to think Brian May could be anti foxhunting without......

[fortyfide]

telling an hunting geezer "you are all f+cking liars" (Newsnight TV thurs)
I am anti foxhunting too and Cameron should not try to sneak it back

Debate in Parliament on Tuesday

[slightlyconfused85]

I'm struggling to understand what battery farmed chickens have to do with the fox hunting argument?

[TheOriginalSteamingNit]

Fox hunting is vile, and anyone who does it it a knob.
I can't believe we're going to have to have these conversations again after this seemed to have condemned to a more barbaric past where it belongs. 'Oh but don't you realise foxes are vermin, and also don't you realise that we quite often don't even kill them anyway' etc.

[sebsmummy1]

I have been on a fox hunt and saw nothing. I'm not sure if any were caught the day I went.

I think if you are raised in a country/equestrian environment it is considered pretty normal, so you don't think anymore about it than you might pheasants being shot for sport or rabbits being shot on farmer's land. I don't feel hugely passionate about it either way and considering the urban fox numbers are starting to increase as more land is turned into housing I suspect there will be a cull introduced directly a child or baby is hurt by one.

[FyreFly]

Is this about a class war or is this about foxhunting? Reading these comments it's hard to tell...

Round here it's mostly your average farmer (I.e far from rich) who hunts, and they tend to ride in whatever jacket they have and they can't borrow "mummy's" horse as she doesn't have one either and they have to hire one.

[TheOriginalSteamingNit]

I don't really care what class they are - I think if you read back more carefully, Fyrefly, it's fairly clear that the comments other than 'mummy's horse' are very much about fox hunting, not class.

[FyreFly]

That's my point Original - it doesn't matter, and yet still the insults fly. "Privileged simpletons" for one.

Fwiw, I'm ambivalent on foxhunting. Never done it, have no plans to. I'm a rubbish rider. The ban didn't affect me and whatever happens on Tuesday, it will continue to be something that happens to other people. However I am a keen shooter and as a result mix heavily with that sort of fraternity and the farming and rural community as a whole. I have friends who fox hunt and as far as im concerned they're lovely people (although would probably look askance at being told they're posh).

I can see pros and cons of shooting vs hunting. Hunting is harsher on the individual animal (the chase) but shooting is harsher on the population (no closed season, indiscriminate, higher kill rate) and there is always the risk of injury but not death - something that certainly isn't a risk with hounds.

I can't say I'm for or against to be honest, however it is far from as black and white (or as toff vs townie) as people like to make out.

[Floundering]

I'm against the amount of govt time + money spent on this bloody subject, given the percentage of the population who indulge in it.

[Floundering]

But YANBU

[TheCrowFromBelow]

I'm against the amount of govt time + money spent on this bloody subject, given the percentage of the population who indulge in it.

This with bells on. What a bloody waste of time. Just so Dave can keep his chums happy.

And I wish they would debate battery farming instead. The suffering isn't a side effect, it's a carefully calculated part of the process to provide cheap meat.

[Fantasyland]

I don't understand how it's cheaper for battery farm hens to be put in cages than roaming about some farm land. Surely the cost of cages increases costs?

[soapboxqueen]

Crow I meant the people buying battery hens aren't buying it BECAUSE the hens were kept in awful conditions. They are buying cheap chicken.

People involved in fox hunting are doing it for the pleasure of the hunt. The sole purpose of it is to make the animal suffer.

As I said before, I don't think comparing the two is useful. Just because thing A happens doesn't mean it's ok for thing B to happen. I think both should be illegal.

However, I still think there is a difference between the type of person who buys battery reared chicken for their tea and one who hunts foxes. The decision processes are different.

[TheCrowFromBelow]

soap People who buy cheap chicken know where it comes from and they are responsible for those conditions by creating the demand. It is only cheap BECAUSE it was kept in awful conditions.

If everyone stopped buying chicken that is farmed like this, there wouldn't be any demand and the farmers would change methods.

