Huntin

Tuesday, 1 July 2003

It's Wimbledon week, so I shouldn't have expected anything different; but two days of solid rain is a bit much for the start of supposedly the most summery of months: July. Tja. Henman is through again to the quarter finals, at least.

Brigg is decidedly quiet today - partly the rain - but also I suspect in reaction to the Fox Hunting Bill being debated (and voted upon) yesterday evening: many pro-hunting land-owners will be present in London to press the case for the this imported Norman tradition.

The thing that strikes me as odd about the 'debate' about fox-hunting is not to do with the issues of (undoubted) cruelty to foxes (and the horses being put at risk of injury) or 'pest control', but the fact that foxes are now an urban and suburban beast. The chances of a farmer's chickens being eaten by a fox are nil - since the chickens are couped up safe in tiny metal boxes with very rigid iron bars along with their 100,000 sister hens in massive air-conditioned barns. Mr and Mrs Jones thrown out chicken carcasses in the rubbish bin are a more likely target. I wonder if the fox hunters will soon be thundering through suburban gardens to halt this menace to our civilisation ... ?

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