The Hunting with Dogs Act has absolutely nothing to do with the welfare of animals and has everything to do with political correctness. If the ban is effective, then foxes will be either poisoned or shot and lots of fox hounds are also likely to be killed as they will no longer be needed. The foxes that are shot are unlikely to be killed outright and will probably die a slow and painful death, as will those that are poisoned. A breakthrough in animal welfare? I don't think so!
The real reason was revealed by
Peter Bradley, a ministerial aide to Rural Affairs Minister Alun Michael, who said his fellow Labour MPs felt so strongly because it was their opportunity to take on the landowning ‘gentry’.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, he said that Labour MPs wanted to wipe out the ‘old order’. ‘We ought at last to own up to it: the struggle over the Bill was not just about animal welfare and personal freedom, it was class war. This was not about the politics of envy but the politics of power.' This startling admission undermines the claim by Tony Blair and Ministers that the reason for banning hunting is to end the suffering of foxes. Other Labour MPs have been reported as saying the ban on foxhunting was their revenge for 'what was done to the miners.'
While I have no interest in hunting myself, I am yet again appalled that political correctness has made an ass of common sense.
Stumble It!