Minding your own business

The governments of todays UK are obsessed with meddling in peoples lives, be it in drugs, alcohol, health and safety, even hobbies and pastimes.
One of the great acts of spite from the Labour government was the hunting ban, it was a purely class driven piece of spite as a sop to those on the left of the party so that those who actually ran things could get on with ruining the country for generations.
Personally I don't have a problem with what people do in their spare times, if they want to get up in fancy dress and chase vermin around the countryside on horses and with dogs that's their affair so long as they don't ask me to pay for it and repair any damage done in the meantime by their activities.

Still we have a Labour government in charge and this activity is still being used as a class issue to try and get votes because the "evil" Tories will probably repeal the legislation Labour brought in.

BBC.

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn is launching a campaign to boost support for the fox hunting ban.

Mr Benn is urging people to sign up on a website backing the ban.
He claims the Tories plan to make repeal of the Hunting Act "a priority". Party leader David Cameron has promised MPs a free vote on the issue.
The pro-hunting Countryside Alliance has said today's meets could be the last traditional Boxing Day hunts before the ban is repealed.
Hunting foxes with dogs was outlawed in 2005, although hounds are still allowed to follow a scent or flush out a fox, but not kill it.

'Barbaric act'

Mr Benn's campaign is being launched to coincide with the Boxing Day hunts and is backed by the actors Patrick Stewart, Jenny Seagrove and Tony Robinson.
The environment secretary said: "For David Cameron, getting the act repealed is a priority.
"He used to hunt foxes; he talked about fox hunting in his first ever speech to Parliament; and he has said that if he becomes prime minister he will get rid of the fox hunting ban.

 Note the emotive language there, "barbaric" etc, clearly designed to woo voters and paint a picture of the Tories as someone you wouldn't touch with a bargepole.
And yet the clues are still there in the text, Cameron has promised a free vote, no whips as Labour have used to force legislation through in the past. In other words it will be a vote of conscience, something Labour have foregone these days with their gutter politics and class warfare policies.
So, it's not a priority at all for Cameron, I doubt it will even be in the manifesto, though I may be wrong.
In my mind it's all about civil liberties and the libertarian in me thinks that so long as no one else is harmed why should the government interfere in any activity, it may be cruel and barbaric, but so what, it's what some people want to do and so long as they don't ride their horses through my house it's really not a major issue with me or I suspect a lot of people.

This whole hunting ban was simply an issue of Labour spite, for that reason alone it should be repealed. After that should come a repeal of the gun laws brought in after Dunblane, but then again I've always suspected that our politicians don't want the ordinary man in the street to have access to weapons in case they use them on politicians, quite happy with criminals having them though as the result of the legislation so it would seem.

Still a return to civil liberties and personal freedoms would be welcome, though I suspect that a repeal of the hunting ban would be as far as we get with the Tories, but at least it's a start.