowledge (though only of a few minutes) by someone in authority. Sorry, I’m not going into this further, the contact being personal. The type of explosive claimed by the authorities was subject to revision after some months, I believe.

Yes, I doubt investigation will go far enough, but at least it’s a step in the right direction, and may help to prevent more such incidents.

Incidentally, fox hunts did need permission to use land, public or otherwise – they couldn’t just ride anywhere.

Duncan McFarlane,

this is another complex issue. I’m concerned that passive smoking is getting blamed excessively, drawing attention away from other risk factors.

‘Your Life in Your Hands’ by Jane Plant is an interesting book about the risk factors in cancer – it concentrates on breast cancer, but has more general implications, too. The power of various industries to warp the scientific picture is very worrying.

Doctors are very much targeted with carefully slanted ‘science’.

Many aspects of our modern way of life increase the risk of cancer; plastics, dairy produce, radio frequency emissions, etc. I think that tobacco smoke may have been chosen to ‘take the rap’, so that other risk factors can continue to be lucrative.

For some light relief… does anyone remember Paul and Barry Ryan? Here’s ‘The Hunt’:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXR2vGY-6O4

@eddie – Brian Haw’s right to protest against an atrocious war – and all its suffering – is significantly more important than anyone’s right not to be offended by his posters.

I think we previously agreed that at least 100,000 people have died in Iraq as a result of the invasion (and as you know, I regard the Lancet report as the best available in a difficult situation, which multiplies that figure by a factor of 10). Now, regardless of your views or mine on the war, it is surely a valid perspective to wish to protest against it.

And other people agree, I suspect. Haw was awarded “Most Inspiring Political Figure” at the Channel 4 Awards in 2007.

No Craig, I think your compass was a bit sharper in your youth in this respect. Fox hunting is in the same category as bear baiting, dog fighting, hare coursing, and boys hanging out of their bedroom windows firing air guns at cats. There should be laws to prosecute the lot of them. Being a liberal doesnt mean that each of us has liberty to do exactly as we please. There have to be lines in the sand – banning cruelty to animals for sport is a line that it is imperative to draw. The biggest criticism against New Lab with their anti-cruelty with dogs legislation is that they didn’t do it properly. Still, a fudge and a botch is better than nothing and I don’t think we should retreat from the small but significant gain that has been made.

ScouseBilly – go and talk to your doctor or pretty much any doctor or healthcare professional – inhaling cigarette smoke causes lung diseases.

You are correct – pretty much all of them read from the same mendacious script. However, rather than accept (your) appeal to authority, I prefer to look at the epidemiological “studies” that supposedly back their position. Guess what, they are not supported.

Joe Jackson (nothing to do with Big Tobacco) after extensive research wrote an essay, Smoke, Lies and the Nanny State:

http://www.joejackson.com/pdf/5smokingpdf_jj_smoke_lies.pdf

That was me above.

Clark,

Agree with you. I couldn’t understand why there should be a complete ban on smoking “indoors” while heavier than air carcinogens from traffic concentrated at “pushchair” level were virtually ignored. In other words,the real and provable demons are ignored at the expense of truth and freedom. Sounds a bit like CO2 – interesting evidence given under oath from a physics professor at Princeton:

http://globalwarming.house.gov/files/HRG/052010SciencePolicy/happer.pdf

Scousebilly,

one difference between the treatment of tobacco smoke and CO2 is that tobacco smoke has been severly clamped down upon, whereas lots of noise is made about CO2, but emissions continue to rise.

The hypocracy gets me. No government was ever serious about reducing their own CO2, just everyone elses. Oh, and raising lots of tax in the meantime.

It’s not that CO2 (or tobacco smoke) might not be a risk; it’s that action taken against the risk is inversly proportional to the power of the groups offended by such action.

Clark,

I like to see evidence of risk – not advocacy and propoganda.

There is a parallel here. Both anti-SHS and CO2 are relying on misrepresentations of good science and statitical analysis.

Both rely on redefining scientific integrity with Ravetz’ PNS – a dangerous fraud,

My comment was purely drawing attention to the difficulties the Irish Government caused for themselves by basing their ban on the carcinogenic properties of smoke (real or imagined).

