52% intelligent. 9% modest. More monkey than bear.

Thursday, November 25, 2004

What do they know anyway?



Foxes and badgers are pretty cute, aren't they?

Brock the badger, badger from The Wind in the Willows - gruff, grumpy but unshakeably wise, strong and loyal. Reynard the fox - sly and cunning, but in a cute and fluffy way. (I'm becoming quite partial to this fox in particular.)

It looks like a cattle culling program may be about to kick off in the English countryside. You might remember the foot & mouth problem that brought the countryside economy to its knees a couple of years ago... well Tuberculosis could be about to cause a similar scare and there may have to be a slaughtering program - the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has been looking into it, and has conducted a trial cull of the badger population.

Thing is, it looks as though our gruff friend may be part of the problem - they may need to cull badgers as well, as they are thought to be an important reason for the spread of the disease into livestock. This has happened before, and stirs up a lot of emotion and protests.

Would it cause as much fuss if the government were to propose a cull of rats? No, of course not. Because it's cute, fluffy and is the star of children's literature, we will go out of our way to protect and encourage them. Most town dwellers would love to have a badger visit their garden once in a while, just as they welcome the foxes - bugger the fact that they could be (and this is contentious) spreading disease into our livestock

This got me thinking about the government's ban on hunting with hounds. Again, a subject that has caused much debate and protest. The ban is seeing as an unacceptable imposition by a mainly urban government onto the rural community. A pursuit that has been practiced for centuries, declared illegal.

I was all for the ban. Instinctively I don't like hunting, and I don't like the people who hunt (who I tend to associate with the UK Independence Party, for some reason). I also like foxes, and as a town dweller, I love seeing them thriving in our streets. One of my most treasured moments came a few years ago when I had a ground floor bedroom and was awoken in the small hours of the morning one day by a scuffling noise. I crept up to my window and peered out to see two fox cubs play-fighting on a piece of cardboard right underneath my window sill. It was a total joy to see - mum was at the bottom of the garden, watching the cubs (and me) like a hawk. After a bit they scampered off and I went back to bed, grinning like a loon. Foxes are cute and fluffy. Chasing after them for sport and ripping them apart with hounds is definitely not my bag.

I've been thinking about this though, and I'm not sure that I can, on the one hand, rail long and hard about the government's erosion of my rights and civil liberties, and on the other hand think that the ban on fox-hunting is "a good thing". Surely if I am to be consistent, I should be jumping up and down at the removal of another ancient liberty?

Unpalatable though I might find it to admit, I have to say that I don't think that the government should have the right to do this.

Damn you Tony Blair. Damn you for forcing me into bed with the Countryside Alliance.

And with that frankly disturbing mental image... I leave you.
Posted by Hello

posted by swisslet @ 23:24  

24 Comments:

  • At 7:59 am, Blogger Damo said…

    Actually, this is the address you ought to view for the UK Independence Party... http://www.ukindependence.org

    You'll need sound switched on, and it shows you all you need to know.

     

  • At 9:03 am, Blogger Aravis said…

    I'm afraid my human failings kick in too strongly, and I'm for the fox rather than the hunters' civil liberties. The fox is run to ground and torn to shreds by the dogs which far out-number it. And for what? So a bunch of bored, spoiled rich people can show off their riding skills and clothes? People can speak for themselves; animals can't. If there is a fox problem, there are better ways of dealing with it than that. Though I really hate hunting of any sort, at least hunting with a gun is faster and cleaner. Me being me though, I still hope the fox gets away! *G*

    It's late and my thinking is foggy but aren't I right in thinking that there's an alternative already in existence for those who like to foxhunt but who don't want to kill a fox? Someone is hired to create a scent trail for the dogs to follow, but there's no fox for them to kill at the end of it. Something like that. I can't recall now where I read about it. That seems sufficient to me for those who want to keep the tradition alive. Only those hired would know where the trail was, so it wouldn't spoil the "hunt" for the riders, and the dogs are given some reward as well instead of the fox. Demanding anything more is just asking to have blood lust satisfied, and is that a civil right to be upheld?

