Lenin and McCarthy
We all know some people who talk bollocks the moment their mouth opens; the likelihood is the speaker is probably the only person in the room unaware of this fact, which is why they keep talking bollocks. A kind soul might have a quiet word in their ear and advise them to shut up, but some…er…gobshites earn a useful crust from their dubious talent and make no attempt to confront the problem. Katie Hopkins is a good example. She’s painted herself into a corner because the public demand she talks bollocks every time she appears on TV in the same way they once demanded Pete Townshend should smash his guitar at every gig. So, she keeps doing it, over and over again to the point whereby her pronouncements become so surreally ludicrous that any point she may have intended to make is warped out of all reasonable recognition and becomes merely another obnoxious ejaculation of projectile bile that nobody other than a psychopath taking selfies whilst posing with military hardware could agree with.
The fact is that nobody now expects anything else from Katie Hopkins; she’s a joke. She can basically say whatever the hell she wants and she won’t lose her newspaper column or be sacked by ITV. Nobody with half-a-brain takes her remotely seriously. Just as well she’s not a male scientist.
A loopy or silly opinion can only be expressed by (and tolerated from) a clown; anyone in a position that commands a level of respect within their chosen profession must follow a rigid party line that has to be agreeable to everyone who subscribes to the consensus – and you’d better subscribe to it, or else. For all the unjust reputation the Victorians and their Queen have retrospectively acquired as uptight, humourless po-faced prudes, their era produced Dickens, Thackeray, Wilde, Beardsley, the Brontes, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Gilbert & Sullivan. Their art oozed passion, wit and sensuality – and Victoria herself waxed lyrically in her diaries on the intimate exchanges she enjoyed with Albert. No society is one thing over another, of course; many awful aspects of nineteenth century Britain sat cheek-by-jowl with its artistic heights – and in many cases, inspired them; but the rules of etiquette that governed the expanding middle-classes of that period were ones that seem positively Babylonian in comparison to the ones that have taken hold of today.
Putting antiquated notions of left and right aside, how would you define fascism? A design for life devised by an elite for the masses, one imposed by strict rules and regulations which the breaking of can result in unlimited imprisonment at best and a death sentence at worst? Such a definition would have been applicable to Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s USSR, Honecker’s DDR, Franco’s Spain or the Ayatollah’s Iran. Free speech is one of the first casualties of fascism and any medium that provides a vehicle for it, whether the press, television or internet, is censored and controlled; the state takes charge of all three to ensure the masses aren’t exposed to dissenting voices because these dissenting voices don’t know what’s good for you like the state does. We are all aware that Russia, China and numerous countries throughout what used to be called ‘the Arab World’ routinely use this as a means of exercising their power, but we assume our superior political system precludes it. And it does. The political system or the state aren’t the problem here; fascism in Blighty is the tool of the self-appointed self-righteous, the serial banners, the Facebook petitioners, the Twitter campaigners, the ‘ism’ Jihadists – all of whom are the inheritors of the right-on student rhetoric of the 80s taken to an unnerving new level, proclaiming their secular fatwas on anyone with the nerve to say something that veers from their doctrine.
The BNP or the Monster Raving Loony Party being represented on the platform at an election count was at one time excused as being a consequence of living in a democracy – that everybody is entitled to their say, regardless of whether it causes offence. Again, however, we’re talking fringe groups whose views were shared by a small minority within society; nobody ever expected Nick Griffin to open the Notting Hill Carnival anymore than they expected Screaming Lord Sutch to participate in the Good Friday Agreement negotiations. They were tolerated and had the luxury of voicing their opinions in public because they were viewed by most as clowns.
Take Malcolm Muggeridge – a rum old sort; he delighted in making waspish, provocative statements, usually contrary to perceived wisdom. For daring to question the institution of monarchy in the 50s, he temporarily lost his role as a regular BBC pundit, but as the 60s progressed, he grew increasingly religious and reactionary, publicly condemning the loosening of moral and social inhibitions in a manner that blunted the precision of his previous radical stance. One wonders what the ramifications would be for him if he were with us now in his acerbic prime, stubbornly refusing to curb his appetite for upsetting the consensus. He’d be a great addition to the ‘Question Time’ panel, and I suspect he’d be a prime target for the neurotic moral minority because he didn’t give a shit.