It did not warrant your rude response.

I have seen Doll’s research and agree that it raises some very interesting questions.

My reference to “category of its own” was intended to refer to the smoking ban interfering in the daily life of almost every citizen, unlike the foxhunting ban, for example.

My comment above directed at ScouseBilly.

Polo, I wasn’t at all clear what your comment meant.

I totally agree that it is a uniquely illiberal policy.

Although I would suggest it rests on the same “settled science” propoganda as AGW.

You may like this:

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/commentaries/march_of_zealots.pdf

Scousebilly, do you work for a tobacco company, by any chance? This sounds exactly – almost word-for-word – like the arguments they issued for many, many years before even they finally were compelled to accept that fags kill. Lots of others things do, too, I agree, and yes, there is probably operative selective political hypocrisy, as usual. But none of that detracts from the fact that fags kill.

It disturbs me to see people willing to summon anguish and condemnation over such a fleeting cause as the caricature of the doomed countryside fox, who without the all of the hunts historic cultural theater and cosplay will simply be shot, poisoned or starved to destitution for being as he would, the unchecked sharp toothed predator in farm and countryside ecosystems.

I have never been on a hunt, and hardly met anyone who has, i am almost vegetarian and against suffering of all animals and peoples, and i am repulsed by the idea of brutal sports like boxing, badger baiting, cock fighting, but those hunts just seem like nice traditional events to me, even including a celebration and respect of the otherwise unceremoniously exterminable vermin.

Between us in our land, we gobble up the crooked carcasses of millions of desparately raised, factory culled creatures every week.

Half the world withers and dreams of what it might be like to live without the terrible all consuming burden of maintaining the systematic supply of our bloated material appetites.

Our daily ways and means are so cruel, we darent really look, so we make caricatures , and get _them_

Nice that you make your post calling badgers ‘vermin’ anonymously whoever you are. It’s hard to tell exactly what your point is – though maybe i’ve missed it.

If ‘vermin’ means doing damage to the countryside, the natural environment and reducing our ability to produce food in future then humans are the greatest vermin of all. Should we kill ourselves too?

You’ll also find that most opponents of fox hunting are against cruel farming practices and many of them are vegetarian (e.g me).

How you think that two wrongs somehow make a right is beyond me though.

Suhayl, no I don’t nor have I ever worked for a tobacco company.

Primary smoking itself doesn’t kill but can precipitate/aggravate “smoking-related” conditions. The research is clear but has been grossly and deliberately exaggerated since the work of Doll.

Second hand smoke, however, has never been demonstrated to lead to cancer albeit lobby groups would have us believe it is a given.

I could facetiously ask you if you work for BigPharma but I won’t. Let’s just ask cui bono? The clue lies in expensive gums and patches.

Now ask yourself this; children through the 40′s to 70′s were pretty much de-facto heavy passive smokers, why didn’t they show high levels of asthma and other “smoking-related” conditions?

There are suggestions that banning smoking in pubs, coffee houses was a deliberate WHO (UN) initiative because traditionally these have been the meeting places for intellectual dissent. This may or may not be true but we must protect the internet and freedom of speech at all costs.

Suhayl, do read the Joe Jackson link above – he’s a good guy.

ScouseBilly – they didn’t show high levels of asthma because no-one claims smoking causes asthma (though it certainly makes it worse for people who already have it). They got lung diseases including lung cancer.

Vehicle emmissions certainly cause the same illnesses (plus asthma) – that doesn’t show that cigarette smoke is harmless.

Arguing that it does is like claiming being bombed with conventional bombs is good for you because being hit with a nuclear strike is worse.

The World Health Organisation is not noted for crushing dissent either.

Duncan, does Enstrom and Kabat mean anything to you?

And if anybody tells you it’s discredited, ask by whom.

Take a look at the Federal ruling against the (US) EPA. I mean look in some detail and you will see policy leading “scientific” conclusions.

I’m not here to argue the toss wiht propogandists merely to ask people to think for themselves and do their homework. You haven’t cited one source btw…

Scousebilly and Duncan, there are a number of interesting points here.

