What was that picture I held up on Newsnight ?

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That picture ?  Well, here it is.  Sorry.  It’s very upsetting, and I felt like I wanted to give you choice of whether to see it or not.  To be honest, I myself often refuse to look at some of the pictures of atrocities I get sent in E-mails, of people persecuting foxes and badgers.  But in this case I think the point needs to be made and the people need to know.  

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THIS is what ‘flushing out’ a fox often looks like.

 

Awful fox picture

No – it’s not an unusual, exceptional occurrence.  The LACS has thousands of pictures just as upsetting as this, from ‘Terrier Work’, which is of course an integral part of the Fox Hunting community.  These people are actually legally able to ‘dig out’ these poor creatures and shoot them. Bad enough.  What is NOT legal is torturing them and then putting them in bags or cages or dustbins in a pitiful state for later release in front of a pack of hounds. But this is what regularly happens. Because a certain kind of human being enjoys this obscenity.  

This particularly hideous pic was tweeted, I understand, by a terrier man, boasting about the pleasure they’d had torturing this beautiful (female) animal.  As you can see, the fox is being help by the ears while a hound is tearing the skin and flesh off its front legs.  The hound is being held in place by another man.  They chillingly call it ‘de-socking’.  It’s hard to imagine behaviour more depraved than this.  

Yet, in trying to sneak a ‘relaxation’ of the Hunting Act past us all, the Government is encouraging and actually endorsing despicable behaviour like this.  Cameron’s Statutory Instrument, they tell us, is to make it easier to ‘flush out’ a fox.  Of course it’s quite absurd to imagine that a whole pack of hounds is needed to assist this kind of murderous operation.  The real reason for the Pro-Hunt lobby to have forced this issue is of course so they can go back to charging around the countryside with full packs of hounds, and then the dogs ‘accidentally’ picking up the scent of fox, and … tally-ho.  To suggest that this very unworthy Statutory Instrument is about ‘wildlife management’ is a blatant lie and an outrage.  

It’s an absolute necessity for those of us who care about decency and humane treatment of all creatures to stand up and speak our mind right now.  And we all need to clearly tell our MPs how we expect them to behave on Wednesday, and how they must reject this attempt to hurl us back into the barbaric past.  

Bri

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