Chester Chronicle letters

Jan 30 2004 Daily Post

AFTER THE appalling incident on January 10, when League against Cruel Sports campaigner Chris Owen was bitten by Chester Hunt hounds in the Clatton-Duddon area, and his children and dogs were frightened it is clearly time for the Prime Minister, elected partly on the promise to ban animal hunting, to call a halt to this uncivilised tradition.

This man has had problems before, with hounds cornering a fox in his garden in 1987, and 10 years earlier they killed and disembowelled a pet cat in a back garden.

There may have been no protesters (or so the hunt representatives claim) at the Cheshire Hunt Boxing Day Meet, but the League Against Cruel Sports staged 21 protests at other Boxing Day Meets including the Cheshire Forest meet this year, and while 'a great many residents are extremely angry,' - after a dangerous trespass on the A51, and the Cheshire Forest hounds running amok on the A54 on the same day in the same area - the minority who enjoy inciting dogs to harass wild animals will have to think again.

League against Cruel Sports has called for a suspension of the Cheshire Hunt pending an inquiry (hopefully independent of the fox-hunting 'authorities' ) and the resignation of its huntsman and three Joint Masters.

If the law only allowed drag hunting as practiced in North East Cheshire since 1958, and the county's two fox hunts took to artificial predetermined scent lines, riders would still enjoy the challenge of a cross-country gallop, the best aspects of the sport and its social life would be preserved, and residents in a dairy farming and 'commuter' area with a complex network of roads and high-speed railways would be relieved.

NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED

YOUR correspondent from the League Against Cruel Sports Points of View January 9 is entitled to query the Countryside Alliance's poll finding regarding the British public's attitude to hunting.

As you would imagine, the Countryside Alliance has been polling consistently on this issue. Our NOP poll of December 2002 showed that 59% of the public were in favour of either self-regulation or licensing.

The poll presented the same three options (self-regulation, hunting under licence, or an outright ban) put before MPs on a free vote in the House of Commons.

I don't think you could put a more appropriate set of questions to the public, since this is precisely what their elected representatives were being asked to vote upon.

The poll has been supported by four other polls carried out by NOP, YOUGOV, and ICM since March 2002, none of which show a majority for a ban on hunting.

The British are tolerant people, and these results reflect a disinclination to pursue the unnecessary curtailment of our freedoms.

Ms Hewitt attempts to paint a picture of the Alliance as somehow being in the pockets of the rich. We are a broad church with members from all classes and levels of prosperity.

Our membership excels at fundraising, and if we have built up a war chest to fight a hunting ban, it is to the credit of our members.

It should be borne in mind that the Alliance has a membership of around 100,000, whilst the League Against Cruel Sports has fewer than a paltry 7,000, and whilst the CA can motivate 400,000 people to protest on the streets of London, no anti-hunting organisation has ever exceeded a turnout of more than a couple of thousand at an anti-hunting protest.

Ms Hewitt also refers to Labour's promise to ban hunting. Not so. The party committed itself to resolving the contentious issue of hunting with dogs in their 2001 manifesto.

They could easily have said that it would be banned, but a pernicious addiction to 'spin' meant that the manifesto statement was ambiguous, and could as easily have referred to licensing and regulating hunting, as it could to banning it, giving hope to both sides.

BARRY HENDERSON Countryside Alliance Regional Director, Llangynhafal, Ruthin

D G SANDLIN'S letter in defence of fox hunting really takes the biscuit. The fox is blamed for hounds invading property; so sue the fox if you are bitten by beagles, or your pet is killed, or there is a train/car crash.

If my dog did any of these things, (if I owned one) I would be to blame if I did not control it. Mr Sandlin; get into the real world - your sadistic pastime belongs in history along with bear and badger baiting, otter hunting, cock and dog fighting. I know some of these things still continue no doubt by the same sort of sick people who hunt with dogs they admit they cannot control.

W D NOCK Shrewsbury Road, Birkenhead

IN NATURE most animals are hunted by another animal.

If foxhounds were turned loose they would hunt deer, hares and foxes. It's nature's way. Man harnessed this instinct and refined the craft. Where man has failed, it is in places like Scotland, where guns are introduced.

A tired fox gives off little scent and he lives for another day. An old or ill fox is dispatched. This leads to healthy, manageable numbers.

There is no better way.

RUTH TILSTON Eskdalemuir, Langholm, Dumfriesshire.

MR SANDLIN really does bring a refreshing new dimension to the hunting issue - unless you support hunting that is.

His view of hunting is like the Atkins diet on food. Just what is the Sandlin diet saying? All the hunt has said about hounds being under control in the past he says is rubbish.

They run amok, here there and everywhere and its our fault, our fault that they wreck gardens, attack pets and should be able to do it just because they want to go where the fox goes. Control, what control? But then he really puts the boot in. It's the farmers who are really ruining fox hunting.

