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BBC listeners call for Hunting Act to be scrapped
A MASSIVE radio poll demanding the return of legal fox hunting appears to have bewildered the producers of BBC radio's flagship news programme, today, over the New Year.
Listeners were asked to vote for the parliamentary act that they would most like to see repealed and of the thousands who voted, a massive 53% demanded the scrapping of the Hunting Act, which made fox hunting illegal two years ago.
The next most unpopular Act, which took Britain into the Common Market in 1972, attracted just under 30%, a result which clearly embarrassed Today presenters, for the programme as long been accused of being politically correct and focussed mainly on London-based stories.
Presenters attempted to smear the vote by suggesting that it had been orchestrated by the Countryside Alliance, which admitted that it had urged members to vote in an article on its website.
But the League Against Cruel Sports had made a similar, though opposite appeal, on its website and had gone further by urging its supporters to write to the BBC demanding that the anti-hunting bill be removed from the poll.
Your views:
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Like alot of country people I do not have a problem with fox hunting except I firmly disapprove of the digging out of a hunted fox - to me this is not hunting. I do however have a problem with stag hunting. Stag hunts claim they are 'managing' deer - this is simply far from the truth, all they manage to do is constantly hunt the best animal that will give them the best of a day's hunt.
One local stag pack has this season recommenced hind hunting only because on the ground they hunt, there is hardly a stag left. I do however accept that whilst some of the best stags are killed by the hunts, we do have a serious problem with commercial poachers - these people by and large are what we call the low life - the morons on motor and quad bikes that are used to turn and flush the deer usually from places where land owners do not approve of hunting.
At the present rate, I will predict that groups of ten or more red deer will be a rare sight within the next five years.
Peter - Wellington, Somerset
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The ban on foxhunting should be kept and strengthened. How can anyone justify a pack of 20 or so dogs chasing and hunting down a solitary fox - and in a country that is supposed to pride itself in fair play? May I ask whether those in favour of foxhunting would support bull fighting in Spain? To be consistent and not hypocritical they would have to!
Hamish Ralston - Orebro, Sweden. formerly Chinnor, Oxon., UK
