The CA meets the minister!!

[Newt]

Alison Hawes, the Countryside Alliance's South West regional director, said while she didn't condone the actions of a minority of protesters, she "understood" why it had happened.

 

I really hate to hear mealy-mouth claptrap like that. "Didn't condone" gives a strong suggestion of "doesn't condem" and if a group of your members behaves like that, you either publically bash them and swear to remove them as members or it becomes very clear that you support their actions.

 

[ 24. September 2004, 04:12 AM: Message edited by: Newt ]

[Bruno Broughton]

fenboy:

Are you a country lad, Bruno, or do you happen to live in the country? You can hardly moan about farmers ploughing fields at 2am. It's just a guess, but I would wager the famer didn't want to be ploughing his field at 2am, either. Something to do with necessity, I reckon... like getting as much done as possible before next round of bad weather.

I am not sure what you mean by 'country lad' or 'happen to live in the country'. I certainly don't 'happen' to live where I do - it was a deliberate act! My rural community comprises three villages, with approximately 180 houses and circa 400 people. The villages are separated by a couple of miles, single-track roads, no school, shop, post office or pub. Institutionally, there is one church and - thanks to a successful Lottery bid for £400k - a five year-old, fantastic new community centre.

 

I know it's the country because there is no sewage system and the rush hour traffic comprises two tractors and a couple of cars.

 

Not sure if I am a 'country lad', either. I wasn't born in the cab of a Massey Ferguson, if that's the acid test; it was the Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford (for the record). My first seven years of life were spent on the town edge, but mostly I played in fields, by the side of the Thames at Sandon or in Kennington Woods.

 

For your benefit and that of Mark Barrett, who seems unusually keen to 'diss' me for some odd reason, the next 11 were spent in rural Essex (septic tank, again), my mates were farm workers' kids, and most of the time I was wandering fields or woods, biking to fishing venues or helping out on farms. I cannot say that I ever met any other kids that hunted, or followed hunts; most (and their parents) either really loathed fox-hunters - who most certainly were wealthy, out-of-village intruders - or were non-plussed either way.

 

I have since lived in leafy suburbia and inner city Leeds and Belfast, inner city Belfast, and inner city and edge of town Nottingham.

 

I am not sure what any of this has to do with the validity or otherwise of any opinion I may hold. I know my genealogy and can trace my ancesters back to my 75th great grandfather, one Marcus Agrippa (who was a lieutenant to Julius Caesar and invaded Britain with the Romans). In some rural communities I know, that fact alone would be enough to mark me down as a settler. I would prefer the word 'townie'... in this case, Rome

 

Ploughing at 2am a necessity? Er, no, just the thoughtless, couldn't care a bloody less attitude by a few (not all) farmers, usually from huge farms run by absentee owners. This ploughing was done 36 hours after the crop was harvested and included the footpath; and rain was not forecast. It kept about a dozen people awake most of the night. Last time this happened - and the neighbours protested en bloc - the police message back was that "the contractors were in a rush because they were going on holiday in Spain the next day".

 

Last winter, it was spraying slurry - or dumping it more like - on the fields opposite our houses, when the fields were already saturated. There were three inches of slurry on the road when I got home, with the lip to the edge of my next-door neighbour's drive just preventing it running into her garage and house. It had done just that about 8 years ago, and she had to dump most of the contents of her garage and the downstairs carpets. The response from the farmer concerned? "Get lost". This time the neighbour contacted the EA, who turned up pronto and took samples from the slurry-laden ditches before issuing a formal warning. The drainage eventually leads to Aqualate Mere, an SSSI, the same place where - five years ago - English Nature had declared that the bream should be removed because they were responsible for eutophication (enrichment) of the water!!

 

Oh, my nose works perfectly well, and I have no objection to slurry or manure smells. I shovel the latter into fisheries. i do object to a hedge-cutting tractor that had done just that, then backed up to a new footpath sign and quite deliberately spashed it to pieces. I retrieved two footpath post from a nearby pond last year. How do you think they got there? The tooth fairy? Like most true rural kids, the young people in our villages wouldn't even drop a crisp packet, never mind uproot oak posts & signs. It seems pretty obvious to me who has the kit and the intent.

 

The point of my original post - and this response - was not to paint farmers with the same dirty brush, or even to support a fox-hunting ban. It WAS to highlight the fact that the CA does not speak for all or most rural people and that, if its leaders really cared for the countryside, and not just for fox-hunting farmers, it would tackle some of the issues about which rural people really are concerned. I couldn't give tuppence whether people hunt or not, as long as it doesn't affect me or mine; I do object when I read that the country (i.e. all of it) supports fox-hunting, that it is a town -vs- country war, that country people will rise up in fury and break this unjust law, or that the Labour Party (or any other)will be brought to its knees. The surest way for angling to get derailed is to hitch itself to that broken wagon in support of a sport that is about to be banned by a democratically elected Government.