[Lurkedforever1]

I'm not interested in a debate, but I'd have more respect for those who campaigned for the ban if they'd put half as much effort into preventing or at least reducing the far more gruesome way foxes die like bad shots and snares. Let alone the greater suffering that goes on in the name of farming and pest control.
And to whoever asked, no I wouldn't particularly like my daughter to witness a pack of hounds ripping a fox up, but given the more realistic choice of watching a hound kill a fox quickly then rag the body round as a pack, rather than let her see half dead, wounded, emaciated slowly dying foxes I'd rather she saw the hounds thanks. And I'd take the hounds over the majority of the food industry too, or poisoned vermin, or those evil glue traps

[Lurkedforever1]

And yes the difference between those who buy battery farmed food, and those who hunt is that generally the former are hypocrites, the second generally aren't

[TheOriginalSteamingNit]

But those arguments are predicated on the assumption that those who are against hunting are primarily motivated by an animal rights agenda: that's not necessarily so. I'm against hunting because I think it's a distasteful and barbaric anachronism which was rightly consigned to history and shouldn't come back.

I don't live in the country: I don't really see how I can do anything about bad snares etc, or demand that people become better shots. But I can be opposed to a hobby that is based on having a whole load of fun in pursuit of an animal.

[MrsTerryPratchett]

It was banned, after decades of campaigning, it should stay banned.

Brian May is neither here nor there.

[soapboxqueen]

I'd take an hypocrite with blinkers on over someone who gets their thrills from watching something suffer any day.

There is a big difference between knowing something happens and being there, watching it and enjoying it.

[Lurkedforever1]

Eating a factory farmed chicken is no more necessary than following a hunt is for survival, both are done purely for pleasure. And the hunt followers are neither here nor there when it comes to the decision to kill that fox, that will happen anyway. Whereas no chicken would be bred and killed in vile conditions in the first place if nobody wanted to eat it. Also the ratio of dead fox to human follower is significantly smaller than the ratio of dead chicken to human consumer. Not witnessing a cheap chickens suffering though doesn't make anyone less cruel, just less informed and I'm of the mind cruelty is more likely where it's not witnessed and openly acknowledged. Hence the misconception hunting with hounds = cruel, but rifle = humane. A rifle in the hands of someone who knows exactly what they're doing is more humane but it's not in the public eye that humanely shooting a fox outright isn't that easy and plenty get it wrong

[frostyfingers]

*I'm against the amount of govt time + money spent on this bloody subject, given the percentage of the population who indulge in it.

This with bells on. What a bloody waste of time. Just so Dave can keep his chums happy. *

Did you think this when Tony Blair's government spent more time debating this than the Iraq War and used the Parliamentary Act to force it through in 2004?

I thought then, and think now that there are more important issues to be discussing.

[JackSkellington]

Regardless of Brian May, it should stay banned. And Scotland should be following the same laws England and Wales currently have in place, although ideally there should be a complete ban which is actively enforced (because not all of the idiots who go ahead and do it anyway are prosecuted).

[Lurkedforever1]

Lets be honest though, it never got banned cos tony Blair cared about it one way or the other, he just needed a scapegoat to distract attention from the bigger fuck ups he made, and because hunting is mistakenly seen as a toff pursuit, the 'nasty upper classes' made a convenient one. No different to Cameron making benefit claimants the scapegoats now, because of course austerity is the fault of the work shy living on taxpayers money, he's just distracting attention from his fuck ups, not actually concerned about the average tax payer

[Kardamyli]

Lurked and Frost I agree with you both. Too many hypocrites going on and on about the cruelty of hunting before sitting down to gorge on intensively reared meat. Factory farming is vile. People know this (anyone remember one of the TV chefs doing a series of programmes?) but are still happy to smugly boast about buying 3 chickens for 5 pounds and eat cheap bacon from a pig that was reared in a small enclosure.

For the majority of anti hunters the whole issue is their perceived notion that the only people who hunt are "toffs".

[TheCrowFromBelow]

frosty yes, I did.

The strength of feeling that foxhunting generates has always astonished me.
I am not pro-hunting, but I do find it odd that people who will happily eat cheap chicken get so enraged about it.

[TheOriginalSteamingNit]

One poster has mentioned 'mummy's horse': I don't see a class issue on this thread other than that?

Some people eat battery chicken , for a number of reasons of which I imagine affordability is chief. They don't get jollies off it though. And I'm not sure what the correlation between people who eat battery chicken and people who oppose hunting with hounds is: does anyone know, or is this just a convenient red herring?