Saturday, August 19, 2006
First they came for the foxhunters...
The Times reports here on some anglers being attacked by "A gang of masked hunt saboteurs wielding baseball bats ... are believed to have targeted the fly-fishermen after failing to find many grouse-shooting parties."
I'm not too sure of the wisdom in looking to disrupt a shooting party with baseball bats, but no doubt intelligence doesn't feature too highly with this crowd. I mean a baseball bat can be lethal, and if someone is threatened with lethal force, well they can (I believe) use lethal force to defend themselves.
Anyway it basically tells us all we need to know about these people, they were looking for one event to disrupt and when they couldn't find one, they decided to go and ruin some other peoples enjoyment. I must confess that when foxhunting was legal, I never had the slightest interest or felt the urge to go; although I have never been in favour of the ban. Now that it is illegal, I feel it is the sort of thing one should support, as supporting it shows support for personal freedom and personal choice.
Ultimately I have my own moral view on things, but I don't go around foistering them on other people. Provided peoples actions don't interfere with the rights of others they should be free to pursue them. Instead it seems there's always some Cromwellian killjoy either a state sponsored one, or a group of private busybodies with some supposed moral high-ground, always trying to disrupt some enjoyment or another; what better example than here where they couldn't find the enjoyment they wanted to disrupt, so went off and disrupted something else instead.
If you want to go around in masks wielding baseball bats why not find some local drug dealers or muggers and do the community a favour, instead of picking on people enjoying their legitimate hobbies?
I'm not too sure of the wisdom in looking to disrupt a shooting party with baseball bats, but no doubt intelligence doesn't feature too highly with this crowd. I mean a baseball bat can be lethal, and if someone is threatened with lethal force, well they can (I believe) use lethal force to defend themselves.
Anyway it basically tells us all we need to know about these people, they were looking for one event to disrupt and when they couldn't find one, they decided to go and ruin some other peoples enjoyment. I must confess that when foxhunting was legal, I never had the slightest interest or felt the urge to go; although I have never been in favour of the ban. Now that it is illegal, I feel it is the sort of thing one should support, as supporting it shows support for personal freedom and personal choice.
Ultimately I have my own moral view on things, but I don't go around foistering them on other people. Provided peoples actions don't interfere with the rights of others they should be free to pursue them. Instead it seems there's always some Cromwellian killjoy either a state sponsored one, or a group of private busybodies with some supposed moral high-ground, always trying to disrupt some enjoyment or another; what better example than here where they couldn't find the enjoyment they wanted to disrupt, so went off and disrupted something else instead.
If you want to go around in masks wielding baseball bats why not find some local drug dealers or muggers and do the community a favour, instead of picking on people enjoying their legitimate hobbies?
Tags: fox hunting, fishing, rights, freedom
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