A lot of the farmers are pretty strapped for cash these days but under the Sandlin diet they dare not diversify, such as sell a bit of land or the odd outbuilding to help things along.

Then of course these vandals who move into the countryside must learn to know their place which must include a ten foot fox proof fence. All to sustain the activities of a sick bunch of idiots on horseback. These are the things he is actually saying.

But then he really caps it all by totally destroying the most sacred view of the hunting lobby; ie all foxes are killed by a sharp nip on the back of the neck - no pain. Not so says the Sandlim diet, they're ripped to bits just like we always knew.

How on earth can he compare a wild animal killing its prey for food to survive, with tame, well fed hounds, ripping a fox to pieces for fun in front of an audience of imbeciles? The only consolation in the Sandlin diet is that it raises many more issues for the hunters than anyone else and for that Mr Sandlin is to be congratulated.

ALEX WOODS Long Looms, Great Barrow, Nr Chester

CHESHIRE hunter David Sandlin in Points of View January 23 claims hunt saboteurs 'frequently try to lure hounds on to railway lines ... in the hope of getting some killed no doubt'

Cheshire hunts have been caught trespassing on railway lines several times resulting in hounds being killed, at no time have the hunts ever blamed saboteurs. Given the very serious nature of his allegation, which goes far beyond the usual anti-pro hunt claims, he must produce evidence to back up his distasteful claim or apologise.

He also pathetically attacks Katherine Watson for not living in a rural area but admits her claims that hounds trespass through gardens, trespass on railway lines, run down busy roads and tear foxes to pieces are true.

Not wishing to take responsibility though, he cowardly blames foxes, in much the same way as Thomas Randle Cooke, Joint Master of the Cheshire Hunt, said of his hounds attacking Mr Owen: 'We are sorry. But where the fox goes, the hunt will follow.'

Donald Salmon Points of View January 16 has 'doubts' that anti-hunt protesters were threatened and pushed on Boxing Day and thinks it was a 'put-up job'.

What utter nonsense! Both incidents were reported to the police present immediately and those responsible were pointed out. Even when protesters are absent, as at the Cheshire Hunt ball in January 2003, hunt supporters still got arrested for assaulting a policeman. No wonder he doesn't want stories that show Cheshire hunts in their true light printed.

G METCALFE North West League Against Cruel Sports, PO Box 359, Chorley PR6 8WA

THE mantra of Education, Education, Education has led me to reflect on my education as a 14-year-old in 1940 war-torn London.

In the face of increasingly difficult conditions within a sequence of unsuitable buildings during the Blitz, the London County Council provided me with a very basic curriculum.

One temporary centre, its predecessor having been demolished by a land mine, accommodated four educational groups - two of boys and two of girls.

Our lessons took place either morning or afternoon; three days one week, two days the next.

The official assumption had been made that we could read and calculate well enough to enable us to move to utopian prospects of language and mathematics.

The former subject was the domain of the dragon-woman we called Nellie Staggers - Staggers wasn't her real surname. That nickname was derived from her tendency to stumble into the classroom as a result of catching her foot on the threshold to the doorway.

With Nellie there could be no question of a chair out of place. Every minute of the lesson, was devoted to the analysis of sentence structures: principle clauses, noun clauses, verb clauses, subordinate clauses, adjectival clauses, qualifying nouns and adverbial clauses of time, place, manner, reason, condition, concession and modifying verbs.

Nellie made no concessions to us, whatever the reason. She declared that sentences could be simple, compound or complex and that sentence analysis aided logical thought, competence in speaking and writing, help in studying foreign languages (German?) and protection against everyday solecisms!

We considered there was little she could teach us: we were already adept at composing such sentences as 'Tuppenny ice, mister', 'Shove off, you!' and 'Shut yer facet'.

Mathematics was in the hands of Old Moore. He informed us we would be taught geometry, algebra (something to do with letters and brackets), logarithms (tables which looked equally meaningless whichever way up they were held), trigonometry and mensuration (which, fortunately, we never reached). Some of these titles we could neither spell nor pronounce. None of them could we begin to comprehend.

I left school with no qualifications. When I sought a job, I was informed by an official that all I was fit for was unskilled factory labour or a job as van boy. Happy days! Their memory encourages a reflection that achievement depends more upon opportunity, experience, interest and motivation than upon a mantra that emphasises the accrual of loans to be repaid in some amorphous future.

ALAN BONNER Meadow Lane, Huntington

I AM familiar with the concept of contingency planning but this is getting ridiculous.

First we have local politicians arguing about the possible costs of the different options for local government in the area, now we have acute speculation about the future of County Hall and where the staff will sit. And we have not yet had the referendum which will decide whether there is to be a regional assembly at all.

Think of the time and energy and, therefore, cost of all this potentially abortive planning.

