“I'm not sure you are right in your assertion, graydjames, "that foxes don't kill for fun". Fun might be an unfortunate word to use but I have experienced at first hand the mayhem foxes have caused by ripping the heads of six chickens and leaving their carcases behind. Now that is carnage that is unacceptable in a so-called "civilised" society.”

“I also keep some pet chickens and fear foxes and take precautions.
BUT I don't think they kill for fun - once they attack a flock, all the birds panic and the fox attacks randomly in a frenzy - but I would n't call it 'for fun', tragic as it is for the owners.”

“@ graydjames

While I agree with you on several points, saying that `foxes don't kill for fun' is misleading. A friend of mine kept ducks and hens in a coop at the bottom of her garden and they were all killed one night by a fox who left most of the carcasses; many of them headless but otherwise untouched. Whatever motivated the fox, it clearly wasn't just a hunt for food.”

“Graydjames a couple of good posts from you and I would like to pick up on a few points if possible.

If boxing was banned then it would go underground, illegal with no medical supervision for fighters, it wouldn't go away but would become darker then it is already, do the moral lobby not see that .

You said there are A hundred more democratic examples of successful pressure groups, like women getting the vote, yes, but have you forgotten the fact that Muslim women had their freedom of choice removed with the Euro veil ban, a controversial issue yes, but indirectly still an erosion of liberties taking away female choice.

Wanting something removed because you don't like it doesn't always make it democratic. Within history and in all cultures, communities are always judged by others people's standards of morality democratic and oppressive combined.

Remember not all pressure groups are positive, you have the EDL and BNP in there that as well, yes are you suggesting all pressure groups should prevail. Some link into a public mood and others are an extreme, minority without support.”

“@ amoros11

If pressure groups did not have their way, there would be little change in this world.

It is all about numbers and the strength of the pressure but you can never stop it. Pressure groups will always, ultimately, have their way if their argument if sound enough to gain support. That is eactly why fox hunting WAS banned. It is why women have the vote, why smoking was banned in public places, why homosexuality was legalised, why burnging as a form of execution was stopped, why, later, capital punishment was stopped altogther - there are hundreds more examples - and it is why boxing will almost certainly, one day, though admittedly not in the near future, be banned. Once the BMA called for a ban the goalposts moved on that issue and they will surely move again once a sufficient majority come to accept the damage it does and the moral bankruptcy of people taking gratification from seeing two human beings slugging one another.

But my point isn't really about boxing; it is about the importnace of the power of pressure groups and to suggest that they should not have their way is not just silly, it is naive.”

“This is the ONLY tenet, I repeat, the ONLY tenet, in Ms Allison's obssessive repertoire of arguments concerning the welfare of animals with which I am in 100% agreement.

Those country folk in favour of fox hunting always trot out this argument about the damage done by foxes (by the way foxes do not, as amoros suggests, kill for fun) and few could dispute that they do do damage to farm animals and other wild life. But this completely misses the point. It is absolutely NOT an argument for fox hunting.

If there is a good argument for controlling foxes in, for example, the same way as there is an argument for killing badgers - and I personally do not conclude on these issues one way or the other for I lack the experitse to say - then I would have no objection to some form of cull. But it is the point that people actually gain some sadistic pleasure from hunting the fox down and then allowing hounds to tear the animal limb from limb, that makes it so very wrong. My own view is that one has to be very slightly sick in the head to take pleasure in such an activity.

I do not, nor could I ever, accept that it is right, in a civilised society, to kill animals for fun, and espeiclaly to kill them barbarically, even if there is some motive, even a sound and powerful motive, for reducing numbers.”

“I'm not a country person but I'm against pressure groups changing traditions otherwise where would it stop, what would be next, boxing and so on.

Do we really understand enough about country life here in the City to dictate and change their traditions for them? Judgements are always made up of other people's ideas of political morality.

People in the country say that the fox also kills for pleasure and livestock is lost through the fox, that's the country line. But I'm again pressure groups having their way and tampering with traditions and lecturing us on morals.”

“And you, Mrs. Allison, consider we live in a "civilized" society? Where would you like me to start?!!”