Labour WILL take power again, as you said ................ climb on board the winning train

Don't be a loser all your life!! There are places for the Tory disillusioned!

Lets all bow down and kiss Blairs feet - he has done such a great job he needs our adoration!

Best leader we have ever seen?? I think so!

Pete

 

nuff said really

 

Bring back the poll tax. I admit, it needs a bit of tweaking, but it could be made to be a much fairer tax then the poxy council tax.

 

In a strange way I can see your reasoning here. If you had followed the other threads on this topic you would see that I don't argue that it isn't cruel for the fox, I just argue that it is unreasonable for people who aren't involved to want me to stop doing it because they believe I am wrong. I might believe that football is cruel, for example, because players get hurt and occasionally (very very occasionally) die while playing the game and it is tedious. I might also believe that Grand Prix is cruel because drivers occasionally die and it is also tedious. However, I have no desire to stop these persuits.

The fact is that one mans sport is another mans cruelty and we have to live with that. There is little or no difference between trout fishing, for example, and fox hunting. Many people will argue that the angler eats the trout but there are also many anglers who return the trout they catch and in principal that is not so very different from fox hunting where the chase is the important element, not what you get to eat at the end of it.

I think that what is important is the preservation of diversity. Wait until the next UK Grand Prix is cancelled because of pro-hunt protesters blocking roads etc. Then we will see how keen the government, and many on here, suddenly become on diversity. I might consider GP racing cruel as some stupid human who is only in it for the cash might die, but I'm not going to tell you or him that it has to stop.

As well as hunting your fundamental rights to decide what you do are under threat here and now that we have a government who want to put GPS tracking devices on your car, issue you with ID cars that you will need to present to buy a bus ticket etc. etc. I think it is important that we all respect diversity and that we all fight to stop the government preventing people going about their daily business. If we don't stand together then soon this country will be run by a bunch of Stalinists supported by a range of PC and environmental nutters who claim that we need to stop doing things for the environment, or out of respect for some obscure religion that has 3 members in the UK or for some other nutty reason that when history looks back it will ask "how did they get sucked into that" in the same way as we look back at Hitler and ask how Germans got sucked into supporting him. Our Hitler may not kill several million Jews, but it is looking likely that he might set out to eliminate peasants and the natural balance of the environment in the British Isles.

Two points worthy of consideration are that the more well off people who like to hunt have, for the most part, already bought houses in Ireland. The price of houses in Ireland in good hunting country has gone through the roof. So, the only people disadvantaged by the ban are the working class hunt members who can't afford to keep a house in Ireland. The second point is that hunting has been banned for some time in Scotland. Before the ban there were 10 hunts, today there are 10 hunts and they estimate that they kill more foxes and have had more support since the ban.

 

Except this Government cocked up with the decison to ban foxhunting, they did it for their own agenda. Simple. End of!

 

 

I return a lot of trout, some streams in the US, especially those subject to high angling pressure, don't allow you to kill any fish so all trout taken must be returned. Under these circumstances it is not uncommon for trout to be caught a very many times and there are many studies documenting this, and documenting a good survival rate. It is not uncommon for the larger fish to become "known" just like large carp. There are even studies documenting how long it takes a trout to "throw" a hook which is left in the fish. Some US anglers will actually break off fish rather than play them for extended periods of time as the studies tend to indicate that they don't suffer too badly from this.

Please try to understand the topic under discussion before shouting too loudly. Those ignorant of the subect matter should remain silent and try to learn from those with experience before testing the water with their own thoughts and suggestions.