The jolly sport of foxhunting

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Extract below taken from The Whitby Gazette

Published on Friday 16 December 2011 10:16

A COUPLE have been devastated after hounds from the Goathland Hunt savaged and killed their cat.

Elderly tabby Moppet, aged 18, was outside her home in Stoupe Brow, near Ravenscar, when 27 hunting dogs bounded onto land belonging to her owners Les and Margaret Atkinson.

The dogs brutally attacked the cat before a huntsman picked up a lifeless and bloodied Moppet and rode away.
Hours later members of the hunt, which was a joint expedition between Goathland and Staintondale parties held earlier this month, were confronted by the Atkinsons – and it was admitted that Moppet had been killed.

Moppet’s body was returned to the Atkinsons by members of the hunt two days after she was killed and she has now been buried. A younger cat belonging to the Atkinsons, George, escaped the dogs by hiding in a stable.
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December 26th

Conservative agriculture minister Jim Paice has said that the hunting act "simply dosent work", speaking during a visit to hunt kennels in his constituency near Peterborough he reminded reporters that as part of the coalition agreement, at some point there would be a free vote on whether to repeal the hunting ban.

Mr Paice also confirmed that he was a supporter of hunting with dogs

North Devon Liberal Democrat MP Nick Harvey said the law was "dangerous" because of the impracticalities of trying to enforce it.

Devon and Cornwall Police have never issued any cautions, fines or convicted anyone associated with hunting since the ban came into effect, and Mr Harvey said: "I think Parliament has passed a piece of legislation that it is not possible in practice to implement, and I think that's dangerous.

"The message that sends out is that some people's activities are beyond the arm of the law."

Just had a reply from my MP on the issue of fox hunting and badger culling- not surprised to report he is fully in support of the government's position on both and would definitely vote to repeal the hunting ban.

I voted against this barbarian, but apparently many in my area voted for him

I was shocked when a woman on Twitter who lives in Crawley (a few miles up the road from me) said that Brian May had endorsed her local Tory MP, Henry Smith. I sent a tweet to Mr Smith asking for his assurance that he is opposed to foxhunting and was pleasantly surprised to get the reply: “You and I don’t agree on much but on this we do”. When the vote is taken, I shall be checking the list of who voted which way. It’s supposed to be a free vote, but it will be interesting to see if Mr Smith is leaned on and persuaded to vote for repeal of the hunting ban, especially as he now has a minor government role as a parliamentary private secretary.

The deciding factor on the vote could be the stance of the SNP who, it is rumoured, have agreed to abstain on this issue, which seems to be top of Cameron’s agenda. It isn’t an English-only issue; there’s no guarantee that Scottish and English foxes will stay on their respective sides of Hadrian’s Wall. It’s an issue about animal cruelty in the 21st century, and if the SNP do the decent thing and vote against it, it will only take a handful of Tory MPs such as Henry Smith to keep the ban in place.

The Countryside Alliance today announced a call designed to stiffen MPs backbone:

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/06/01/countryside-alliance-launches-grassroots-campaign-for-repeal-of-hunting-ban/

It looks as if another source of opposition to the Tories has effectively been nobbled. Cameron was unable to get a relaxation of the Hunting Act through Parliament, but now the RSPCA, which in recent years has been prepared to prosecute hunts (including Heythrop, Cameron’s local one in Oxfordshire), is under new management. The new chief, Jeremy Cooper, has said that his arrival “heralds a new direction for the charity” and that prosecutions of foxhunting will be “virtually eliminated”. His appointment has been welcomed by the Countryside Alliance whose leader, Lieutenant General Sir Barnabas William Benjamin White-Spunner KCB CBE, once described the RSPCA as “sinister and nasty”.

Presumably the expectation now is that the Hunting Act will be ignored and become irrelevant because nobody bothers to enforce it. The fact that the RSPCA had to prosecute hunters was because the police and the CPS clearly couldn’t be bothered to do so. Is there any clearer example of animal cruelty than systematically chasing foxes to exhaustion and having them ripped to pieces by dogs? If you hate foxhunting and donated to the RSPCA because of it, I would suggest that the League Against Cruel Sports might be a more deserving recipient of your contribution.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/27/rspca-countryside-alliance-progressives-tea-party

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/14/new-rspca-chief-promises-less-adversarial-less-political-animal-charity