Hunt Ban & Free Vote

Herne

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19 March 2009
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Alec,

This is part of the reason why the Hunting Act is such a bad piece of legislation and why it must be removed from the Statute Books - I cannot think of any other piece of legislation that is viewed with such contempt by the people that it is supposed to govern.

The thing about Law is that it only works with the consent of the people being governed. Even burglars accept that burglary should be a crime.

Hunting people do not accept - and never will accept - that hunting ought to be illegal and therefore they view the law with contempt.

The Hunting Act 2004 is broken every single day of the year. And I am not talking about "registered hunts", here, I am talking about everyday people who let their dogs do what dogs do, be it you letting your dogs chase a hare, or a shepherd letting his sheepdogs see off a fox or a farmer using his terrier underground to protect his chickens. These people see what they do as plain common sense and would consider it completely absurd to be told that what they are doing is “criminal” – if they even thought about it.

However, under the Law, what these people do is every single little bit as illegal as the Heythrop Hunt in full fig hunting a fox with a pack of hounds.

Are the antis clamouring for the Police to be chasing farmers and shepherds and game keepers? No. because they don’t really care about those people. They only care about stopping the registered Hunts.

But the Law cannot work like that. A government must not be allowed to pass a badly worded law that affects everyone and then say ”Oh well, we only care about controlling the people that we don’t like. The rest of you can just ignore it – that’ll be fine!”

That is bigotry and it is wrong.

Simple question: Is hunting with dogs ethically and/or morally wrong under Law?

Simple answer: No. The Hunting Act 2004 lists not less than 9 circumstances under which hunting with dogs is permitted.

Either something is immoral or it is not. There are no exemptions to morality. You do not say of paedophilia: It is immoral – except in the case of red-headed kids on a Tuesday, in which case it’s fine.

The Hunting Act threfore defeats its own purpose because it enshrines in Law the principle that hunting with dogs is neither immoral or unethical.

It then goes on to say “but we’ll stop some people from doing it anyway, based purely on the arbitrary prejudices of the people who drafted it.”

That is bigotry and it is wrong.

The Hunting Act 2004 is an appalling piece of legislation, based on prejudice and bigotry. It is a disgrace to our legal system and no hunting follower or supporter of plain justice should be satisfied with anything less than its complete repeal.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

Hunting people are good people – so keep doing something!
 
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