The coffee-house sedition idea was an C17th/ C18th one – they apparently closed coffee-houses down then because they reckoned they were foci of dissent and rowdiness. Coffee woke people up, while booze sent them to sleep or into fights. But I’m not sure smokers (even as were, pre-smoking bans) were any more or less ‘seditious’ or ‘subversive’ than anyone else, though the tobacco industry tried an succeeded in portraying the image as such. Yes, there’s Che Guevara and his Cuban cigars, back in the 1950s/ 60s and of course who would deny Fidel his Havanas? But how about the big capitalists with their cigars? (!).

In any case, now many ‘subversives’ I know are lifelong non-smokers, though of course many others are smokers.

I think it’s a red herring. But an intriguing one, in view of the historical vignettes.

But I shall check-out the links, thanks.

Duncan, you state NOBODY claims smoking causes asthma.

Try googling – smoking causes asthma:

Here are just 2 of the 126,000 results:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1562147.stm

http://www.bupa.co.uk/health_information/html/health_news/270503smoke.html

Should I believe anything else you have to say on the subject?

Scousebilly – since every US President and member of congress has their election campaign heavily funded by big companies (including arms, oil and tobacco firms) US federal government agencies are heavily influenced by those firms, so one of them claiming tobacco isn’t so bad is hardly surprising.

Suhayl – interesting – i didn’t know about the coffee houses.

Suhayl, Sartre was a chain smoker, you know.

Actually, I always get suspicious when claims are made that something is bad, bad, BAD.

Recall the stories of German atrocities in the US press that suddenly started appearing before the US joined in -= e.g. chopping hands off babies.

Nicotine has interestingly positive (cognitive) effects on brain chemistry; improved concentration etc. but woe betide anyone pointing this out. For a smoking G.I. deprivation of his nicotine could mean a seriously premature death, yet that’s what was being proposed by smug committee people in their safe offices.

The US EPA has considerable form in this area and now calls CO2 a pollutant. The lunatics really are running the asylum

Duncan, I am well aware that there are seen, and worse, unseen, hands behind politicians and their initiatives.

However, as stated repeatedly I urge people to go back to source. That is empirical evidence – not surveys, nor op-eds.

Are you a CP graduate, by any chance?

P.S. Everyone should read tis:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/26/AR2010022603369.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Mr McFarlane, i never maligned the badger. Im posting anonymously because i don’t wish to build a profile, just comment occasionaly. (I think there are more than enough personalities here to hold the house)

“You’ll also find that most opponents of fox hunting are against cruel farming practices and many of them are vegetarian (e.g me). ”

You mean you have met some that aren’t vegetarian? Shouldn’t you harass those cuckoos, put horse crap in their bacon sandwiches, and spit on the chickens in tescos? Try hounding your own kin for their vices.

“How you think that two wrongs somehow make a right is beyond me though.”

Surely it is wrong to cause upset to others, but that wrong can be offset by worthy outcomes.

In this case, the suffering of millions of livestock throughout their lives in socially upheld farming practice is immensely greater than the sum experience of the hunted foxes. Truely greater -by a factor of millions. That means the upset you are prepared to make in the name of the fox is a millionth as worthy as the upset you could make in the name of our ghettoed livestock. I could get upset at a hunt sabber for swatting midges using rationale -two wrongs don’t make a right. Fools rights can be all wrong.

Realise that being chased down and gobbled up by a predator is just about the least traumatic way which nature has given a wild animals life to end. Without predation wild animals slowly starve and die of sickness. Without wolves the wild deer herds where tormented by sickness (believed some Inuits).

We don’t live in a heavenly reality where it might be wish to harass the hunting celebrations. There are so many more serious causes to put passion into than this, hunt sabotouring does not look virtuous at all, it in fact looks like the kind of ignorant brutalising sport which it imagines it is opposing.

@eddie: thank you, but I too support Mr Haw; I think his persistence and bravery against legal and physical attacks have been incredible. He is not an eyesore, unless our consciences are. Talking to him is an education; he is thoughtful and serious. You should try it one day.

