Mr Bliar

[Highlander]

From an article in the Times newspaper…if only Mr Bliar could be relied upon to do the same for shooting sports

 

An Act of singular ingenuity BY BRUCE ANDERSON

 

 

IT IS TIME to apologise. The Government has been proved triumphantly right; its critics, including me, humiliatingly wrong. It is now clear that the Bill to ban hunting was not only new Labour’s most successful piece of domestic legislation. It is one of the best Acts of Parliament promoted by any postwar government. Consider the position of hunting ten years ago. There were problems. Deterred both by the expense and the time involved, not enough youngsters were joining hunts. Some farmers were becoming troublesome about hunts riding across their land, especially if there was a daft wife in the offing who had been listening to one of Paul McCartney’s females.The hunting community also knew that it was disapproved of by the urban masses, who had even infected the National Trust. The NT had banned hunting on land in Devon, which had been left to it on the understanding that hunting would always be preserved. The threat of a ban made it difficult to recruit young hunt workers. Why take up a career that might not survive? So hunting morale had suffered — until Tony Blair rode to the rescue. It is true that ostensibly the Government brought forward a Bill to prohibit hunting. But any Labour backbencher who was deceived by this must have been as dim as John Prescott. The real purposes were transparently obvious. The Blair Bill demonstrated that it would be impossible to ban hunting. Moreover, by turning hunting into a question of civil liberty, it enabled the hunts to win back public support. Hunting is more popular than it has been since polling began. There are even reports that the National Trust will start to live up to its name, and lift the ban. In the shires, meanwhile, consciences have been pricked. People have realised that they must use their hunts or risk losing them. Last season more people hunted than for many years and more foxes were killed. The number of youngsters riding out delighted everyone involved with the sport. There has been a deplorable tendency for those involved in hunting to insult the Prime Minister. T-shirts have been produced with the slogan “******** to Blair”. This is a shockingly ungrateful way to treat a benefactor. In future, I hope that the first stirrup cup at every meet will be drunk to the refrain of “D’ye ken Tony Blair, with his coat so pink”.

[old rooster]

Good old Tone, see you lefty ***** were right all along, he is a friend of the hunting people.

[Hodmedod.one]

Good old Tony...I almost wish I had voted for him.

 

The sooner him and his cronies are voted out the better.

 

Lets see what sort of a balls-up Dangerous Dave Cameron can make of running whats left of our country

[bofh]

Yep I'd agree they made a cracking mistake that seems to have paid off in our favour. However, let's not site back and grin to soon. You know what these tree huggers are like, I'm sure they will be moaning to ban something else that's nothing to do with them soon enough.

 

Bofh

[Teal]

Thing I fear about is 2-3 years down the line, a panorama or similar investigation into it, and perhaps a bit of a public outcry. I think the CA has done a lot of great work to get the issue onto territory which we can win. LACS shock value of video footage, has gone, and the issues promoted by CA still stand. They will need to be careful though, not go back to the bad old days, and keep thinking hunting is in the firing line, and then they shouldn't have problems.

[pavman]

I must make time to find out the BNP stance on hunting and field sports, so far they are getting my next vote