What, I wonder, would he make of a member of a team that had achieved a remarkable scientific breakthrough by landing a spacecraft on a comet being castigated and forced to apologise before the world’s media like a shamefaced schoolboy for wearing a silly shirt that made him look a bit of a tit? What, indeed, would he make of a highly respected scientist being forced to leave his lofty post because he had aired a somewhat daft summary of his female contemporaries? He’d no doubt be gobsmacked at how the expression of an individual opinion can provoke such violent disagreement that it can blight a reputation and ruin a career. As someone who had observed with his own eyes a devastating famine in Ukraine instigated by Stalin, one that exposed the sham of the supposedly egalitarian communist system, I should imagine Muggeridge would instantly recognise what the poisonous seeds of a small and unelected clique of moral guardians imposing their will upon the rest of society can sprout into if not nipped in the bud.
Today we have few eloquent and articulate critics who are prepared to stick their necks on the line and stand up to the people’s censors. We have the likes of David Starkey and we have Peter Hitchens, but whereas both can be occasionally entertaining on TV, the former has the aura of a slightly bonkers, eccentric academic and the latter comes across as a grumpy old Tory barking at ramblers to get off his land. For all the valid points they are capable of making, both Starkey and Hitchens are mostly preaching to the converted from the comfort zone of minority television channels or cosily conservative tabloids. Yet, the fact remains that public figures are scared – scared for their careers, their spouses, their children, their friends and colleagues, their social standing. They know one ill-timed verbal slip-up could place all in peril as the mob descend, demanding their head on a plate simply for having a different point of view, one the mob has deemed unacceptable.
I’ll admit I was happy to see fox-hunting banned, but for purely personal reasons. Like all other blood-sports, I find it vile, barbaric and disgusting. I feel the same about bullfighting and big-game hunting. I cannot fathom why anyone would derive pleasure from seeing another living creature die before their eyes in agony. It repulses me to the pit of my stomach. But I find the existence of abattoirs equally horrible. Does that mean I have the right to demand that they all be closed down and everyone must stop eating meat as I did 25 years ago? Of course it doesn’t. I am grownup enough to know that this is merely my own opinion, shared by some but opposed by many. That’s called being human. I tend to remember that when I switch this bloody thing off. Some never get that far.
Petunia Winegum
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June 22, 2015 at 9:16 am -
Excellent post; thank you.
I think the sentence “I am grownup enough to know that this is merely my own opinion…” says something which is very apposite but seldom articulated and is something I have thought for a long time. That is that the unwillingness of many people to accept alternative points of view, to put up with situations that they don’t find personally agreeable and to pursue ‘direct action’ rather than allow due process to take place is simply a reflection of their immaturity. It’s foot-stamping, breath-holding, scream and scream and scream-ing done by people that are, in age terms at least, adults.
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June 22, 2015 at 9:56 am -
everyone must stop eating meat as I did 25 years ago?
I became a vegan at age 18 , for the only valid reason that there really is to forgo Bacon, all the hot girls in our ‘Milieu’ were vegans and I wanted to get laid. Only problem was that I am damn near allergic to every vegetable on the planet, just the stench of cabbage cooking makes me want to retch and things like Kale and Broccoli are guaranteed to unblock this Dwarf to the extent I’ll be on the toilet so long I’ll get spots before me eyes and pass out when I, finally, stand up. DO I need to expand on that? Ok, not to put too finer point on it-Rabbit food goes through me sooo fast , I shit plasma.
I survived on a diet of lentils (“NEIL YOU STUPID HIPPY!”), rice and tomato ketchup , whilst the alcohol, tobacco and coffee served to flush any remaining nasty, toxic, nutrients out of my body. A year later, and this one writes itself, I collapsed at work with vitamin deficiency and upon recovering then went to work in a German Meat & Sausage Factory….where one could eat ones own body weight in hot ‘Wurst’ in the canteen every morning free and gratis – usually washed down with plastic cups full of 50/50 chocolate milk and brandy (workplace rules on drinking back then being somewhat laxer). Pretty sure the milk in those chocolate brandy milks was ‘real’ milk not soya so that was it for me and veganism. Damn those Lilac, chocolate milk producing German cows! http://blog.zwergenzone.de/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/lila-kuh_ma1974.jpg
Word to the wise, Vegan girls taste bitter, in a slightly ‘onion gone mouldy in the fridge’ way. DO I need to expand on that sentence? Really? This early on a Monday? Oh dear…think soixante-neuf….with me now?
