Welcome to my blog. I am a former local journalist who now works in PR and a Conservative and community activist in Woking and Horsell. This blog will keep updated on local issues as well as my interests and quirky news stories.
The Hunting Act 2004 was undoubtedly an affront on civil liberties. It was a spiteful, mobbish and class-motivated piece of social wrecking imposed by a liberal political elite onto a significant minority of the country whose ways they never understood.
I remember as a student writing articles opposing the ban and it’s easy to remember that the act formed part of the 1997 manifesto, taking seven years for Labour to enact. It has achieved very little – the hunters still like to kill foxes “by accident” after the hounds get “out of control” and the antis still like to commit acts of vandalism and assault in the name of “animal rights”. How either party feels it owns the moral high ground is beyond me.
The ban remains a dreadful example of badly-drafted and devisive law that fails to serve the common good. But I’m dismayed that the Conservative manifesto is promising a free vote – effectively repealing the act. Yes, the 2005 manifesto says:
“A Conservative Government will therefore introduce a Bill, and offer
Parliament a free vote, to overturn the Government’s ban on hunting with
dogs.”
But 2010 Britain has moved on. Labour blundered their way through this issue, eventually only returning to it to please the leftist anti-war crowd. The fight has been had. Labour has ruined the economy and placed Britain into huge debts; they’ve fought expensive pointless wars; they’ve expanded the public sector beyond the size that the private sector can afford; they’ve curtailed civil liberties in so many areas and smote business with everything they had. Labour has taxed, tinkered, toyed and torn the country to bits and now they are terminal decline.
The Conservatives have so, so many things to put right. Resurrecting the hunting issue will divide a society that desperately need unity and force social strife where we need recovery, consolidation and statesmanship. Moreover, it will paint the party as narrow-focussed and hell-bent on looking after its own before the nation as a whole. Labour stooped lower than low with the hunting ban – we must, must not stoop ourselves and for the sake of first term success, leave this damned law out of the 2010 manifesto.
UK plc is already going to the dogs; Conservatives cannot make doing the same an option.