    Sheesh, I sound like a PETA member, and I'm not. Though I hate hunting-as I've said- when it's done to help feed a family I understand it. I live in a rural area and there are several large, poorer families around here who really need the venison and poultry that the hunters bring home and store. That's fine.

    Hunting for sport disgusts me.

     

  • At 9:03 am, Blogger LB said…

    the best way to cull foxes and badgers is to increase the speed limit on country roads. Not a day goes by on my journey into work that I don't pass a selection of dead rabbits, badgers, pheasants, hares and foxes.

    and I totally agree with you about the hunting ban. I think it is a hideous pursuit as well (it doesnt help that the local hunt actually comes through my village) but an ongoing diatribe about the widening power of the state seems to fly in the face of a call for banning a tiny minority pursuit.

    Perhaps the hunting fraternity could turn their attention from foxes to cows and kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.

     

  • At 9:09 am, Blogger Aravis said…

    I can't stop laughing at the image of the surprised cows ...

    Thanks, LordBargain! *G*

     

  • At 9:25 am, Blogger Teresa Bowman said…

    Now wait a minute. I'll have to think carefully about this and group my thoughts into a numbered list. OK:

    1. The hunting of deer with hounds no longer happens, but deer still need to be culled (because they devour crops). So every so often, a certain number of them are shot by gamekeepers employed for that purpose (amongst others). And yet the Countryside Alliance would appear to believe that the best way to effect a similar cull of foxes is for a number of people to dress up in red jackets, clamber onto horses and chase after the fox with a pack of half-wild dogs. Hmm.

    2. Just because it's something that has been practised for centuries, doesn't make it right.

    3. HOWEVER. I read a very good article by posh-bloke-in-the-countryside Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in the Observer Food Monthly a couple of months back (you may have read it too - I seem to recall that you also read the Observer, don't you?) in which he raised the point that as regards countryside matters and the treatment of animals, there were other, far more important issues for people to get up in arms about and for the government to muscle in on. Things such as, for example, battery farming of chickens, and the conditions in which pigs are farmed. Although I'm not sure he and I share the same views on hunting, I agree with him in that if the government had to step in and ban one countryside practice, battery farming is far crueller and more abhorrent than hunting with dogs. Plus, it's something that effects the lives of everyone in this country (well, except maybe vegans), while the same can't be said for fox-hunting.

    4. Mind you, my natural inverted snobbery rejoices in the fact that the (to my mind largely wealthy, upper-class, landed) people of the Countryside Alliance and their ilk have had their toys taken away from them. That's quite probably the wrong reaction for me to have, but I can't help it.

    Right, wrong? Should I think this, or should I think that? As an open-minded, free-thinking, middle-class liberal, what should I do? BY GOLLY IT'S AN EMOTIONAL MINEFIELD.

    (Now you see why I don't often post comments on political blogs.)

     

  • At 9:52 am, Blogger swisslet said…

    It certainly is a minefield. I'm not saying hunting is a good thing(personally I find it a bit repugnant), and I'm not saying that just because it's a centuries old tradition means we should keep doing it....

    All I'm trying to highlight is that I'm not sure the government has the right to tell them that they can't do it any more.... after all, they don't hurt anybody and it is usually carried out on private land with the permission of the landowner. There's not even any convincing evidence that the fox suffers (I find it hard to believe that they don't, but there you go...)

    You are quite right about that Hugh dooberry-wotsit article in the Observer - battery farming is an issue we would do far better getting stoked up about than this, and is one that affects us far more directly. Are you having a chicken sandwich for your lunch today?

    I don't like hunting, but I'm starting to realise that perhaps that's different to agreeing that it should be banned (the pro-hunt people don't help themselves - their arguments about the rural economy etc. just don't work for me).

    What if the government decides to ban live music next, on the grounds that it damages our hearing and produces noise pollution? An issue that we would both care deeply about. How would you feel if that got banned? what then? where does it end?

    If things like the right to trial by jury are up for grabs, then I don't think anything is safe.

