Here in Merry Olde England, the Hunting Act has now been in force for four years, and on any view, has been a complete waste of space.
You will recall that when New Labour swept to power in 1997, they did so on the back of a large contingent of New Labour urbanites, who for reasons best known to themselves, wanted a ban on fox hunting.
This was motivated in part by their naïve belief that foxes were the creation of Walt Disney, and a barely concealed contempt of big, beery Hooray Henries on big, beery horses and County gels with enormous fetlocks galloping hell for leather in pursuit of their little furry friends.
As Oscar Wilde described them: "The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable.
" What is less well known is that the Act took 700 hours of parliamentary debate spread over seven years before it hit the statute books, and then in a form that was difficult to understand and even more difficult to implement.
It was the classic 'square peg in round hole' syndrome, because there was a wealth of evidence to show that foxes were vermin and natural born killers, rather like their human counterparts, and where most animals will kill to eat, foxes kill for the sheer hell of it.
So if foxes became a protected species, we would all be buying our lamb from New Zealand and our chickens from Botswana.
So the draftsmen of this Act inserted a number of exemptions to the ban on hunting foxes, which had all the elements of a Whitehall farce.
In short, you were permitted to stalk and flush out foxes using no more than two dogs, to be shot by a 'competent' marksman.
That's the foxes, not the dogs.
This had all the ingredients of high fiasco, and the chances of 'Scrumpy Jack', the so called 'competent' marksman, dispatching one of our little furry friends with a single shot were about as remote as Chelsea Football Club retaining the services of their manager for longer than twelve months.
More recently, the High Court has pondered the wisdom of the Act, and in a thorough and far reaching judgment bordering on tedium, has ruled that once the 'exemption' defence has been raised, it is for the prosecution to disprove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
With successful prosecutions already as rare as hen's teeth, I suspect even the most determined prosecuting authorities will call it a day, and ride off into the sunset, where they might find one of our little furry friends making its way home after a good day's hunting, if you catch my drift.
You will recall that when New Labour swept to power in 1997, they did so on the back of a large contingent of New Labour urbanites, who for reasons best known to themselves, wanted a ban on fox hunting.
This was motivated in part by their naïve belief that foxes were the creation of Walt Disney, and a barely concealed contempt of big, beery Hooray Henries on big, beery horses and County gels with enormous fetlocks galloping hell for leather in pursuit of their little furry friends.
As Oscar Wilde described them: "The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable.
" What is less well known is that the Act took 700 hours of parliamentary debate spread over seven years before it hit the statute books, and then in a form that was difficult to understand and even more difficult to implement.
It was the classic 'square peg in round hole' syndrome, because there was a wealth of evidence to show that foxes were vermin and natural born killers, rather like their human counterparts, and where most animals will kill to eat, foxes kill for the sheer hell of it.
So if foxes became a protected species, we would all be buying our lamb from New Zealand and our chickens from Botswana.
So the draftsmen of this Act inserted a number of exemptions to the ban on hunting foxes, which had all the elements of a Whitehall farce.
In short, you were permitted to stalk and flush out foxes using no more than two dogs, to be shot by a 'competent' marksman.
That's the foxes, not the dogs.
This had all the ingredients of high fiasco, and the chances of 'Scrumpy Jack', the so called 'competent' marksman, dispatching one of our little furry friends with a single shot were about as remote as Chelsea Football Club retaining the services of their manager for longer than twelve months.
More recently, the High Court has pondered the wisdom of the Act, and in a thorough and far reaching judgment bordering on tedium, has ruled that once the 'exemption' defence has been raised, it is for the prosecution to disprove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
With successful prosecutions already as rare as hen's teeth, I suspect even the most determined prosecuting authorities will call it a day, and ride off into the sunset, where they might find one of our little furry friends making its way home after a good day's hunting, if you catch my drift.