oneampfuse

What harm does the hunting ban address?

From today, hunting animals with dogs will be illegal for the English, for the first time since William the Conqueror.

After the pubs close tonight, whilst the queues of the nation’s kebab shops gently vomit and fight, when the last fish-wrapper lies in the pavement and the burger bars are shuttered, we’ll be resting safely in our beds knowing that noone is killing animals for pleasure. If, that is, we are one of the 339 MPs who voted to outlaw hunting with dogs.

Keith Feiling, writing in 1950, said of the previous ban, “No part of Norman government was more hateful”. I’m a New Labour man at heart, but I’ve had serious problems with this Government: Dishonesty about the war in Iraq and the kow-towing to religious fundamentalists, for example. But the hunting ban, for its fabulous stupidity and hypocrisy, is indeed the most hateful.

Stupidity, as surely not all of the 339 can have realised that the processes which produce their Sunday roast involve the death of animals. Hypocrisy, as I understand that not all of them are vegans. Although the MPs put down their pasties and bacon butties long enough to vote for it, I don’t know how the courts are going to read the legislation with all the bacon fat stuck to the pages from the lard-stained figures of its drafters.

You have to actually be a vegan to vote for the ban without hypocrisy. Overwhelmingly, chickens, pigs and dairy cows live all of their lives in pain and misery, before being slaughtered in terror. The hunted fox lives a natural life and is then killed. Also, fox-hunting does not have the harmful externalities of animal husbandry: deforestation for grazing and farting herds are major contributors to global climate change.

It is sometimes suggested that there is something immoral about taking pleasure in killing. Does an MP not sometimes take pleasure in a lamb-chop? Even if he only ate goats raised on uncultivable hillsides and sung to sleep by a chorus of nymphs, the MP would have to ask himself, of each portion, whether it was for pleasure or necessity. Then he might ask himself whether any other thoughts and feelings have been criminalized.

In a sense, it’s hard to argue against the ban, as no real arguments have been given for it. What harm is it supposed to address? Animal rights? But we can still kill foxes, and rats too. A fox will not now be able to apply for compensation on the grounds that its rights have been infringed by a human any more than a rabbit will be able to assert its rights against a fox.

I was once, inexplicably, the target of write-in campaign by the Shellfish Liberation Front (or some such organisation). These people deserve much more respect than the anti-hunt brigade. At least they see some of the corollaries of ‘animal rights’, although I doubt they would assert the rights of a crab against an otter.

I’m a city-boy, and not fox-hunter. I don’t know why fox-hunting would interest anyone and find the idea unpleasant. However, I have very much the same attitude to Richard Whiteley’s activities. But I don’t think viewers of countdown should be arrested for being entertained by his dreadful puns.

Last week, I ventured into the countryside and stopped at a village church. There had been a break-in, and there were bits of an 800-year-old stain-glass window scattered over the graveyard. A man arrived who told me he was returning once again to wait for the police. They’d failed to make their appointment in the morning and there wasn’t much chance of them coming now, judging by the experience of the previous six break-ins.

Who wants even five minutes of police time that could have been spent catching those burglars wasted on trying to ascertain whether someone with dogs is hunting? As to the problem of policing the ban, William I had a solutioon: everyone who owned a dog had to cut three claws from its front feet. I commend this approach to the Government.

Perhaps the ban will not last as long as the Norman dynasty. The Conservatives have said that they will overturn the ban on their first day in office. My attitude to the Tories has historically been similar to that of Nye Bevan, but now I support their election, if only for one day.