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my opinion that those involved in foxhunting are misguided and have no moral foundation upon which to defend their activities
Cormack
On what moral foundation would you justify boxing?
Or for that matter, NH racing when a bunch of p**s<br>ed arseholes at the course cheer when a horse falls and then the horse doesn’t get back up?
Just because that’s not you or me (or, I believe, anyone else on this forum), doesn’t mean that there isn’t this element in racing.
Should your right to enjoy racing be controlled by those who generalise all racing fans to be in the "I don’t care what happens to the horses as long as my bet wins" brigade?
Or by those who have no personal knowledge of horses or racing?
Steve<br> ÂÂÂ
(Edited by stevedvg at 1:47 pm on Sep. 18, 2004)
Corm, the problem is that morality is, by definition, a very personal thing – what you believe is right and wrong.  Some things are easy to agree on and have been part of civilisation for centuries, ie law against murder, theft etc.  But this can have too many grey areas.
Personally, I find boxing repugnant and can’t understand the mentality of cheering as two humans batter each other to a pulp.  I also have disgust for people who refuse to make any effort to recycle, whilst munching their way across the world like locusts.
There are also people out there (and plenty of them) who feel the way you feel about hunting about other subjects, such as smoking, adultery, animal testing, abortion, eating meat and horse racing.  All these things have persuasive arguments against them as they all hurt individuals who have no say in their participation.
But you reach a point where it is the individual freedom to decide your own moral code that is important.  I don’t feel I have any right to tell a woman having an abortion that she is misguided, or that, as a vegetarian I should then pass a law forcing others to not eat meat.
It’s entirely within the spirit of democracy to campaign against a law that you don’t agree with, Ian – there is no requirement to ‘grin and bear it’ until the next election.  Laws on the death penalty, votes for women and Prohibition got changed through strength of protest.  Democracy only works if people (from both sides) make their voices heard, so that their representatives find out what people want.  ÂÂÂ
Maybe if you had been more vocal and pro-active in your objections to whichever laws you mean, rather than just grinning and bearing it, the Tories wouldn’t have been in power for so long?
Ian, you state "…and living in a democracy means tailoring our behaviour to fit in with what’s acceptable to the majority. "<br> Are the majority of people in this country in favour of the death penalty -especially for child or police killers or terrorists ?<br> In the early 1940’s, were the majority of Germans (admittedly it wasn’t a "democracy then) in favour of Hitler’s regime and the laws against jews?<br> The "majority" can sometimes make mistakes too.<br>Having said that, you’re right in this instance; the law should be obeyed.
For all those justifying this weeks "protest", I suppose you are quite sanguine with the rights of anti-hunt protesters to disrupt (legally) your revolting "sport"
The best thing about this weeks "protest" was the fact taht it was carried out by some of the people it is extremely difficult to for most of this country to have any empathy with.
A snobbish rock stars eton educated son saying his "life is ruined":angry:
Do me a favour…
Quote: from phunter on 3:16 pm on Sep. 15, 2004[br]<br>With many folk against fox hunting who actually go racing i don’t see this as being a good idea, if they want to protest fair enough, but they shouldn’t be involving racing with it IMO, there are marches elsewhere for this.<br>
Absolutely. The presumption that all racegoers are pro-hunting is spectacularly misguided. It reminds me a bit of that line from Monty Python’s logician sketch, “Alma Cogan is dead, but not all dead people are Alma Coganâ€ÂÂ
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
Quote: from Ian Davies on 3:20 pm on Sep. 15, 2004[br]Paradoxically, perhaps, I’m anti-hunting but love point-to-point, which is essentially there as a fundraiser for hunting.
You’re not alone, I also love PTPs and wouldn’t even mind commentating on one at some point in my life, but I’ll be jiggered if I’ll let anyone take that to mean I approve of what its hosts actually get up to the rest of the year.
I’m already looking forward to my annual trip up to Charm Park in Scarborough for the Stainton PTP in March, but not some of the characters / mindsets I’ll have to encounter once there.
