Fox Hunting - It's The Future [boardwalk]

FOX HUNTINGFox Hunting????? Professor Plum - 3rd post - 10 Sep 2004 21:00 BBC Today Boards
I have to confess to being rather perplexed by the heated debate over fox hunting, maybe its because I'm an lifelong townie or maybe I'm just an unfeeling brute but I really don't care enough about the little critters for it to be an issue. I am still very confused, just what is it that foxes do that means we have to go to such extreme means to catch and kill them?


re: Fox Hunting????? Little Richardjohn - 79th post - 11 Sep 2004 12:38
The fox-hunting lobby would like you to believe that fox-hunting is a sport because it involves riding horses very fast over a challenging course in teamwork with a pack of skilled hounds. It's a sort of race. Killing the fox is just an unfortunate consequence, and a necessary one to keep down the numbers of this vermin.
Also they predict that without fox-hunting, the poor country folk would simply waste away from poverty. All the dogs would have to be slaughtered and burned in great pyres on the hillsides.
And yet.
When they hunt foxes to virtual extinction, which they occasionally do, they import or breed them to give the hunt something to chase and kill. After reminding them to close the doors on their chicken sheds, that's all that can be said about the 'vermin' debate. The only conclusion is that they actually LIKE killing things, and this is what disturbs most people.
Foxes are only foxes, and most Britons wouldn't shed a tear at the thought of them being killed for a reason. But killing for fun is something else. And if it isn't about the killing, then why do they do it? It is possible to get all the fun of the chase without the kill.
And I would love to ride oe'r brake and thorn all afternoon then get drunk over a three course meal with my mates down the pub. Riding horses en masse is fun. No-one denies that. There is just no need to kill anything for the sake of it. But at present, thousands of people are banned from this form of fun because the only opportunity to do it is as part of a hunt, sanctioned by local landowners, and fearfully expensive to boot. Old chap.
There is nothing to stop an enterprising young country go-getter from organising blood-free hunts involving scent-trails and rented horses for the urban market. Along the lines of the Dude Ranch. One step up from Paint-Balling.
(take this idea with my blessing)
They would clean up, as would the kennels and stables and local pubs and hotels and farmers. I'd book tomorrow.
The trouble is, it would mean the County set revoking their control of the activity, and would also mean an influx of fearful Oiks into their nice feudal wonderland.
By insisting on there being blood and guts, they are limiting the numbers willing to take part and thereby protecting their territory from 'outsiders', which has always been the major pre-occupation of the English Countryside.
And a pretty squalid mob they are. Did you hear their spokesman, Lord Man ... Mansleigh? Manifold? whatever .. on yesterday's 1 o clock news equating the forthcoming Bill with the War in Iraq?:
"People's lives are just a toy to him. (Blair) He's playing with them as he does in Iraq."
That is probably the most tasteless remark broadcast this year.
All the arguments used by the tweedies are just hot-air. Hypocritical Moral Blackmail, mostly, directed at a culture that hates the idea of ickle doggies being needlessly slaughtered, made by businessmen who would rather do just that (liquidate their assets) than adapt their business to suit a new climate, or make any attempt to seek out new markets.
The fact is that if the Hunting Industry were to broaden its horizons, it would probably lose the petty aristocracy that still noisily infests country life. ‘You let those dreadful people in and we go, and that's not the only lever we have over you. Next year when you want to borrow our combine harvester - forget it.’ You get the picture, it's all about the vested interests keeping control. Boring, predictable, but true.
And, shamefully, there is still enough unforced feudal fore-lock pulling to keep the landed chinless ones a significant factor in the equation.
In other words, fox-hunting is not a sport, it is a social barrier in a Butlin’s Jacket.