     

  • At 1:01 pm, Blogger Damo said…

    I'm not sure it's a class war, but it does seem to fall largely on political boundaries (although, for example, Anne Widdecombe supports the ban). And what I find resentful is that protesters on the right wing of the political spectrum always seem to be able create enough chaos to get their cause heard, whereas the left side frequently finds it can be ignored. Remember the fuel protests? We had the bizarre and sickening position of both the Conservative Party and (of course) The Daily Mail telling you what fine upstanding people they were - when these are organisations that would normally do anything to portray protestors of any kind as unwashed and underinformed.

    Same again. Countryside Alliance not getting its way? They just stop access to bits of land. They blockade ministers' homes. They invade Parliament. Because they can.

     

  • At 2:58 pm, Blogger Damo said…

    One more thing. The bloke who plays Ali G has another character whose name I forget - basically a foreign journalist who uses his (faked) difficulties with English to show people for what they are. He went to a hunt once and by these means was able to easily drag out some astonishing bigotry. With that in mind, read this.

     

  • At 3:01 pm, Blogger John McClure said…

    There are several arguments that tend to get used in favour of hunting with dogs:

    Tradition – “We’ve done this for centuries, it is therefore our right to continue to do it.” This argument has more holes than a decent sized block of Swiss cheese. The Vikings had a traditional way of dealing with Christians that involved ripping their entrails from their bodies fast enough that the Christians got to see their insides before they died. The Christians responded by skinning Vikings alive and hanging their “skin suits” on the door of the church to warn other heathens about what fate awaited other unbelievers. Imagine someone doing either of those things today and then standing up in court to offer the defence “It’s traditional!” For centuries, it was considered fine to use humans as slaves, but we don’t do it anymore.

    Economy – “But thousands of country people will lose their jobs as a result of the ban!” Again, this is woolly at best – hundreds of thousands of people earn their living from the drugs trade, but that doesn’t provide an argument against trying to stop it.

    Science – “You can’t prove that the fox suffers.” This is right up there with “You can’t prove that cigarettes cause cancer.” The fox gets ripped to pieces by a pack of dogs – just because it doesn’t have a voice or the ability to write a strongly worded letter of complaint to the Telegraph doesn’t mean that it doesn’t suffer. How would the typical huntsperson feel I wonder if the nominated target for a particular hunt were one of their beloved hounds? I doubt they’d be so amenable then to the notion that the animal won’t suffer.

    There are worse things in the world – indeed there are, but that’s no argument in favour of what you’re doing. If the government turned its attention instead to the eradication of battery farming of chickens, I doubt the fox would derive much consolation, as his limbs were torn from his body, from the fact that the chicken his pursuers ate the night before was free range. It’s a classic psychological ploy for dealing with accusation that we learn as very young children to simply point at someone else and accuse them in turn of some more dreadful crime. Imagine a rapist standing up in court with the defence “You can’t convict me of rape when there are people out there doing bloody murder!”

    Civil liberties – The argument that it is an infringement of civil liberties for me misses one key point, and that is that there is a victim of the actions that these people want to be free to carry out (i.e. the fox). No one would dream of sanctioning paedophilia on the basis that “it is to some people’s taste, and it shouldn’t be up to the government to decide what we like and what we don’t” – but the harm caused to the fox is every bit as detrimental to the fox as the harm caused to a child by a paedophile is to the child. I believe you should have the right to say what you like and to think what you like, but you don’t get to enforce those views simply because you hold them.

    To conclude this short essay – The hunt supporters’ civil liberties remain intact – they have the right to protest against a decision they don’t like – and if they come up with a more convincing argument than “Well, daddy did it, and his daddy did it, so I’m jolly well going to do it” then maybe they can convince the nation and get their “sport” back. Otherwise, they ought to accept that the majority of people in this country don’t view hunting with dogs as acceptable practice, and on that basis, the government has been perfectly within its rights, indeed, has been as good as obliged, to instigate the ban.

     

  • At 4:05 pm, Blogger swisslet said…

    Thanks for your comment John.

    Let me just say again that I generally think hunting is a **bad** thing, and I agree with pretty much every point that you make.