 

I know a bit about no-go areas, breaking unjust laws and violence in support of causes thanks to four years at the beginning of 'the troubles', living in Belfast. A letter last week in one of the regional english papers mentioned the intense anger of hunting folk, the promise that the rule of law will go out of the window in the countryside, with the chilling aside that the Government should remember that most of the million or so shotguns are held by farmers, who are now furious. An MP who voted for a ban has has a rock thrown through the constuency office window, dead foxes have been dumped on the doorsteps MPs and the RSPCA, at least four council meetings have been invaded (with arrests and criminal damage in one case), a road blockage has been mounted on the A1 - with promises that the M25 will be next. And (to quote) "we have only just started". So, where will it end? Quite what scenes will we see next week at the Labour Party conference. I fear the worst. It is merely a matter of time before someone get killed.

 

I meet a heck of a lot of people in my work, mostly in the countryside, and I promise you that fox-hunting is hardly ever mentioned. What will swing even more country and town opinion against fox-hunting is more of the same we have witnessed in the last week. 26,000 fox-hounds are threatened with death. The one single act that will make the silent, indifferent majority itself rise up against fox-hunting is if, or when, those hounds start getting shot. Anyone who claims that fox-hounds do not make good pets may know about packs of hounds but knows nothing about dogs. I have yet to read of even ONE single attempt to find new homes for any of them, of talks with the RSPCA or the Dogs Trust, or appeals to the general public. Neither will there be any, I wager.

 

For the record - yes, I am prepared to re-home one fox-hound. If it is such a trained killer, it will have a whale of a time sorting out the bloody rabbits in my garden.

 

Lasty, the loss of jobs issue. Please show me, Mark, just where, anywhere, I have sought this, applauded this, or campaigned for this. Come to that, show me where - anywhere - where I have supported a ban on fox-hunting. It is indeed awful for anyone to lose their job (sorry, 'livelihood, which sounds more emotional). Can you enlighten me on the numbers involved, actual numbers that is, not guesses? According to the statistics I have read today, there are 5.5 million people employed in rural areas, of which those in farming account for 400,000 (falling by 14,000 per year). No mention of hunting.

 

There is a consolation - if the ban comes into force in June 2006, they have 21 months notice, which is way more than just about any other industry I can think of. Workers in textiles, engineering, car-making, steel-making, coal mining, aerospace, armaments, heavy engineering and many other 'downsized' industries would regards that as a luxury.

 

In rural Essex in the 1960s, farm workers in tied cottages got 24 hours before losing job & house if they dared to put a foot out of line.

 

Sorry to bore the rest of you. Rest assured that IMHO angling is mature and strong enough to stand up for itself and will be all the stronger for doing so. At its membership height, about 26,000 anglers were claimed to be in membership of the CA. Will anyone wager in which direction fox-hunting anger will be directed when the ban is finally ratified?

 

[ 25. September 2004, 12:45 AM: Message edited by: Bruno Broughton ]

[Leon Roskilly]

Bruno Broughton:

Ploughing at 2am a necessity? Er, no, just the thoughtless, couldn't care a bloody less attitude by a few (not all) farmers, usually from huge farms run by absentee owners.

Deep buried weed seeds, turned over by the plough, can be activated by exposure to light.

 

Farmers who wish to cut down on their herbicide bill have taken to ploughing in the hours of darkness.

 

Even the artificial light of the tractors beams can activate the seeds, so ploughing is done in total darkness, which sometimes means waiting for street lights etc to go off (it's a common practice in some rural hours to turn off the street lights in the wee hours - it's a bit of a shock when walking home late at night, to be plunged into total darkness, miles from anywhere!)

 

(Apparently, another reason for night ploughing is to lessen predation of earthworms by gulls)

 

Tight Lines - leon

 

[ 25. September 2004, 08:02 AM: Message edited by: Leon Roskilly ]

[poledark]

Strange reasons Leon

 

I have this morning spoken to "the bloke driving the tractor" and he said that the reason for working at night is simply a matter of the weather and the volume of work to get through and the limited amount of time available.

 

Now don't ask me why they have to get the fields ploughed and sown so soon after harvesting but I would hazard a guess that it has to do with suppressing the weeds which grow like lightning in the fields which have been left for a week or two.

 

So they (the farmers) seek to save on weedkiller and fertilizer, very laudable I would have thought, or maybe it is the difference in making money out of the crop and losing a packet if it goes pearshaped.

 

Den

[Peter Waller]

I think the ploughing at night issue is pretty irrelevant! However the reality probably has more to do with one contractot grabbing as much work as possible rather than any other issue! Oh for the days of Dobbin and Boxer!

 

My local MP voted against the hunt, and has taken up pretty much a whole page in our local rag explaining his reasons.

 

He is quoted as saying that he considers fox hunting to be unnecessarilly cruel. The only real value being pleasure. He goes on to say that he also considers that fox hunting, like cock fighting, bear and badger baiting all belong in the past.

 

My immediate comment being does he mean hunting by all means or just with dogs?

 

Now that hunting with hounds is to be consigned to the history books, as it should be, perhaps angling can now start talking to the shooters. I stress those who shoot, not the CA!