Madnesss, Politicians and Dogs

I found this very well-written piece on the web site of the National Coursing Club

“MADNESS, MADNESS – MADNESS”

by Sir Mark Prescott

How many hours did Parliament devote to debating the war in Iraq? The answer is 41 hours. How many have died since that war began? If you believe independent sources 220,000 men, women and children.

How many hours did Parliament devote to debating the war in Afghanistan? The answer is 22 hours. How many human beings have died since that war began? If you believe the same independent sources again, it is in excess of 70,000 men, women and children.

How many hours have Parliament devoted to debating “Hunting with Dogs”? Answer: 700 hours. How many hares died coursing last year (wait for it) exactly 169!

If you told the Man on the Moon that 700 hours of Parliamentary time were devoted to 169 hares and only 63 hours to killing 290,000 human beings, he would scarcely believe you.

If you then described how, after 700 hours of debate and deep consideration, the Mother of all Parliaments, incorporating presumably the finest brains in the Kingdom, had fine tuned and honed a Bill, to such an extent that it had resulted in it being legal to kill a rabbit but illegal to kill a hare, the Man on the Moon would think you were joking.

If you then explained that such an offence would incur a £5,000 fine or 6 months in prison, but that almost no politician, few policemen and certainly not a dog in the world can tell the difference between a hare and a rabbit, the Man on the Moon would surely be convinced he was the victim of an elaborate joke.

Famously a BBC newsreader, some years ago, having introduced without comment footage of a Garda policeman’s dying body, partially covered by a tarpaulin, with blood pumping down the gutter, prefaced the next news item with the words “What you are about to see now, may prove disturbing” and proceeded to show footage of the Waterloo Cup. But what really is disturbing is that probably that newsreader was right to issue a warning, for modern man is so divorced, by supermarket packaging and cellophane, from the realities of nature and animal husbandry that the sight of two dogs pursuing a hare as Nature has decreed for the last 4,000 years probably is distressing.

For modern man is totally ignorant of the fact that the hare is the only mammal in creation with complete vision behind and an 180 degree blind arc in front (and now you know why it always jinks prior to disappearing through a small hole in a hedge!) When pursued it knows exactly what it is doing, for it is perfectly adapted for pursuit, and if fit, healthy and alert it will live (only 1 in 9 hares coursed are killed), but if it is slow, ill or stupid it will die (but never be wounded). This process is called Natural Selection, the survival of the fittest, upon which, as Darwin told us, depends the survival of every species in the world.

However, the hare was not designed by Evolution to evade guns, or cars it cannot see, nor to perceive the dangers of toxic sprays. Yet modern man is happy to tolerate the annual unselective slaughter and wounding of hundreds of thousands of hares by such methods, yet balk and legislate against coursing, a selective means of control, that conserves thousands each year on coursing estates yet kills only 169 animals, and those selectively, as Evolution decrees.

It is agreed by all that a banning Bill will, in total, not result in one hare’s life being saved and, further, in the words of the Game Conservancy investigation into hare numbers, “It is only on hare coursing estates that hare numbers are on the increase against the National trend”. It is an undoubted fact that, should coursing be banned, hundreds of greyhounds from off the tracks and from the Irish coursing fields, who are too cunning or too slow to earn their place will have no second career in the English coursing field. Both the dogs and the hares will all be adversely affected by a ban.

Four independent enquiries in 40 years have found in coursing’s favour; three of the last four Directors of the League Against Cruel Sports have changed their minds on its abolition. Yet modern man persists in attempting to end Britain’s oldest field sport and with it one of our oldest sporting traditions “The Waterloo Cup”.

Ban coursing and thousands of hares currently conserved will annually be shot. Hundreds of dogs will have no future and only 169 hares will be saved.

As the Man on the Moon looks down on this scene of self inflicted destruction, he can only reflect, in those saddest of closing lines to that much loved British film “The Bridge over the River Kwai”, “Madness, madness – madness!”