I have a problem with an arranged consensus, especially when it goes against the bleedin’ obvious:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/05/21/its-the-sun-stupid/#ixzz0orK2Tze5

An undiscerning treatment of the subject matter is quite obvious from here ;p

“Other forms of social sanction can and should be deployed against fox hunters. Social disapprobation, ridicule, protest, peaceful disruption. But is the crushing hand of the state really required? No, I don’t think it is.”

My policy on fox hunting is one of studied indifference. As a liberal and moreover as a liberal who believes politics is for human beings and foxes don’t vote I can’t accept that it should be illegal but at the same time given how wretched I find it I can’t really bring myself to call for its reinstatement. It’s rather like the argument over simulated child porn; should it be legal? Probably. Am I going to make a point of trying to make it legal? Like hell. Politics may be the art of the possible but it’s also the art of structured priorities; in a world where children go to bed hungry, when we vote under a system which wastes more votes than it honours, when we stuff prisoners into prisons rather than engaging in real rehabilitation and when we have schools in which teachers bound up with red tape are effectively forced to cram their overcrowded pupils with facts rather than teaching them how to think I kinda feel the right of aristocrats to terrorize and maim small canines is low on the priority scale.

“The same goes in my view for the smoking ban.” – Worth mentioning (perhaps) that we actually brought the smoking ban into law in Scotland before Labour followed suit in England. The argument would I suppose be two-fold: (a) the ‘private’ nature of places like bars and restaurants is mixed; you don’t have the right to refuse service to people on the basis of race or sexual orientation, for example. Some might argue that by allowing smoking you prevent the use of the establishment (either as employees or customers) of those who have respiratory conditions or who simply don’t want to inhale carcinogens (certain this is an argument I bought for banning smoking in our student Union though I am, in general, opposed to them: you can see what the status of a student bar might be slightly different (less private) than a pub however and (b) the concern in Scotland was public health. They had attempted to use a voluntary ban but that did not appear to have much impact as almost all night clubs and pubs continued to allow smoking rather than risk losing some customers, so the view was taken that an external ban was necessary. In this you could regard us as acting as liberal republicans rather than liberals but the existence of a state health care system makes your health part of my material interest.

I hardly drink so your and other bar frequenters’ health is part of my material interest.

According to your reasoning.

Where did common sense go?

Like you I’m an ex Sab, and my view on the fox hunting ban is the same as yours on Eugene Terre Blanche’s murder. In principle I can see it’s a bad thing, but in practice I find it impossible to shed a tear over. Hunters have the right not to be criminalised: Terre Blanche had the right to carry on living. Lackaday.

“[Hunting] In principle I can see it’s a bad thing, in practice I find it impossible to shed a tear over”

The extended violence and suffering involved in fighting is a bad thing. This is the horrible aspect of true bloodsports where rage and suffering is drawn out and celebrated.

In foxhunts, the hounds do not fight the fox, there is almost no contest involved. A dog may be wounded sometimes, the fox will die in seconds, such is nature.

In principle hunting is an absolutely unavoidable natural neccessity. Coming to terms with this fact is part of loving and caring for the natural world.

Wild animals hunt with teeth and claws. Humans have used spears, dogs, bows, guns… fences, stun guns and shopping trolleys.

Another fox song, this one from a great album by The Family:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZOr9aoaBss

WHAT THE HELL HAS BANNING FOX HUNTING GOT TO DO WITH STATE POWER?

Why not abolish regulations for slaughter houses, too, then? Let the animals be slaughtered however people choose – let people have fun slowly killing the animals – it’s better than too much state power!

Let’s have dog fighting and cock fighting brought back!

And why make the murder of humans illegal? State power is bad! Let society sort itself out without state interference.

Have the guts to admit that you are happy to let foxes suffer for “sport”, Mr Murray, because that’s the kind of man you are.

Not being able to kill a fox for fun has ABSOLUTELY NO IMPACT on our lives. Has the ban on dog fighting and cock fighting affected our lives? NO!

