Britain bans fox hunting with hounds

[quaoar]

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6523705/

House of Commons imposes decision on Lords

The Associated Press
Updated: 5:01 p.m. ET Nov. 18, 2004
LONDON - Britain outlawed fox hunting with hounds in England and Wales as elected legislators won a dramatic standoff Thursday with the House of Lords to ban a popular country sport that is despised by many urbanites. The formality of royal assent followed within 45 minutes.

Supporters of hunting have vowed to defy the ban, which would take effect in three months, and to fight it in court. “True civil disobedience is now on the horizon,” said John Jackson, chairman of the pro-hunting Countryside Alliance.

The House of Commons invoked the rarely used Parliament Act to force the ban into law despite the opposition of the unelected House of Lords. The years-long debate over outlawing a sport opponents see as simply cruel has been highly charged and deeply divisive.

Prime Minister Tony Blair, who had vainly promoted a compromise to regulate hunting, agreed with both sides in predicting that the battle would quickly move to the courts.

[Pirate Smile]

1. So should we expect riots?

[Maple]

2. Yes

Expect riots.

[Zero Gravitas]

3. No

Fox hunting is primarily (but not exclusively) a sport enjoyed by the upper classes. If one is a member of the British upper class one does not riot in the street... dressing up in ladies underwear on the other hand....

[Maple]

5. It's not just the 'upper class'

its all the people employed in this 'sport'.

And during the last demonstration Wills and Harry were reportedly involved.

[tsuki]

16. Only the most genteel kind of riot.

[mistertrickster]

4. Blow up Iraqi babies with bombs--ban hunting foxes with hounds

Good . . .

[TahitiNut]

6. "The unspeakable in hot pursuit of the inedible" - Oscar Wilde

Another Tory privilege (cruelty in the name of "sport") finally outlawed.

[CottonBear]

7. I think that foxhunting should be allowed but

perhaps they could modify the hunt to be like those in the US. Here the fox or coyote is tracked but not killed. I am a horse owner and have participated in events with the local hunt in my area. Fox hunting promotes rural land conservation for agriculture and wildlife. Surely they have more important issues to debate. The Iraq war comes to mind.

edit: There is a huge industry associated with fox hunting: horse boarding and breeding farms, farm hands, grooms, vets, farriers, exercise riders, trainers, horse feed suppliers, saddlers and tack makers, equestrian apparel makers, hay farmers etc. I wonder how a ban would impact the rural/equine economy?

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. How do you stop the hounds killing the fox?

Is it just a question of them not being bred to do so?

[CottonBear]

34. The huntsman who is in charge of the hounds

can call them off the chase. The hounds are highly trained working dogs. Sometimes the hounds do catch a fox, but most of the time they simply give chase and tree them or send them to ground (into their den.) It is to the benefit of the hunt that the fox lives to give chase another day.

[signmike]

8. No 'hitting on' good lookin' babes?

Just kidding. Foxes, get it?
hyuck hyuck *snort*
Maybe they're called 'birds' in Jolly Olde

Did you see the old biddy who said "Life is not worth living without fox hunting" ? The poor elites are SO picked upon

[random fox]

9. Good

Atleast we can hope other countries will outlaw terrible acts. They're on their way. 'the moral progress and greatness of a nation can be judged by the treatment of its animals'~gandhi, if only the US could follow suit with banning cruel and unusual treatments...

[JudyM]

10. Much of Europe is way beyond us with environmental and humane issues

[Dem2theMax]

11. Good. And if they keep yelling about it,

take all the hunters, remove them from their horses, give them a head start into the woods, and release a pack of pit bulls on them.

Fair is fair. :evilgrin:

[Bigleaf]

13. I laugh when I hear the word "sport" attributed to hunting.

I was always under the impression that sport was fair. One or more people with guns chasing a defenseless animal through the woods doesn't seem sporting to me. Baseball, hockey, football, tennis etc are sports. You want hunting to be fair and a true sport? Let 2 hunters hunt each other in the woods. That's about the only way it will ever be fair and could be classified as sport.

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. The usual way of killing the fox isn't guns

it's killed by the hounds (though they may shoot it if it goes down a hole and they have to dig it out or send terriers down to chase it out).

Shooting foxes will still be allowed.

[DemBones DemBones]

21. Oh, for heaven's sake, it doesn't even save the foxes!

Sillier than I thought. So they're supposed to play a tape of hounds, I suppose. The Master of the Hounds will now maintain the bloody sound system!

