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Originally Posted by scastle
 Why shouldn't the government stick it's nose in to this? It's something a lot of voters feel quite strongly about (whether for or against). Why should the Government stand by and allow creulty to animals (even vermin such as foxes)? |
This is actually a pretty fundamental question about what we believe Government is for.
Should a government in general exist to tell us what we can do, or what we can't?
Should a government ban anything simply because a majority of people believe that thing to be wrong? (thereby putting a whole lot of minority pursuits, certain religions included, at risk)
I think Government's role is to ensure an environment exists in the country to allow people to get on with their lives, as far as possible, without let or hindrance. The existence of foxhunting does not cause let or hindrance to anyone. The existence of foxes, on the contrary, causes a good deal of hindrance to certain farmers.
As for animal cruelty, if the Government was genuinely concerned about that as an issue, there is a lengthy list of animal cruelty issues far more serious than this that they could tackle first. This has nothing to do with animal cruelty; that is pure smokescreen designed to obscure one disgusting fact: that the Labour back-benches are still populated by Marxist dinosaurs who wish to ban certain pursuits and traditions
purely and simply because they perceive them to represent a social class they would rather did not exist. Whatever Government is for, Government for the purposes of blindly imposing ideology is not it.