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June 22, 2015 at 10:03 am -
I passed by fields full of solemnly-munching cows and bullocks yesterday. It crossed my mind that if I did not eat meat, none of them would be alive. It’s not the eating that’s the problem, it’s the killing. In the wacky Seventies there was a popular theory that plants could feel pain too. Facing the possibility that the ultimate consequences of a pain-free world left me the only option to starve to death and be eaten by the dogs, left me thinking that the whole non-meat bubble was just a function of spoiled, rich kids with not enough to occupy their minds. Back in the Seventies most of them seemed to be in America.
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June 22, 2015 at 10:28 am -
June 22, 2015 at 11:35 am -
TBD –
A tee shirt for your birthday/xmas ‘wish list’:-
http://www.healthontherun.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/vegetarian_hate_plants_shirt_thumb.jpg
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June 22, 2015 at 1:55 pm -
T-shirt? I WANT that as a Tattoo!
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June 22, 2015 at 10:07 am -
Fox hunting and people who gain pleasure from trapping an animal and having it ripped apart in front of their eyes!
I do not want these dispassionate barbarians running our country. It gives a big clue to the integrity of the person. They don’t care about the animal. They don’t care about the animals family. They don’t care about the hurt it causes people who are sickened by it. They are barbarians and Mr Cameron the barbarian is running our country. OUT!-
June 22, 2015 at 10:18 am -
Personally I believe the Fox Hunting Ban MUST be repealed, not because I am a hunt supporter (infact I think fox hunting has had its time and that time is gone) but because Blair brought it in in the most insidious way possible. If Cameron was a real Tory , he would repeal the Fox Hunting ban, The Smoking Verbot and the Gun Control Laws tomorrow. Not that I shall hold my stinking smoker’s breath on that one though…
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June 22, 2015 at 10:23 am -
I don’t do politics, I do compassion.
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June 22, 2015 at 10:23 am -
What about Bear Baiting, Hare Coursing and cock-fighting – the proletarian blood-sports have been banned as long or much longer than the sports of the Squires.
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June 22, 2015 at 11:54 am -
“…infact I think fox hunting has had its time and that time is gone…“. How do you explain the fact that more people than ever now ride to hounds or follow the hunt?
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June 22, 2015 at 12:04 pm -
Isn’t that because they no longer hunt the actual fox and so it is now just a ride through the country-side jumping over fences as directed by the supervisors of the Hunt. I watched one pass by on a walk recently. The only moment of unpredictability was when one of the dogs made a bolt for it over the wrong fence and two Hunts-People had to shout it back, I wondered if it had the scent of a real fox in it’s nostrils, the filthy animal.
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June 22, 2015 at 2:36 pm -
“How do you explain the fact that more people than ever now ride to hounds or follow the hunt?”
There are people who still travel by train, or hand write letters. Indeed I believe both are still popular-if horribly archaic. That was what I meant by ‘time’. This is the year of our Lord 2015, not 1815. We put men on the bloody moon. The only real justification for fox-hunting was vermin control but a pack of men in fancy dress, horses, and dogs chasing down a single fox has to be about as out of date as driving a stick shift car FFS! How many Hunt Masters have appeared on TV to tell us that the chances of them, pre-ban, actually killing a fox were slight and that more often than not the Fox had a ‘sporting chance’ and eluded them? Lets have some ‘efficiency’. Mind you, the recent Badger Cull, I’m told, showed the limitations of One Man And His Gun so maybe gas or poison?
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June 22, 2015 at 3:08 pm -
There’s also the small matter of landowners who aren’t part of the hunt clique and resent their land being trampled over and being bullied into submission by the chaps on horseback.
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June 22, 2015 at 3:33 pm -
From observation, I would guess that drag-hunting is a very profitable side-line now for farmers. When I watched my “scripted” Hounds Hunt, the fences the chaps and chapesses were jumping over had been specially adapted so as to make it easier and safer for the horses, so plainly the land-owners were all in on the gig. I could hear shotguns going off over the hills too and later saw a line of identical Range Rovers, so I suspect that what is developing are “Huntin’ & Shootin’ short breaks”. I can imagine they’re very popular for Business exec beano’s too. Given the farmers can make such a lot of money by hiring out their land, I imagine the pursuit of the uneatable by the unspeakable will be entirely killed off by good old Capitalism in the end.
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June 22, 2015 at 3:53 pm -
“Drag-hunting”?