As for cruelty, I once saw one of my Labradors take down a huge woodchuck in my garden and you can believe me that one minute the woodchuck and the dog were faced off, snarling at each other, and the next minute the dog was eating the woodchuck. Dogs kill very quickly. He was never a hunting dog and he was well fed but his instinct told him woodchucks and rabbits are good to eat.

All those poor foxhunting dogs are going to have to find alternate exercise, too! No more running the fox to earth!

[Coventina]

17. Ha! Good idea!

:thumbsup:

[DemBones DemBones]

15. Some people know nothing about the

importance of fox hunting to the British economy and culture. I don't know if the great English hunt traditions can continue by using a faux fox to scent the hounds. It's not the same thing; the wiles of the fox are a lot of the excitement.

I also wouldn't be surprised if the fox population increased and foxes became public nuisances, eventually becoming pests dining on the pet cats of the city folks who wanted foxhunting banned. Which would serve them right. England has some freaky animal rights activists -- remember the ones who set loose a plague of minks in the English countryside, "freeing" them from fur farms to become pests?

My great grandfather was Master of the Hounds on a large hunt, even though he was a barrister in London, and one of my distant cousins, a farmer, still rides with a hunt near his home in Devon, so this is personal for me. If they succeed in banning foxhunting, they'll go after all forms of hunting and then what? Ban the racing of horses, then riding of horses? Next, perhaps they'd ban the owning of dogs and cats. I'm serious. There are animal rights activists who believe that people should not own animals. I've always had animals, wouldn't want to be without them. Life will be poorer quality if these people succeed in banning everything they disapprove of.

[Coventina]

18. Um, it's the cruelty

"Wiles of the fox"?
More like a creature running for its life in mortal terror.

Fuck tradition!
Foxhunting is the English version of the Bullfight, which is also reprehensible.

[DemBones DemBones]

23. It's cruel to allow animals to become overpopulated,

as has happened with deer over much of the U.S. Deer now are malnourished, ravage gardens, and die of starvation, disease and, often, when hit by cars or trucks, often causing injury and death to humans.

If they can't hunt foxes, they'll have to trap them and kill them -- where'e the kindness in that? In a hunt, the fox has a chance to escape. Sure, the fox runs in terror, just like any animal pursued by a bigger one, like, say, a rabbit pursued by a fox.

Some traditions are worth keeping. This is one -- and I repeat that some people know very little about its importance to the rural English economy and culture.

[random fox]

19. but...

One thing we can all agree on is a great tradition doesn't have to involve misery. I don't think that I know that much about how honored it is no...but have you ever seen a bleeding animal shrieking for hours because someone injured it and didn't manage to finish it off, and yet it still died needlessly? It's quite traumatic and gives great justification to wanting to end specific kinds of hunting (if not to those who witnessed terrible animal cruelty, wanting to end all forms).

I've seen activists yell at burger king for having butter on a vegitarian burger. That is wrong. I've seen hunters shoot a large animal to death and watch it squirm only using bird shot. That is also wrong. I think another's suffering isn't needed to maintain happiness.

[DemBones DemBones]

22. Nice to have a random fox drop into this thread. . .

Read what muriel volestrangler, who is English, says above and my reply to her. Dogs kill quickly and efficiently.

Activists *should* "yell at burger king for having butter on a vegitarian burger" since it means vegans, like my daughter, can't eat it.

When and where did you ever see "hunters shoot a large animal to death and watch it squirm only using bird shot"? Sounds like bull shit instead of bird shot to me -- bird shot wouldn't kill a large animal.

[random fox]

28. it is good to have someone who cares say something

"bird shot wouldn't kill a large animal."

that's the point. It bled to death, and yes where I live there's quite a lot of witness to that kind of thing. I guess a lot of people just don't "get it" that animals feel pain, especially when you use an inexpensive means to kill them.

"Dogs kill quickly and efficiently."

oh? I've seen medical documents to prove you wrong. Go out and find them yourself because I don't feel like being a messenger. If you want to just go ahead and believe I'm wrong I don't see what's apt to stop you anyway.