Jeremy<br>
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
Quote: from robertylea on 6:04 pm on Sep. 15, 2004[br]
1.  What’s going to happen with the fox population – how will it be controlled?<br>2.  What’s going to happen to ex-racehorses, who may well go point-to-pointing or hunting after their career is over?  Responsibility for these animals must be taken.
<br>a ban on foxhunting will only affect the horse population, PTP calendar etc. if the members of hunts are too pig-headed to accept what is being offered, namely the ability to continue as draghunts without further censure. The likes of Mid Surrey Farmers already operates (part / all of the time?) as a draghunt, and it is in that guise that its PTP takes place every year. Simply expect to see more of the same.
If there ARE any real concerns about the fox population post-ban, I do not see why the earthstoppers, or whoever it is that drives the animals out of the ground, cannot instead develop a symbiotic relationship with their local vets – they could be employed to catch the foxes as they leave their burrows instead, and bring them to the vets for sterilisation before being released back into the wild, thereby ensuring a tempering of numbers with no death or needless suffering whatsoever. I defy anyone to tell me how this cannot work.
Jeremy<br>
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
Quote: from insomniac on 7:33 pm on Sep. 15, 2004[br]<br> This is a liberty being removed because of class bigotry, not because of any deep seated concern over animal welfare,
One thing you can be sure of though is that if fox-hunting was the pastime of gays, muslims or jews no action would have been taken against it by our Labour bigots.
<br>Forgive me if I don’t dignify your bileous closing comment with a longer reply. However, you may be right in identifying some sort of class element to the whole affair, which is why I would not ban the ACT of hunting, merely what is being hunted.
Stopping (mostly) posh people bombing around the countryside on horseback outright – even if, as will eventually happen, they are following nothing more harmful than the trail of an aniseed-impregnated hankie – would simply be an inverted equivalent of posh people wanting boxing banning because the thought of two rough lads punching each other’s heads in is unbecoming behaviour. Frankly neither is any more or less deserving of censure than the other.
Jeremy<br>
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
Quote: from highflyer1 on 10:38 am on Sep. 16, 2004[br]<br>I know quite a few people who hunt and when I ask them if they would go drag hunting in the event of a ban they say "I doubt it, just wouldn’t be the same without the thrill of the kill."
Sadists one and all. Have no sympathy for them! <br>
Yep, I’ve heard this any number of times, particularly from the people I queried on the matter during my only recently-completed five years working in an intrinsically public post in rural North Yorkshire (a more hunt-saturated part of the world you could barely imagine, yet one in which – if you scratch away at the surface – a surprisingly large number of people are uncomfortable with the concept of ANY hunting continuing).
When I suggested to the pro-hunters that drag hunting would be a perfectly adequate substitute, the response was usually that it wouldn’t be the same, there’d be no kill, no random element, and besides which, the modifying of a sport in such a way would be utterly unprecedented….
…which of course it wouldn’t. Were that the case, we’d still be heading those ludicrously heavy leather footballs from the 1950s and 1960s and enjoying the head injuries they engendered. We’d still be having amateur boxing matches without head guards and wondering why so many young men still in their teens were getting really, really badly hurt. We’d still be running horseraces with wooden or concrete rails and non-collapsible hurdle / fence wings. Any riders who had not been smacked into such an immovable object after the final obstacle would then have the opportunity to force his or her mount home with a non-cushioned, hard impact whip rather than today’s more humane equivalent.
The point is this; as we have become more civilised over time, so we have felt the need to revisit numerous sports and make them safer for its participants (human or animal) and in keeping with newer / more prevailing sensibilities. Hunting has no cause to presume it can remain immune to such potential intervention for all eternity.
Jeremy<br>
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
Quote: from tooting on 1:52 pm on Sep. 16, 2004[br]There’s an obvious solution of course.
Let them hunt asylum seekers…<br>
<br>Imbecile.<br>
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
Quote: from Ian Davies on 10:01 pm on Sep. 18, 2004[br]Jeremy,
Have you ever been to the Holderness at Dalton Park up in that neck of the woods (usually the Saturday after the Cheltenham Festival or Lincoln Day)?