If the “countryside” can’t survive without fox hunting, then there’s something seriously wrong with the UK economy – sort that out, don’t defend upper-class cruelty.

“As a liberal” seems to mean as a selfish person who cares only about number one and my own damn ego.

Still blaming “New Labour”, Mr Murry? – you, of course, praised BAT, a dirty tobacco company. You talk about this false freedom from state power in order to allow big business – the CEOs! – to take control of the government, the economy and our lives (every state asset must be privatized, including schools and health care, welfare must be abolished to create more desperate and suicidal people, and the law must be tailored to satisfy CEO greed and insanity, rather than to create a healthy society), a matter you never discuss. THE GOVERNMENT IS EFFECTIVELY CONTROLLED BY CEOs, BY THE RICH AND POWERFUL. Many in government hail from the corporate world.

Politics truly is an evil, filthy game – any pretext is used to push an agenda.

The way things are going in the UK, I’m really not sure I can drag out my life much longer. I’m reaching a point where I’ve had enough.

You can all have your “social darwinism” – it’s NOT evolution at all, but a grotesque distortion – and it’s what Hilter supported! Atheists – based on what they BELIEVE rather than on SCIENTIFIC FACT – will continue to destroy society by turning humans into expendable lumps of matter, human “resources” that will be exploited by CEOs to the fullest.

Increasingly, all I want is to be out of this Hell and nightmare. There’s no life for me in the UK. I was dead for over 14 billion years, then I woke up. Soon, it will be time for me to sleep again.

Other Richard,

you sound truly tormented. If I can help at all, I will, or at least try to. You can contact me via the link below.

Badgers live in the country too, and they may or may not be a health risk to cattle.

But why would government inspectors need to wear balaclava masks?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5shpuKXATGI

(or go to youtube and search for Brithdir Mawr badger cull).

Here in the Essex countryside I rarely see a fox, once every couple of months maybe, whereas in built up areas I see several every night. I don’t know the figures, but foxes seem to be predominantly urban animals now, presumably because wasteful humans ensure a plentiful food supply.

Conversely, the rural badger population seems to have increased a lot since badgers became protected. Would more foxes reduce the badger population?

@other richard, I hear your frustration, and on the issue of foxhunting I too think Craig is wrong. I am not moved by being called ignorant by @sabretache et al, nor statistics that show that foxes have started to die in other ways as a result of the ban. That may be true, but it does not detract from the fact that foxhunting is a barbarous sport, and foxes die barbarous deaths as a result of it. If there is a negative side-effect to banning fox-hunting, then let us see what can be done about it without resorting back to cruelty.

On the BAT issue, I agree that multinationals are generally harmful, but in Craig’s defence he only spoke well of them, I believe, because BAT were defending ordinary Uzbeks against their atrocious government. I think in other less desparate circumstances, Craig would join you in condemning the excesses of tobacco firms – and he often does criticise neoliberal capitalism. As do many of us here!

I am inclined towards negativism sometimes, as you are. In my view, the best tonic is to examine your talents and to see how you can help fight back against the neoliberal tide in your area. For example, manning a Free Palestine stall occasionally in your area might bring you together with other people who care about the state of the world.

other richard, chill man. Politics is not everything. Much good happens in the world and in this country between ordinary people. Craig represents good and he hasn’t given up, in spite of the difficulties he’s faced. One can get a distorted picture from cyberspace and it brings one down, I know. It’s better to be with actual people. We’ve all been there, man, we’re all 14 billion year-old stardust. Space beings. Put on some earth music – maybe check-out Richard Robinson’s tunes. Have a cuppa. Think of Ozymandias and of the last paragraph of ‘Middlemarch’.

As Clark said, we’re mud that sat up. But that’s better than mud that lay down.

The ban was also against hare coursing, hare and deer hunting, not just fox hunting, something no one seems to mention. Anyone who has witnessed the hare coursing event that was the waterloo cup will be very happy with its demise. Craig, do you also think that badger baiters and dog fighters should not have the state breathing down their necks either? The hunting ban is badly written, but I think it should be improved upon, not destroyed.

I don’t like fox hunting!

http://tiny.cc/huntsabs

nice piece