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‘Beginning of a campaign’ is fake news Joe, not fact. They’ve been campaigning for the end of the whip for years.
I enjoy how you continue to gloss over the question posed to you regarding jumps racings doubt once the whip is abolished.
Of course a whip ban has been in AA’s manifesto for years, but this is a fresh campaign, an ad campaign booked and budgeted. I’d have thought that the picture of a big bloody bus with a campaign ad on the side would have given you a clue about what I was referring to. Not to mention the Racing Post and The Guardian carrying the story prominently.
As to my ‘glossing over’ of the threat to jumps racing in general, I must have posted a dozen times on here – and at least once on this thread – that this is the very thing I am trying to get protected – NH racing’s future.
I’ll try again to illustrate how this pans out:
The whip is the easiest of access points for campaigners. People can see it in use in every race. It’s a big, neon-lit shop window for the antis to say to every passing member of the public ‘Come and see what they do to horses every day in your country!”
The whip is the brand for the antis. All they need to do is build it through exposure, interviews, phone ins. Then an ambitious MP latches on and takes the campaign to parliament. Then a law is passed to ban the whip.
Drunk on success, the MP and the antis look for the next target – jumps – that’ll do nicely. And on they go.
Now, doing it the sensible way, racing ought to have withdrawn the whip voluntarily, before a campaign started. That would have stripped the shop window and turned out the neon lights. The antis might still try to have a go at jumps racing and fatalities, but pictures of green screens going up on very rare occasions would elicit nothing like the emotional reaction of seeing horses being whipped every few minutes of every day.
I have nothing against the whip. It’s just that I can see the big picture while posts from people like you and Ginger suggest that you’re incapable of thinking more than one step ahead.
I don’t think your post makes any sense, Joe. Fuzzy logic.
You don’t have a problem with the whip and you recognise that Dene Stanstall’s ‘Animal Aid’ jokers have been banging on about it for years, but still you think ‘the sensible thing’ would have been to have caved and withdrawn the whip already?
Surely that would just have accelerated the nightmare scenario you map out. Racing would have been seen to acknowledge a problem with the whip and would leave itself vulnerable for the next thing (NH racing) and the next thing (the sport itself). The sport would be fighting for life already with antis able to point to precedent to back up their case.
What happened to standing up and fighting when you know you’re right? We all (well, most of us) know the whip is perfectly fair and humane while being absolutely essential in making a competitive sport out of horse racing. We love the sport so let’s stand up and put up the grittiest most staunch fight we can to retain the status quo rather than meekly saying “you couldn’t be more wrong…but I guess it looks kinda bad” as seems your preferred response. We should all dig in hard.
Joe, you do understand that AA have been trying to abolish the Grand National for years?
If they got there way with the whip there’s not a hope in hell that they would stop there as you have stated above.
That’s the big picture and one step ahead, not this fake worry about a whip debate that’s happening nowhere but within racing.
I can never envisage an end to horse racing or the use of the whip, what i can see is the whip only being aloud a max of 3-4 times and fences and hurdles being lowered in height in the interest of “safety” and while this will spoil it for most fans of the sport this is now the 21st century and animal welfare is a big thing.
I believe this will not happen in the near future but in 10-20 yrs from now, horse racing is big business and employs a lot of people, in 2017 there were approximately 85,000 working across all sectors of the industry and it generated almost 5 billion to the UK economy, it is also the second most popular sport.
So to conclude, racing will never be banned.
All comers, all ground, all beaten
This is what you argued on why hard, injury making, killer obstacles should be kept and the soft safe whip should be banned, Joe:
Ginger, on your killer fences V the whip point, fences need to be jumped. That’s part of the rules of NH racing. Horses do not need to be hit. There’s no rule to say they must be. Also, there’s a very strong argument that horses enjoy jumping obstacles.
It is you who is “incapable of thinking more than one step ahead”.
Can you not see that the arguement fences (and hurdles) “need to be jumped, that’s part of the rules of racing” – is an extremely strong arguement TO ban NH Racing?
ie If something intrinsic to the sport causes pain, injury and death to animals – surely all the more reason to ban that sport?
Value Is EverythingWhat i can see is the whip only being aloud a max of 3-4 times and fences and hurdles being lowered in height in the interest of “safety”
Reducing height would mean increasing speed and therefore impact more heavily. Could increase injury/fatalities.