"Sounds like bull shit "

With bush as president, the amount of bull shit is going to increase. I think it's GOOD that britain is taking means to be a less barbaric nation. If you can't see that, and obviously know I'm not going to see your way, why even get into it? I think that one was just discrediting what I had to say because you somehow believe your logic is more superior because someone else simply said /their/ dog killed a single woodchuck quickly once. Statistics, chaos theory and the amount an animal like a fox can escape though wounded, will all bring into account the misery I talked about. Perfection is a luxury human beings just don't have -- they won't get every animal, but they can cause them a lot of pain in trying.

"Activists *should* "yell at burger king for having butter on a vegitarian burger"

in your opinion. Which is just as likely to be bullshit as mine.

I've seen pictures and forensic documentation to know what I'm talking about. We're not in iraq but we can assume what goes on there is wrong -- I don't have to be in england to know what happens to an animal involving a long vigorous chase, pulling it out of it's burrow and often times subduing it with wounds before killing (as they're trained, unlike the above poster's dog which is most likely not trained to specifically kill an animal one way) is wrong.

Using false burrows, breeding animals to kill and others to BE killed, and using unfair and unethical ends to get what they want is NO different than what the bush administration is doing...only in this case it's worse because murder is worse.

[muriel_volestrangler]

24. It's not important to the economy

and the culture is important to a few people, not most of us.

Foxes are already urban animals; there's no worry about what they do in cities.

Your 'thin end of the wedge' argument is pretty hilarious. You should take it on the stage.

[DemBones DemBones]

27. You're a citydweller, I take it. The rural people

say otherwise about the economy and the culture.

Glad to have given you some amusement and I've been waiting for the next stage to Black Rock, actually. Tally ho! ;-)

Edit: Wasn't the last big pro-foxhunting demo in London even bigger than the huge anti-war marches? I ask because you said most of you don't support foxhunting but I remember seeing photos and television footage of huge crowds opposing the outlawing of the hunt.

[muriel_volestrangler]

30. Well, I live in a town

there are a couple of hunts within about 10 miles of me.

Hunts employ about 1000 people directly, and the estimate from the pro-hunting lobby is that maybe another 1000 jobs might be lost in associated sectors (source). Bad for them, of course, but not a vital part of the economy.

The last big demonstration (while they were sneaking into the House of Commons): "police estimate there were between 8,000 and 10,000 protesters but the organisers put it at 20,000" (BBC)

The big Countryside Alliance march was in 2002 (on general rural concerns, though hunting was the major one): " More than 300,000" (BBC)

The biggest antiwar demo in February 2003: "The demonstration in London was the biggest in the UK capital's political history, with nearly two million taking part, organisers said, although police put the figure at 750,000." (BBC)

[ekhunter]

20. looks like they will just have to start trapping them where the

fox will most likely have a slow painful death.

[DemBones DemBones]

25. Maybe they can just enact a ban to stop

foxes from raiding henhouses, eating pet cats, etc. Put those foxes in the gaol if they can't behave themselves.

[The Stranger]

26. Damn PETA!

Wait . . . what?

[Ima]

29. see this

From the commencement of the hunting season in November to its end in April, fox hunters terrorize the fox population, in hunts which typically last from late morning to tea time. Chased by numerous hunters and hounds, and often, radio-equipped trucks for tracking, the fox usually dies an agonizing death after hours of pursuit. As a group called "earthstoppers" usually fill every visible fox hole the night before the hunt, the hunted fox has no means of escape, and is forced to flee until exhaustion. Hunting hounds are bred for endurance, not speed, which means that each fox hunt can last as long as two hours, until the fox is finally seized, and if lucky, shot, before being thrown to the hounds. Sometimes, the fox is literally eaten alive by the dogs, torn to pieces, with the tail, feet and head usually taken as trophy. Some hunts still engage in the practice of "blooding," where the foxes' blood is smeared on the faces of those witnessing their first kill, usually children.

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:MctZc1qzMuUJ:www.arkonline.com/foxhunt.html+fox%2Bhunting&hl=en

movie

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:MctZc1qzMuUJ:www.arkonline.com/foxhunt.html+fox%2Bhunting&hl=en

[BonjourUSA]

31. At last good news in this world of brutes

[thebeaglehaslanded]

32. Fox hunting is no better than bear baiting or bullfighting or

the blood lust combats of the Coloseum. Is it not wrong to take pleasure from watching the suffering and death of any living creature?

[Lefty48197]

33. this is anti-freedom, unconstitutional, and it makes Wayne LaPierre mad

.