Cue visions of Eddie Izzard and Grayson Perry on horseback. I think I’ll go and lie down in a darkened room until they’ve faded…
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June 22, 2015 at 4:15 pm -
small matter of landowners who aren’t part of the hunt clique
Is that an issue at all? I was living in Ruralshire when the whole Fox Hunting debate/Cuntrycide Alliance was in full swing (usually hunt saboteurs from the nearest elm) but I don’t recall it being mentioned once….and when I say ‘ruralshire’ I mean somewhere where, as primary school kids, we were taken to a local meet and helped serve the Gentry with their ‘stirrup cups’ ,doff our caps and proclaim ‘gawd bless yer heart Kind Sir’ for every shiny
shilling5p we were tipped.I guess my gut feeling would be if someone bought/inherited land over which the hunt has ridden since around the time serfdom was abolished then they, the new owners, should quit whining. Same with FootPaths. Different if their is no historical right or precedent of course, then they can go tell the Hunting Crowd to shove it up their Sassoons…..sideways.
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June 22, 2015 at 4:44 pm -
Just as a matter of minor correction, Hunts only go over land on which they are welcome; one of a Hunt Master’s duties is to know the landowners on his Country, and know where his followers may ride or not. If hounds stray where they are not welcome, it is the Hunt staff’s duty to call them back. Not easy, if hounds are hard on a scent, but it must be done.
Many landowners are ambivalent about the social snobbery associated with some Hunts, but allow their passage both to address the vermin problem on their land, and because the Hunt traditionally makes good any gates, hedges or fences they damage in their passing; many a landowner had had their ricketty old gate replaced by a brand spanking new one in their time!
In hill-farming areas, things are different. The Hunt is not about social snobbery, it’s pure predator control; no more, no less. Very few landowners and farmers in those areas object to the Hunt because it’s part of the warp and weft of the area; an out-of-control fox population hits them hard in the wallet come lambing time.
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June 22, 2015 at 11:58 am -
Even Blair was politically astute enough not to try to ban fishing, but why not?
Fishing’s far more cruel than fox-hunting, with millions of innocent creatures every year having a barbed hook thrust through the side of their mouths, ripped out without treatment before they are lobbed back into the water, only for the same barbarity to be inflicted upon them sometime later, when they are again conned into tasting the fake food offered to them by those sly bastards with rods (and usually personality problems too). At least there was some quasi-justfication for fox-killing, unlike all the fish-abuse and piscatorial massacres.
Maybe the cunning Mr Blair knew that the profile of the voters who kill fish was quite different from that of the fox-killers. Spooky that – nothing to do with perceived animal cruelty after all.-
June 22, 2015 at 12:05 pm -
Stop yer carping
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June 22, 2015 at 10:23 am -
Sorry, but this is just more “I am good; if you don’t agree with me you’re evil” bullshit.
No, I don’t support hunting. I also don’t support banning stuff just because I don’t agree with it, particularly when it’s just thinly disguised class warfare.
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June 22, 2015 at 10:32 am -
Go and say that to a fox!
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June 22, 2015 at 10:41 am -
My last comment here because I have a busy day ahead and this blog isn’t really to be hijacked with a hunting debate.
But he who does not believe in ‘banning stuff’ would surely un-ban mugging and un-ban burglary , car crime, murder….let’s un-ban everything and have a lawless society.
Laws are about protection and it is right to extend that to protecting animals.Good day to you and I am unsubscribing to this blog now permanently for no other reason than I really do object bloggers being personal….and using foul language. Just can’t be arsed…..!
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June 22, 2015 at 10:48 am -
June 22, 2015 at 10:49 am -
“But he who does not believe in ‘banning stuff’ would surely un-ban mugging and un-ban burglary , car crime, murder….let’s un-ban everything and have a lawless society.”
No, I think we’re generally for the freedom to do whatever one likes, subject to it not causing harm to others and / or their property.
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June 22, 2015 at 11:58 am -
Good luck with the web-site Anne Pyke.
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June 22, 2015 at 2:03 pm -
Here is my view and if you don’t like it I will just run away and not respond.
How very grown up and liberal you are.
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June 22, 2015 at 4:18 pm -
using foul language. Just can’t be arsed….
I see what you did there! That was quite witty. Unfortunately the rest of your last comment, as you flounced out the door, was borderline ‘OFFENDED’ .
===> Mumsnet is that way.
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June 22, 2015 at 4:16 pm -
Class warfare? – not at all:- I’m comfortable with fishing “for the pan”, and have no objection to hunting when it’s for the pot.
What I find personally unacceptable is to deprive another creature of its life where the primary purpose is to revel in it and take pleasure in doing so. I feel that this speaks volumes about the perpetrator(s).
I do accept that this is just my viewpoint, and that I do not have the right to force this upon others, anymore than they have any right to force theirs upon me:- were I a landowner, my land would be ‘hunting-free”; however, I ain’t so it’s a moot point.