That venue marked my introduction to ptp in 1978, and, among other things, I saw Ronnie Beggan riding there an an amateur and Old Applejack – who went on to be a fairly useful handicapchaser under rules – win an Adjacent Hunts Maiden.
Since then, most of my ptp has been on the Kent/East Sussex SE circuit and, more latterly, at my new local track at Hackwood Park, Hampshire.
<br>Indeed I have, Dalton is a lovely course with good viewing, a nice atmosphere and a good-sized parade ring for a PTP course.
As may have become apparent over some of my posts I do tend to follow anything and anyone to do with the Mason / Guest franchise quite keenly, and it was primarily in that capacity that I went to Dalton in 2002, as Brancepeth employee and Red Marauder’s lass Claire Metcalfe was riding Light The River – a former Mason inmate gifted to her – in the ladies’ open. It squeaked home and I went home richer. Nice.
Old Applejack was a fave of mine over a decade ago – I think I’m right in saying he got round in the National at least once, didn’t he?
Jeremy
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
1200 jobs lost at Jaguar Coventry, insomniac. It must be Red Robbo, back from the dead. Up to his old tricks again… destroying the Britsh car industry and selling off Rolls Royce, our flagship, to the Germans. You’d better check extra careful tonight for they pesky Reds under your bed.
Here’s a little something to aggravate your insomnia, seing that that the political degeneracy that Keillor writes about, has been mirrored in this country – ever since Reagan’s girlfriend became PM:
graysonscolumn,
just in case there are any others who misunderstood my post, let me nail my colours to the mast.
I’m intrigued by what (and indeed whom) the Countryside Alliance thinks it’s supposed to be representing. Their manifesto is hazy at best. Maybe they should be clearer about what they want. Sat here in South London, I’d say they seem to be about protecting the following values and traditions:
1. The right to hunt and kill animals for fun. For fun.
2. The right to huge subsidies from a Europe they want no part of.
3. The right to farm animals so intensively that future generations will look back on them with a horror and shame similar to that with which we regard the slave trade.
4. The right to keep England not so much green and pleasant, as white, Tory and Church of England.
Now if I’m misjudging them, they’d be well advised to work better on their marketing…
If we tolerate foxhunting, to be consistent we should pemit-
1. Hoodlums from so-called sink-estate to hunt around this  green and pleasant land to hunt foxes on their half-bred roans and ponies etc with pitbull terriers or any other preference.
2. The current Hunts with their privileged, stable background should have the right to hunt our urban jungles for urban foxes on horseback or otherwise!
Permission to abuse the  country’s  wildlife population and fox population in particular should not be granted on the basis of who people are or where they live.
Quote: from graysonscolumn on 10:20 pm on Sep. 18, 2004<br>Old Applejack was a fave of mine over a decade ago – I think I’m right in saying he got round in the National at least once, didn’t he?
Jeremy
<br>
<br>Old Applejack got round twice in the National. Sadly he was later put down after breaking a leg in what was intended to be his last race before retirement, at 13 years old.
Quote: from tooting on 3:10 pm on Sep. 19, 2004[br]graysonscolumn,
just in case there are any others who misunderstood my post, let me nail my colours to the mast.
I’m intrigued by what (and indeed whom) the Countryside Alliance thinks it’s supposed to be representing.  Their manifesto is hazy at best.  Maybe they should be clearer about what they want. Sat here in South London,  I’d say they seem to be about protecting the following values and traditions:
1.  The right to hunt and kill animals for fun.  For fun.
2.  The right to huge subsidies from a Europe they want no part of.
3. The right to farm animals so intensively that future generations will look back on them with a horror and shame similar to that with which we regard the slave trade.
4. The right to keep England not so much green and pleasant, as white, Tory and Church of England.
Now if I’m misjudging them, they’d be well advised to work better on their marketing…
<br>My apologies, Tooting; on the basis of the above I did indeed interpret your comment entirely incorrectly. Can’t argue with any of the four points you’ve outlined, particularly number, um, er… bugger it, all of them.
Jeremy<br>
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
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