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“a tax based on exchange turnover would have rendered exchanges unviable.”
Indeed it would have. Yet another resounding success for the Tory Lite party.
The buffoons who protest about the death of some horses ought to bear in mind that if any code of racing were to be banned there would be lorry after lorry taking racehorses and broodmares off to abattoirs.
I wonder if a national hunt horse steak tastes better than a flat sprinters steak, medium-rare please
Ruby put his tin hat on and watched it and lived to tell the tale. Thanks for the warning ex.
My qwack said no – it could just finish me off apparently, and as Elvis says
” I got whole load of shakin’ left to do – Mama “
Some might say the mere sight of gamble posting outside the Lounge on TRF makes for a disturbing horse racing clip in its own right, but Chezza couldn’t possibly comment.
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"These are from Animal Aid.
Actually so many horses are dying now, I never saw as many when I was younger. Please tell me it is just there is more racing on TV? Or my own thought that the over breeding and inbreeding is finally a devastating effect.A good thread this – it’s very difficult to measure with any degree of accuracy the present level of hostility towards racing, and then even harder to make comparisons with decades past.
I just feel that in the 70’s and 80’s the chances were that you’d bump into many more people who would raise the subject of animal welfare issues when racing was discussed than nowadays. Perhaps those that otherwise would be applying their energy to stir up anti racing sentiments have now been swept up by the ‘ x amount of years to save the planet’ brigades- in different circumstances I could certainly imagine that geeky looking lad who tied himself by his neck to the goalposts at Goodison Park being a ‘ban racing’ activist!
Added to this is that there just seems to be a bigger indifference to the sport from the general public than ever before – it just doesn’t float the boat of most of the emerging generations, irrespective of this nonsense we are fed about how ‘student days’ (come on number four!) are going to guarantee crowd engagement in future years.
Unfortunately, social media enables small numbers to run campaigns that come to the attention of multiple times more number of people than a large 70’s or 80’s style demonstration outside a racecourse could ever do and I fear that the most damage will be inflicted when the wastage issue is reignited, as surely will be the case sometime soon.
Way back in 1983 I founded the Warwick University Turf Club.
In fact this is the 39th anniversary of our first ever trip to the races – a mini bus carrying about 15-20 of us went to Mackeson Day at Cheltenham.
Largely thanks to me putting up Pounentes (won at 8/1 – sadly no footage of the race anywhere as BBC cameramen were on strike) and word getting round the campus, we had a big coach to Brown Chamberlin’s Hennessy and other days at Leicester and Stratford.
“Ah, the Master Tipster! I had three smackers on Pounentes and I’m now off to get VERY drunk!” I remember one first-time student racegoer saying to me.
I think he went to Newbury then lost interest.
Getting people to engage with racing and stay engaged was hit and miss even back then.
I’m not sure if any of those students – I think Andrea Leadsom was one of them actually – ever became lifelong racing fans.
Fast forward to today and Peaky Blinders has probably done more to broaden the appeal of a fun, cool, “dodgy” day at the races than any other contemporary influence.
All a bit “wide boy,” give it large, have a gamble, get off your face.
But it’s all very ephemeral and not at all what marketing people call “sticky.”
And there’s now a constant, “woke” hostile influence in the background.
Greyhound racing in Scotland is on the verge of abolition – that’s a warning.
Jumps racing – the whole idea is to sort out not just who’s fastest but who can jump and who can’t, right?
And if horses fall and get killed in the process of finding that out, that’s natural selection, the law of the jungle, right?
And hitting them to make them go faster – if it doesn’t hurt or scare them, why do it?
These are the 21st century questions that won’t ever go away.
And the existential defence these horses are commercially bred, no racing, no life, abolish racing and there’s 10,000 of them off to the abbotoir and no future generations of them doesn’t silence any of it.
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"I was in the Racegoers Society at my university in the early 90s. There were some good trips to Wetherby and Doncaster and I had my one and only visit to the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 1991.
It has to be said we were a small group. I would guess there were about 50 to 70 people at the most, in one of the largest student communities in the country. It was also almost exclusively male – there must only have been about half a dozen girls, alas! Even then, racing did not have a lot of appeal to a young audience. I expect it has even less appeal now.
Student days are quite well attended in Ireland. On my last trip back in 2019, I attended Gowran Park and Tramore. Both were student days.