I do believe that I have the freedom (just about) to express my opinions.
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June 22, 2015 at 11:53 am -
To some, the biggest annoyance is supermarkets refusing to prominently label whether meat is throat-slit halal, or not.
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June 22, 2015 at 3:15 pm -
Certain / total lack of understanding of animals and hunting there Anne, but there you go, a lot of hyperbole makes up for it, I supose.
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June 22, 2015 at 10:34 am -
Pretty much spot on.
What will be interesting to watch over the next 10 to 20 years will be the extent to which the presently liberal democracies’ politicians acquiesce to the incorporation of the illiberal tendancies’ oppressive obsessions directly into punitive law, simply because none of the major players will be brave as stand up to say ‘Enough!’
There may well be some variation resulting from countries legal histories. Those with existing written constitutions underpinning individual freedoms in law may well see more oppressive mob behaviours becoming more enshrined in the efforts of internet based SJWs – the Mozilla/Brendan Eich example in the States comes to mind, whereas those without such, written ‘Bills of Rights’ and such, such as, /cough, the UK, may well see the written law become the more popular medium used for suppression of minority, or even majority, view suppression
And I don’t believe the BS about this sort of stuff never getting through parliamentary process or the notion that we are still likely to be capable of framing the principles of our law to protect the rights of all. Previously inspired declarations of rights for the people were drawn up during or after times of great adversity and momentous historical events. That was then. The day of The Social Fascist is now
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June 22, 2015 at 10:37 am -
The people are the enemy? Interesting political theory but I’m not sure how it can be a platform for any aspiring democratic politician…
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June 22, 2015 at 4:19 pm -
Hmmm. I’m sure it’s a theory put into practice by the majority of our ‘democratic’ politicians…
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June 22, 2015 at 10:51 am -
I fail to see what part of Tim Hunt’s joke is not entirely accurate – not that I am a scientist, but in my line of work it was far far worse than that.
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June 22, 2015 at 11:03 am -
He’s plainly not very self-aware, judging by the nose-hair. Eeeughh… 8-}
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/files/2015/06/tim-hunt.jpg
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June 22, 2015 at 10:52 am -
“What, I wonder, would he make of a member of a team that had achieved a remarkable scientific breakthrough by landing a spacecraft on a comet being castigated and forced to apologise before the world’s media like a shamefaced schoolboy for wearing a silly shirt that made him look a bit of a tit?”
What, I wonder, would he make of someone describing him as looking like “a bit of a tit” for his choice of shirt? I’d say his choice of clothing made him look like one of the most agreeable of English gentlemen, and one of our defining traits, a bit of an eccentric.
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June 22, 2015 at 11:24 am -
At least the shirt stopped one focussing on his god-awful tattoos. What a numpty.
http://seradata.com/SSI/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Tattoosandtitillations.jpg -
June 22, 2015 at 12:13 pm -
He could probably have got away with it if he’d been on a Club 18-30 holiday. Mind you, there was an equal amount of attention given to one of the female members of the team and how she perhaps should have worn a bra when celebrating the achievement. Perhaps it says more about media priorities these days that the dress code of the brains behind the comet-landing craft received so much exposure.
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June 22, 2015 at 3:23 pm -
“Perhaps it says more about media priorities” Exactly. Even when a team of researchers and engineers build the first working star ship there will be a media outcry because they aren’t coiffed and curled for the cameras.
John Q Public “Hooray, we can travel to other star systems!”
Media mouthpiece “We can’t, not in a t-shirt like that! What will the aliens think?”
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June 22, 2015 at 11:45 am -
Another cracking title, Petunia. Do you compose the puns first, then create the posting around them??
Hopkins simply fills a need & earns a crust for herself. “…. the public demand she talks bollocks every time she appears on TV” – alternatively – she strikes a chord with many of the public, voicing opinions many others are too wimpish to utter.
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June 22, 2015 at 11:57 am -
Just a quick word on fox hunting, if I may. Fox numbers must be controlled. Once the pack has reached the fox its death is instantaneous. Now reflect what old Reynard does to his victims….
