The ban on hunting with hounds came into effect at midnight. Many hunt supporters claim that they will carry on regardless.
The advocates of hunting have seen the ground on which they stand erode and crumble. Every argument they have used in defence of their favourite pastime -- 'the ban is illegal', 'the public are on our side', 'it controls the fox population', 'hunting is safe and harmless', etc. -- has been shown, in many cases repeatedly, to be a baseless lie. The hunting advocates' standpoint now: we don't care about public support or the rule of law; we will continue, ignoring all argument, because hunting is something we enjoy.
Which of course has been their position all along; it's just that now they're no longer able to hide it. I'm glad the excuses have evaporated -- I'm not a big fan of pretence.
I'm not hugely for or against hunting, but I'm strongly in favour of logic. So when the pro-hunting people try to claim both that hunting is pest control, and that hunting kills very few foxes (or even that it keeps the fox population healthy!), they earn my instant disdain.
Well, it might be the contradiction, or it might be the daft red coats, I'm not quite sure.
I still don't see why ripping foxes to shreds is "bad".
It just seems like another nanny-state law to me. I hadn't seen the fox faeces counting article though. Interesting.
Since you hate pretence so much Chris, perhaps you could remove the link to the ``night-time "lamping"'' shooting of a boy which has nothing to do with fox hunting in your view not being safe and harmless. It even describes lamping in the article so I can only assume you were aiming to tar all hunting with the same brush. People generally don't go careering across the countryside on horses in the dark - I know lots of the people who wanted hunting banned think they're idiots but they're not that stupid.
Only stupid enough to shoot at shadows in the dark?
You're absolutely right though, that accident had nothing to do with hunting with hounds. Oops. However, since it's indicative of the kind of accident that inevitably happens when you wave guns around for sport, I'll leave it in.