At both venues (particularly Gowran) the students did not appear to take much interest in the racing. Very few ventured to the paddock and they did not seem to be betting much. They did watch the first few races but they mostly drifted away to the bar or dance floor as the day wore on.
I am not sure it stimulated any interest in racing for anyone who was not already interested.
So AnimalAid have put some clips on YouTube that a few people – all already anti-racing – will see. So what?
I can still see the picture from the back page of the Sunday Mirror in April 1975 which was a graphic image of Beau Bob landing on his head at Bechers, breaking his neck and being killed. Given how people in here think, I note that a Labour government were in place then, so it was probably their fault.
I didn’t see any of the newspapers carrying images of poor Discorama or Eclair Surf this year. That would really have been something to have worried about had they done so.
“Given how people in here think, I note that a Labour government were in place then, so it was probably their fault.”
A silly comment by your standards, QF. No one has suggested any such thing.
But I do stand by my comment that a Labour government is likely to be friendlier towards animal rights activists than a Conservative government, whereas a Conservative government is more likely to be more well disposed to racing and the bookmaking industry. I do not see anything particlarly controversial in that belief.
Its nothing to do with breeding, if it where to do with breeding the sport woukd already be finished, the second it has a direct link to that its over.
Anyone whos suggesting breeding, provide some breeding facts on this unless im missing something tracking breeding back, not as if were going 2×2 are we? Still the same philosophy we have always used…
“But I do stand by my comment that a Labour government is likely to be friendlier towards animal rights activists than a Conservative government, whereas a Conservative government is more likely to be more well disposed to racing and the bookmaking industry. I do not see anything particlarly controversial in that belief.”
I’m a Labour voter, but I like to think I’m a realistic one and I’ve no problem with this comment from CAS at all.
I’m a Labour voter because I believe in equality of opportunity, meritocracy, egalitarianism, social justice, I have a social conscience and believe in free minimum standards of NHS healthcare and state education for all.
But I’m not blind to the fact that a lot of Labour activists also simply want to tell others how to live their lives – there’s a big not only authoritarian but positively puritanical and abolitionist element on the left of politics – left wing libertarians are pretty rare!
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"“Greyhound racing in Scotland is on the verge of abolition – that’s a warning.”
Thanks to ID for highlighting this news:
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/historic-scots-greyhound-racing-under-28356810.amp
The animal rights campaigners are claiming the sport is “inherently cruel” – a ridiculous statement devoid of any evidence. But – to no one’s surprise – it sounds like the left wing Scottish government is only too eager to listen.
One of the campaigners said: “If I am one of the people to bring this sport to an end in Scotland I will feel pride and certainly not one bit of regret. Greyhound racing does not belong in modern society.”
It is worth heeding those words. They give the impression of someone who is fanatical, not willing to stop until they have got what they want and certainly unwilling to listen to their opponents. A lot of the anti-horse racing brigade are similarly fanatical.
If the Scottish government orders a ban, Scottish horse racing should become very worried. Does anyone think the Ban It crowd will just go away? It is far more likely they will find a new target.
I wonder what that will be?
An end to Greyhound racing north of the border would definitely be looked back on as watershed moment because, as commented above, they won’t relent and Scottish jump racing will be the next target at the same time that English Greyhound racing comes under pressure….and so on.
I sometimes wonder what would have happened if racing had stood firm when the Grand National came under pressure, hastening the end of Bechers as we knew it followed by the loosening of the spruce all round – though as referred to earlier the back pages of the national newspapers would not hold back with images of dead horses (back then they’d also show grim pictures of the corpses of Grand Prix drivers being carried away from their burnt out vehicles).
The two most dramatic racing connected back pages images I can recall, both from Bechers, would be Jonjo knelt down over the deceased Alverton in 1979, who moments before had been absolutely lobbing along like the well handicapped animal he was, and Dark Ivy from the 80’s, being a grey, and building a following from the general public in the days leading up to the race.
During a period in the 80’s when Monty Court had page 3 of the Sporting Life to himself when editor, he once penned a supportive piece about a prominent RSPC figure ( Bernard somebody or other) whom Court claimed was a ‘racing fan’ and considered it wise for racing to work together with him and his ilk. One could sense then that changes were pending and that racing would begin to yield.
We’ve now reached a point were certain powers in the sport erase parts of its history – remember just a few years back when as a pre Grand National feature they had a few ex jockeys around a table discussing their past experiences in the race – Jonjo could not recall ever being in with a chance of winning the race!
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