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Perhaps you're right.
But if it's got absolutely nothing to do with class, then answer this: why have we only just got round to banning fox hunting, when working class blood sports such as cock fighting and dog fighting have been outlawed for years?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_fighting#Europe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_fighting#United_Kingdom
At last someone who gets to the real reason hunting is banned - it's nothing to do with suffering or efficiency and all to do with old fashioned class hatred.
:chin:
Why? was dog fighting not attended by the middle and upper-classes?
Of course fox hunting has plenty of working class followerers, but few of its opponents realise that (or think its a myth). If they did it wouldn't have been banned.
And it's patently bollocks to try and paint fox hunting as anything other than a sport for the wealthy - I don't know many inner city working class people with horses, for a start.
Yes, but lots of rural working class follow on foot. And when my local paper reported the convictions for dog fighting recently it included a stockbroker and a lawyer - very working class that...
If people were culling foxes because it was just something that needed to be done, then thats one thing, but the whole thing about fox hunting, is that people really get off on it, and thats what makes me feel a bit sick.
Just like with dog fighting. Dogs will sometimes fight. its not nice, but when you get people encouraging it and whooping with joy at the bloody scene, then it turns into something evil
Proper fox hunting where they clear foxes properly by going after and shooting them should not have been outlawed, there is no pleasure in it its just 'find the fox and shoot it'. Contrary to what those fucking idiots holding the cuddley foxes say they do not shoot vixens with cubs and they do not enjoy it.
Sadly the people who clear foxes and the hoorays get tarred with the same brush.
One thing I always wanted to do to the countryside alliance wankers saying 'oh save the cuddley foxes!!!' is walk them into my uncles henhouse after a fox got in there, killed and ate 1 hen and killed the other 13. Then we will see how cuddley and smiley your fucking fox is.
Well it's not just a sport for wealthy, I know a lot of girls that belonged to the local hunt and they are not wealthy. You don't have to be rich to own a horse ffs.
Not that it has anyting to do with class or wealth anyway. It's about welfare of the fox surely, and controlling the fox population.
all sorts of people can be bloodthirsty
So it's not the death of the fox or the way it's killed, it's the fact people enjoy it?
Let me tell you now, people enjoy shooting them just as much, it's. still sport People enjoy hunting live quarry.
I dont think that chasing an animal halfway across the countryside with horses and dogs, where it is then ripped apart, is anything but cruel. The fact that people get off on it makes it doubly sick. This is why it was banned and I agree with that ban
Err, the green bit? I was born and raised (22 years) in a small village in Hampshire of about 200 people, surrounded by acres and acres of beautiful rolling green belt. It's more shooting round my way than hunting but local hunts are not far away.
Actually I don't think fox hunting is a class thing at all. It's a rural thing yes, but I'd actually say that it's one pursuit where the classes, if you want to affix such a vulgar tag to this, mix more than they would in society as a whole.
As Skiver has pointed out on several occasions, most of the people associated with a hunt are not landed gentry - they are humble country folk.
See above. Your ignorance of the subject is quite overwhelming.
Dog fighting serves no purposes other than entertainment.
Fox hunting controls fox numbers as they are vermin who destroy farmers' livelihoods. When was the last time you heard of a pack of dogs killing livestock?
Horses are country animals ffs. You think you could keep a horse on an estate in Peckham? They need stables, stud and exercise somewhere where there is space for it like, I dunno, the countryside?
To all you opponents of fox hunting, how else do you propose to keep the numbers down? Like it or not, the fluffy wuffy little fox is vermin and their numbers need to be kept in check. Shooting and baiting are infinitely more cruel ways as the suffering to the animal is infinitely larger. Hunting with dogs, as anyone who has actually done it, is quick and efficient. If hunting with dogs is out, what's the solution?
Got a better solution that has all these other fringe benefits?
Well the death is pretty much instant. Shooting does often result in wounded foxes getting away. If anything crue about fox huting it's the fact it can become a drawn out chase. That's the problem I have with it.
Since the ban my mate has been going to hunts with his Golden Eagle called Morgan. They still use packs of dogs to flush out and chase foxes which is then either caught by the eagle (it doesn't happen that often) or it is shot. So what has changed really?
The fact that people enjoy it has nothing to do with it, or at least it shouldn't? It's about controlling fox numbers and the welfare of foxes.
That's actually pretty much instant - It's all over in a matter of seconds. It may not be pretty, but that's different.
I've seen it. Over in a few minutes, fox never gets away once caught.
Compare to that gun shot wound which can take days, or result in the fox not being able to hunt and therefore starve. Or snares or poison which although both being illegal have increased since the ban.
Really? Not quite sure where you got that from, but the BBC, and more accurately, Oxford University's Wildlife Conservation Unit, the 1949 Scott Henderson inquiry (commissioned by the Labout gov't of the day) along with research conducted by Chris Barnard and Jane Hurst at Nottingham University seems to suggest otherwise.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/418681.stm (from 1999, at the time of the debates).
Indeed, David McDonald, the chap at Oxford, states: "The fox does not anticipate death, so is not unduly traumatised by the pursuit. And the alternatives - shooting, gassing, snaring or poisoning - would all inflict much more pain and suffering on the foxes. Already, 10 times as many foxes are shot each year than are hunted to death. That figure would only increase if hunting was banned."
From the Henderson inquiry: ""A popular myth is that the fox is killed by being torn apart by a pack of hounds when it is still alive. This is not true."
Additional research is also quite interesting: "They also say that foxhunting is crucial to conservation of the species. Figures on the Foxman website show that during the Second World War, when fox hunting ceased, the fox population went into decline, because farmers took to shooting them all. "
Such as?
As discussed above, trapping, shooting and poisoning are much more cruel as they take at least 10 times longer than with dogs.
It is if the gun shot isn't immediately fatal which happens far more often than you think. Once caught by the hounds a fox is dead, once shot a fox may escape with horrendous wounds.
Well...
From here: http://www.aknight.info/pages/publications/miscellaneous/fox_hunting.htm
Some direct witness accounts:
http://nwhsa.redblackandgreen.net/foxkilledbycheshireforesthunt5.10.02.html
http://www.animalaid.org.uk/h/n/NEWS/news_shooting/ALL/1109//
http://www.hsa.enviroweb.org/news/fddis02.html
On the one hand, hunt supporters will say that it's all about the day out on horses, that the main focus is the ride in the country, that some days you never even see the fox, etc. Then in the next breath they'll tell you that hunting with dogs is the only effective method of population control. Er, what?
Anyway, I think it definitely is a class issue. It's a class issue insofar as those who have been the ruling classes for most of the past two centuries were nobility and those who had a personal interest in allowing hunting, while abolishing other bloodsports that were mostly enjoyed by the poor. The only reason it survived as long as it did is because it was the hobby of half of the House of Commons and most of the Lords.
First one is a valid source, the other three are not.
Quoting two eye-witness accounts from an organisation calling itself the Hunt Saboteurs Association is going to have a bit of a vested interest.
It would be like asking the Daily Mail for an eye-witness account of the reality of immigration...