Value Is EverythingLS, Winning isn’t always about defending every one of your beliefs. I’d happily retreat on the relatively small matter of the whip and lose that battle to win the war.
There’d be no need to say we are abandoning the whip on welfare grounds. The BHA have for years said that public perception is important to them. They could now say that although they have no welfare issues with the the whip, they respect public perception and will launch an x month trial of the whip being used only for safety. That would be in the news for a day at most – maybe a few hours on social media. They then quietly extend the trial etc etc until the whip is gone and AA have had their key visible anti-racing brand reduced to nothing.
I should add, of course, that the above is what racing ought to have done. I understand this ad campaign on buses is due to end next week. If all goes quiet with AA for the rest of the year, racing ought to grab its second chance and do as suggested above. If AA have plans and resources for yet more attacks on the whip, then racing has left it too late. So long as they keep it in the public eye, then when the whip does go, however it goes, AA will claim victory, and their appetite, confidence and support for targeting fatalities etc will increase a hundredfold.
A week or two back on this thread I was being slated for these views mostly on account of – ‘who’s campaigning? There is no campaign! All that’s happening is people like you stirring things!’
All that these people are willing or able to see is one step in front of them. Planning and preparing several moves ahead seems beyond them.
I think you’re getting yourself into a real tangle, Joe – that still doesn’t make any sense.
The point we’re all making is that the BHA are wrong in how they’re acting on public perception and also have a shaky grasp of that perception. Focus on explaining why the anti-whip boys are wrong – don’t pander to their incorrect beliefs. We should be totally inflexible and not even entertain this as a debate. As discussed, the consequences of opening the door too far just don’t bear thinking about.
Mark, with every post you make on this ‘obstacles kill’ argument you illustrate that you just do not get the big picture.
Of course horses die. Of course racing is hugely vulnerable on that point. That’s exactly why you need to disarm the antis by removing their obvious way in to make the attack on NH racing.
It’s a hell of a lot harder to make a ban racing case out of “0.17% of runners die on a racecourse every year” than it is to say “Horses suffer 1 million whip strokes annually on a racecourse’ (or whatever the figures are).
To attack the fatalities issue with any hope of success, the AA would need a massive head of steam to keep driving momentum. That’s something that would be hugely difficult to build without a high profile public success (winning a whip ban). Think what has happened with FOBTs…the fallout. Would anyone have been able to build strong support for banning betting ads or football sponsorship by bookies or protection of the under age without that FOBT decision fuelling the search for more targets? Would they even have thought of raising these issues at this time?
Give it some strategic thought, eh?
No tangle here, LS. It could not be clearer nor more logical to me that my strategy is right.
I’ve laid it out a number of different ways and most either don’t get it or don’t want to get it.
If you think that the best strategy is total inflexibility and a refusal to debate, good luck with that.
It’s a hell of a lot harder to make a ban racing case out of “0.17% of runners die on a racecourse every year” than it is to say “Horses suffer 1 million whip strokes annually on a racecourse’ (or whatever the figures are).
It really isn’t hard. They frame it the best way possible the get response –
XXXX numbers of horses die every year by jumping obstacles in a race. Shock tactics.
As LS says, we all agree the BHA need to do more. Agreeing that they should bend over backwards for something that isn’t wrong is madness.
There’d be no need to say we are abandoning the whip on welfare grounds.
Come off it Joe. Surely even you can see that if the BHA ban the whip it won’t matter what the BHA “say”. Point is it will be seen by the general public as being done on welfare grounds.
You give the anti’s one “welfare victory” and the second welfare victory will be inevitable.
Value Is EverythingThis has been one of my key points. No matter if the whip is ‘safe’ society will not tolerate its use indefinitely. Hitting animals in the name of sport will increasingly distance people from racing.
And the thing is, racing can exist perfectly well without it.Racing is currently seen as vote winning quarry. Let’s take the target off our backs.
Cormack (edit to add my name)
Society will not tolerate horses jumping hard, injury making, killer obstacles.
Making animals jump these in the name of sport will increasingly distance people from all racing.
And the thing is Racing can exist perfectly well without it.Let’s take the target off our backs and get rid of Jump Racing before it brings about the banning of all racing.
Value Is Everything
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