I suggest that the real debate is not yet happening. Our local politicians ought to be leading a campaign to persuade people to vote NO in the forthcoming referendum.

I say this on the back of considerable, possibly unique, experience of local government in Chester and Cheshire. As a former Director of Education, elected member of the city council and of the county council, I have direct knowledge of the workings of two fine local authorities and the relationships they share.

Chester lost its campaign for independent unitary status in the last reorganisation, in which I took part, in spite of having at least as good a case as Halton. I have advised many times since then that there is now no chance of re-visiting that case, and so it has proved. We are now faced with the prospect of either a merger with Ellesmere Port and Neston or submergence in a unitary county council. What kind of choice is that?

Why is either option better than what we have now?

Cllr John Price is naturally against the county's case and says 'Chester needs a local council to provide local services'. Let us expose this myth of 'locality'.

If you live in Malpas the problems of the people of Blacon, or Kelsall or Handbridge are as remote as if they were Macclesfield or Northwich. To add Little Sutton or Stanney or Neston to the mix simply adds to the problem. It certainly does not make the proposed West Cheshire authority any more 'local' than what we have now.

Size and distance are base criteria for any local authority to deal with. Nothing is ever the 'right' size and mechanisms are needed to deal with matters which are too small or too big. What is needed is consistency of approach, fair dealing and transparent policies.

I want Chester to survive as a vibrant local authority and it can do that under present dispositions. I believe John Price and David Evans who lead the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties locally are constrained by the fact that their national party policies support the idea of regional assemblies.

By clear implication they accept that the plans for the North West are potentially damaging to Chester. I call on them to come out fighting, put Chester first and lead the campaign for a NO vote in the forthcoming referendum.

NEIL J FITTON The Beeches, Upton

ON A recent visit to my maternal home from South Wales, I was interested to read the contra views concerning unitary status from Paul Devham and Jeremy Taylor.

As a tax payer in an authority which has unitary status forced on it by the Government, I assure both of these chief executives that their dream will become a nightmare for the tax-paying electorate.

Paul Durham rightly points out that distance between communities lessens their common bond. Jeremy Taylor suggests that unitary status will reduce Council Tax bills - an action I am still awaiting after nine years' rule of a unitary authority.

He also talks of staff reduction without redundancy to reduce costs owing to the 6% annual staff turnover. I'm afraid this is a distortion of facts, as the big saving will be the reduction of management grades which will never reach the 6% figure. He pours scorn on Chester City's plan for a privately funded new office block building.

My authority has just agreed a £30m private finance initiative for one school - in reality a mortgage of £15 per household for the next 27 years.

My experience is that unitary status is not a financial or organisational nirvana for the tax paying electorate, although it may be an early retirement incentive for certain well paid officers.

FRANK HEATON Broomfield Close, Tonteg, Pontypridd

WHAT a golden opportunity presents itself with the county council vacating County Hall.

The city council could move in there and so save millions of pounds of ratepayers' money by not going ahead with the big glass slug at Gorse Stacks.

A SNOWDEN Hoole Road, Chester

WITH reference to various items in last week's Chronicle, it is not just Chester that stands to lose its own local council if we vote for regional government in the North West. The same will happen to a string of other towns and cities, including the five other districts in Cheshire, and places like Barrow, Burnley, Carlisle and Preston.

What we are entitled to from our local councils, instead of endless arguments about which is best, is a solid agreement to fight against any scheme of regional government that puts at risk the existence and integrity of any of them. Fortunately there is still plenty of time for this to happen before we vote on regional government in the autumn.

ROBIN WENDT Secretary, NorthWest Says No Campaign, Church Lane, Upton-by-Chester

DESPITE all the column inches devoted to the various conflicting views on the most suitable forms of unitary authority, it is reassuring to see that The Chronicle (23 January) highlights the fact that these only become options if the North West votes in favour of an elected North West Regional Assembly. Fortunately, the opinion polls have so far indicated opposition to this.

However, I notice that the bribes to persuade us to back such an assembly are starting to be hinted at. First, Lord Barnett suddenly pops up to suggest that the formula he proposed a quarter of a century ago, which awarded greater spending to the Celtic fringes than to the English, may have been wrong. Funny that he's only just come to this conclusion after all this time!

Then John Prescott hints that Regional Assemblies may be able to even out the funding, increasing the amount to be spent in our area. As the current position is that no new money will be put into the Assemblies, the implication is that the Scots, Welsh and Irish might get funding reductions, though I rather doubt that the Scottish MPs who keep the Blairites in power would be too keen on this! Watch out for more obvious bribes if this one doesn't have the required effect.

On top of all this, the vote for the Regional Assemblies will be by a postal ballot, which appears to increase the risk of vote rigging.

The period between now and the vote in the Autumn looks like being rather interesting!

GWR HUNT