    I do want to take you up on something, and it's in your most crucial point too... the bit on civil liberties. There is a very real, and crucial difference between fox-hunting and paedophaelia, and that is the involvement of a human as the victim. I'm certain that the fox doesn't have much fun at a hunt, and I do care about that, it's just that when push comes to shove, I care a lot more about what happens to a child. And don't be coming straight back at me with the "pro-life" defence here either. Abortion is different again because although the foetus clearly has no say in the matter, there is another human involved here as well - the mother, and I choose to believe that they have rights too.

    I'm moving off topic a little bit now, but for the sake of argument.....

    Where do you draw the line? Do you worry about the fox exclusively, or are there other animal issues you care about?

    I do a lot of worrying about animals: I worry about the plight of the fox. I worry about battery farming. I worry about poor brock the badger. I worry about veal calves.

    Poor things have no one to defend them and they can't speak up for themselves.

    I have a proposition.
    Let's outlaw meat eating.
    Let's ban the wearing of any leather products.

    Poor, fluffy, innocent creatures die to provide these to us. No one can tell me that they feel no pain when they die, so we should ban it all to protect them.

    There are perfectly acceptable alternatives we could use, so why persist with all this unneccessary killing?

    I don't want to belittle the plight of animals, but surely we should have a sense of perspective here. Protest about what people do to people....

     

  • At 4:09 pm, Blogger Teresa Bowman said…

    >>>If the government turned its attention instead to the eradication of battery farming of chickens, I doubt the fox would derive much consolation, as his limbs were torn from his body, from the fact that the chicken his pursuers ate the night before was free range.

    I'm sure I don't need to point this out, but I feel I ought to. I wasn't in any way saying, "Who cares about hunting, the government should ban battery chicken farming instead". They're both issues that should be looked at. I hate hunting and I'm all for the hunting ban, but I was just saying that people get more steamed up about the fox-hunting issue because, well, foxes are cuter than chickens. Whereas the battery chicken issue could be said to be more "important" because it affects everyone, or at least everyone who eats chicken and/or eggs.

    "Don't eat the tuna fish!"
    "Why?"
    "Dolphins get stuck in the nets!"
    "What about the tuna fish?"
    "Oh, fuck them, they taste good!"
    (Denis Leary)

     

  • At 4:23 pm, Blogger Soaring said…

    Slightly OT is this: A chap called Mr Pigeon came in yesterday. The employee he was after was called Mr Badger. I was going to make a joke, but I thought I had better not. I bet you thought this was a joke. Sorry, its not. Its true life. Ref Serena Wombat's post a while back about the ecumenical nultilingualational etymylogically multinational names of people in the UK.

     

  • At 6:13 pm, Blogger John McClure said…

    I accept a line needs to be drawn, but if you're giving me the pen, it's going to get drawn in such a way that killing an animal for sport is not OK, but killing it because you need to eat or be clothed is OK. I'm in no way religious, largely because of the way some people chose to interpret scripture, but I do think that when God gave man "dominion" over the animals, the intention wasn't "So have at them with a pack of hounds if you fancy that."

    I believe not in the fox's right to stay alive, but in its right not to suffer a cruel and painful death when a much quicker, and relatively pain-free one could be so easily administered instead.

    Wombat Lady - sorry if I sounded confrontational toward you - it was Wyrall Twitingham I was thinking of as offering the woolly argument that worse things happen, so ignore this one.

    Anyway - leave the fucking foxes alone, man!

    Or shoot them.

    But don't hunt them with dogs.

    Have a nice weekend!

     

  • At 6:45 pm, Blogger swisslet said…

    so, God gave us "dominion over animals"? That's the old testament right? I'm pleased you brought that up. Shall we get into some of the finer points of Leviticus as well now?

