And There Went Hunting

[liadnan]

Well, so comes the ban. I'm glad the government are concentrating on the important things.

It makes no real difference to my life (I don't hunt, though family, a few friends, and people I know from where I grew up do), but I am quite strongly opposed to a ban*. One wonders whether it'll end up as Scotland has, where the only real difference is that the foxes, having been flushed with dogs, are now shot. And just how expensive and effective it'll turn out to be in policing terms. I'm also rather interested, technically as it were, to see whether the argument that the 1949 Parliament Act is void because it was passed under the provisions of its predecessor, the 1911 Parliament Act, actually stands up. Lord Donaldson, former Master of the Rolls, has been banging on about this for some years now (entirely independent of the hunting debate) and it's certainly true that the way the Parliament Acts fit with traditional constitutional theory has never been properly examined. I think the 1949 Act has only been used two or three times before now (the War Crimes Act, which the Lords rejected on the grounds of poor drafting and it being retrospective legislation; the age of consent; and possibly something else). I think the 1911 Act was only ever used, as opposed to threatened, to pass the 1949 Act.

The human rights argument will, I am fairly sure, fail, both in the High Court and in Strasbourg if it gets there: see Whaley.

*I take it as read that all but a handful of you, and all but a handful of my friends in general, disagree with me.

Comments

[red11.livejournal.com]

I don't think it was "the majority of elected MPs". It was a majority of those that voted, but not an absolute majority.

So what principle is it that's been won ?

[brelson.livejournal.com]

As a member of the pro-hunt lobby, you're clearly very irked by this decision and would like someone to beat over the head in order to vent your frustration. I'm not going to be that person.

Ultimately, you're not going to succeed in portraying the ban as being anti-democratic in nature. But if you sincerely believe it is, it must be a relief to know that there will be a general election in the next 18 months, at which the hunting ban will no doubt be a central issue. The Conservative party might well come to power on the back of their pro-hunting stance, in which case I'll be proven wrong (but I sincerely doubt I will be).

[red11.livejournal.com]

I'm not trying to vent anything - this was pretty much expected. I would like to know what you feel happy about - saying "banning fox hunting" ignores the debate over the last few months about animal welfare and alternative forms of fox control. You are not even going to be spared the sight of people in red coats riding horses. What is it that is making you happy ?

[brelson.livejournal.com]

I'm not especially happy about this particular decision, but I'm emphatically not unhappy about it. I see fox-hunting as a fairly barbarous activity, so there's a sense in which I'm a bit happier to be living in a country which now has one less form of legal barbarism.

That's just a kind of background happiness though - the issue of fox-hunting is nothing like as important to me as it is to you. If you want a serious debate on the issue, I'm not the person to be talking to. And as I said earlier, it's all up for grabs at the next general election, where I'm sure the Tories will be promising to shelve the ban. The energies of the pro-hunt lobby should be directed towards that, I'd suggest, rather than people like me who are simply disinclined towards barbarism.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Don't worry about "fox control" - by far the most important form of fox control, in the form of people running them over, will carry on as before. Fox numbers are bounded by resources, as with pretty much any animal population, and plenty of them die on the roads; the few extra killed by hunting make no real difference.

Really, the arguments proffered in favour of the hunt remind me of nothing so much as the story stammered by a man found naked with another man's wife, trying to explain how they got paint on all their clothes and then while they were changing he was reaching for something and fell on top of her. People don't hunt foxes because they need to control their numbers - they do it because it's fun. If numbers were their main concern, they would stick to shooting them; it would be far cheaper, and somehow I don't think they were plumping for hunting because they were worried about cruelty to the fox...