Unintended Consequences: It's the Law!

From today's Yorkshire Post comes this article by Bill Carmichael:

"THE law of unintended consequences is the curse of well-meaning lawmakers around the globe.

You set out with high ideals of achieving some lofty goal – and end up doing precisely the opposite.

So it is with the banning of hunting with dogs. Almost three years after the ban was imposed in 2005, the sport of fox hunting has never been healthier.

This Boxing Day more than 250,000 hunt supporters gathered at over 300 meets around the UK – the numbers apparently swollen by people who previously had no interest in hunting, but who now turn out in protest at what they see as an illiberal and nanny-statist law.

So those people who set out to destroy fox hunting have succeeded only in invigorating it. Those who wanted to save foxes from the hounds have engineered a situation where more of them are killed than ever before.

You'd need a heart of stone not to laugh."

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