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June 22, 2015 at 12:24 pm -
Rats suffer much more grievously. A rat-catcher of my acquaintance was explaining some of the new methods current in our enlightened times. Poisons have become an unpopular option because carrion feeders can become victims later too – foxes perhaps. One new option is apparently a substance that the rats eat and this stuff then swells up inside them and literally crushes them from the inside; what a way to go. Another option nowadays is a super-glue pad that when they run onto it, their little feet stick fast. There they remain until they starve to death or are found by the rat-man. If they’re lucky the rat-man returneth. He said that his favoured option for dispatching them then, is to wear heavy hob-nailed boots and to stamp on their little heads. He says at least it’s quick. Amen to that. This is the trouble sometimes, the most merciful ways of killing are often the ones that make folk wince the most.
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June 22, 2015 at 1:14 pm -
“Fox numbers must be controlled”
Yes indeed (and other species which now lack natural predators). But would public opinion allow effective control of this handsome, furry animal? Probably not, unless rabies were to re-appear in this country in the fox population.
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June 22, 2015 at 1:27 pm -
“She can basically say whatever the hell she wants and she won’t lose her newspaper column or be sacked by ITV.”
She’s won by telling the truth.
Envy?
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June 22, 2015 at 2:05 pm -
Don’t know much about Katie Hopkins, so can’t comment. Do know a bit about the hunting debate, having followed it during Blair’s rather cynical use of it to bribe some of his more class-war orintated back-benchers, so know just how emotive and uninformed the ‘debate’ can be. It maybe wasn’t the best example to quote.
There are some who would exploit a public lack of knowledge for their own political ends. One example that failed was over nuclear power. Some of the anti campaigners in the 1970s and ’80s used all manner of emotive arguments, exaggerations and outright lies to have the industry shut down. They failed, fortunately. They are using the same tactics now over ‘fracking’. Is that social fascism, denying the majority a technology that will benefit all just to satisfy their own (often very shaky and flaky) prejudices?
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June 22, 2015 at 3:13 pm -
Or perhaps the previous anti-nuclear and now anti-frackers (spookily often the same people) are being ‘steered’ to protect the commercial interests of those whose current and future trade would be compromised if fracked gas discoveries displaced imported fuels …… are you listening Vladimir ?
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June 22, 2015 at 2:42 pm -
Thank you for a wonderfully articulate piece of writing.
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June 22, 2015 at 3:12 pm -
Despite not agreeing with all of what Peter Hitchins says I’ve always been rather grateful that he IS there, saying it, despite – as Petunia writes – his air of “a grumpy old Tory barking at ramblers to get off his land.” But it was his brother, Christopher, whose following quote caught my eye recently (in the comments-section of The Guardian, strangely enough):
“I always take it for granted that sexual moralizing by public figures is a sign of hypocrisy or worse, and most usually a desire to perform the very act that is most being condemned. From King Lear: “Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand! Why dost thou lash that whore?… Thou hotly lust’st to use her in that kind, for which thou whip’st her.” This is why, whenever I hear some bigmouth in Washington or the Christian heartland banging on about the evils of sodomy or whatever, I mentally enter his name in my notebook and contentedly set my watch. Sooner rather than later, he will be discovered down on his weary and well-worn old knees in some dreary motel or latrine, with an expired Visa card, having tried to pay well over the odds to be peed upon by some Apache transvestite.”
I’ve since not been able to view MWT’s ever-present shifty-eyed mug without this dreadful image storming into my cranium.
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June 22, 2015 at 3:48 pm -
Petunia, ref your final para, remember Mr Jorrocks words, “it ain’t that I love the fox less, it’s that I love the hound more.”
Country people understand that wild animals hunt to survive and will in their turn sucumb to a faster, younger predator. The pleasure in hunting is largely in watching the wonderful hounds doing what they do naturally. And a foxhound is twice the size of a fox, so a kill is a pretty quick affair.-
June 22, 2015 at 4:06 pm -
I think for many not part of the hunt community, it’s the pomp and ceremony that accompany it that sticks in the throat. But, as I said in the piece, it’s a purely personal opinion, and not one I intended to be the heart of the post.
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June 22, 2015 at 4:33 pm -
But if you object to the ‘pomp and ceremony’ of the Hunt, would they not equally be able ot object to and ban your way of life and pleasures?
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June 22, 2015 at 4:34 pm -
and not one I intended to be the heart of the post.
You didn’t think outing yourself as 1. a vegetarian (FFS!) and 2. a fox fondler wouldn’t ‘blue touchpaper’ in a country pub? Next you’ll be saying you thought that ‘that nice Mr.Blair….’ and then I WILL have to complain to the Landlady.
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June 22, 2015 at 4:57 pm -
Well, even that Mr Hitler built the autobahns…
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June 22, 2015 at 5:01 pm -
..and Blair brought in the Freedom Of Information Act.
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