    [snigger snigger]

     

  • At 7:43 pm, Blogger Jenni said…

    Although this is a British issue, I thought I'd weigh in anyway. That a government would even think about banning a form of hunting would cause mass chaos here in the U.S. While Britain discusses limiting fox hunts, we in Wisconsin have opened it up to more species. For example, the dove...something seems not quite right about shooting the symbol of peace, but I guess I was in the minority on that. In Wisconsin, we also just added a constitutional amendment so that the right to hunt and fish will not be infringed upon. Nine other U.S. states already had similar amendments. Nevermind that giving people guns to go out and shoot animals can turn into things like this: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6551094/

    In the end, I agree with AravisArwen. Hunting for food is acceptable, but the idea of hunting for sport or the sake of "tradition" seems unnecessarily barbaric or inhumane. As for hunting animals to prevent widespread disease and suffering of the population (both "animal" and human"), I feel that's acceptable but unfortunate.

     

  • At 11:15 pm, Blogger Aravis said…

    I agree with John. One point not made yet is that traditional fox hunting is a form of cruelty to animals, something which is against the law here in the US. The abuse of animals raised for food is somewhat regulated here, but not so well as some of us would like. That's something that could be improved upon in both of our countries it would seem. Better regulation and monitoring of conditions would be a more reasonable start than declaring a Vegetarian State, however...

    Jennie, we don't use dogs to hunt in the same way. Our dogs track, but don't kill the prey. We don't use methods of hunting that would require government interference beyond enforcing the regulations in place. Otherwise, it sounds as though we are in agreement. :0)

     

  • At 11:17 pm, Blogger Aravis said…

    Doh! Sorry I misspelled your name Jenni!

     

  • At 11:43 pm, Blogger swisslet said…

    everyone's rooting for the fox, and no one seems to give a damn about the badgers....

     

  • At 12:16 am, Blogger Aravis said…

    Badgers are animals, and haven't I been defending animals? But it's true that I didn't really take up their cause. Foxes are being hunted for sport, while badgers I gather are in danger because it is believed that they spread disease. They're scrappy fighters, though. People don't often want to tangle with them, at least until now.

    ST, when it comes to a fight between people and animals, I'm usually on the side of the animals. At least they're honest about what they are. ;0)

    *standing on the sidelines cheering for the furrier critters*

     

  • At 12:50 am, Blogger Jenni said…

    AravisArwen...No worries about mis-spelling my name, I'm quite used to it. :)

    As for the differences in hunting here and there, I was aware of the different role of dogs. However, I guess I have a problem generally of the idea of hunting solely for sport, which stems partly from my ex-boyfriend's family. They had all these animal heads and antlers and horns all over the place, but rarely actually ate the meat from the animals. Killing something just so you can mount its head on your wall seems unnecessarily barbaric.

    ST...I would gladly defend the badgers, partially because the badger is the mascot of my alma mater. I couldn't get the first link about the trial culling to work, but when I read about it happening before, I was surprised to see that they were doing a trial culling to see IF badgers are actually linked to the spread of disease, not because they actually were linked to the spread of disease. What would they have done if it proved not to be true? "Oops sorry hundreds of murdered badgers, guess we were wrong?"

    Has it now been proven that the badger causes TB in cattle? And why are the badger less important than cattle? Because we don't eat them, presumably. So it seems the role of animal is to either get killed to be eaten or get killed to protect the animals that get killed to be eaten. Glad I'm not a badger...or a cow or fox.

     

  • At 5:57 am, Blogger Aravis said…

    Jenni, it sounds as though we are in total agreement then. :0)

     

  • At 9:07 am, Blogger swisslet said…

    Jenni - wonder why you can't make that link work..seems to be working okay for me. Anyway - key conclusion was 'The sum of evidence strongly supports the view that, in Britain, badgers are a significant source of infection in cattle'.

    It's still contentious mind you.

    Thanks for commenting. This is turning out to be quite a topic of conversation.

     

  • At 6:40 am, Blogger Aravis said…

    Well ST, that's because you posed such an interesting dilemma! :0)

     

  • At 4:03 pm, Blogger Jenni said…

    ST...thanks for informing me on the outcome for the badgers/TB connection. I tried the link again yesterday, but it still wasn't working. Today it is. My computer must have been so appalled at the thought of the poor badgers that it simply refused to load the page previously ;)

     

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