User talk:Peter

Discussion on File:The Great Secret.pdf moved to File talk:The Great Secret.pdf

--Peter P 08:35, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Perverse and bloody stupid abuse of our vote

From that blog back in May 2006 (lightly edited):

A few months ago (ie 2005?) the Department of Culture media and Sport launched an 'Icons of England' website to discover what people regarded as quintessentially English. To their acute embarrassment, Foxhunting was not only nominated but received the highest number of votes. So what did the Department of Culture media and Sport do about it?

Why, they decided to include foxhunting in their 'Icons of England' results, but renamed it "Foxhunting and the Ban". Talk about changing the rules after the fact. It is crystal clear that the hand of a deeply embarrassed New Labour minister is behind it.

Just hours before the expiry of a FOI request by the Countryside Alliance, The Department of Culture media and Sport has justified the decision with the words: "Images of hunt saboteurs and scuffles with the police spring to mind alongside hunting as an icon of England". The Countryside Alliance response:

"Foxhunting is an icon of England, an activity inextricably linked to the English countryside. Public opinion opposes the Hunting Act, which has been shown up as a worthless law which merely allowed Labour backbenchers 700 hours to express their prejudice and bigotry.

Foxhunting was nominated as an icon; the ban was not; and while laughable, it is extremely concerning that the DCM&S suggests that thugs in balaclavas fighting with the police is an icon of Englishness. The DCMS has succumbed to political pressure, and in doing so, is promoting precisely the sort of animal rights extremism which the rest of the country is at pains to avoid.

There has never been a picture of a hunt saboteur on a beer mat, and there never will be."

Quite.

Addendum January 2001 - even after a change of government we're still being insulted over the icon we chose as the single most important part of being English, the picture on "Icons" page is entitled "A huntsman from the Cheshire Forest Hunt doffs his riding hat to anti-hunt campaigners in the village of Lach Dennis, December 26, 2003 © ".

Needless to say, the entire text at that page is by turns untrue or insulting or both. "The old country pastime of fox-hunting met its legislative Waterloo in 2005, when an Act of Parliament came into effect that made it illegal in England and Wales, much to the exasperation and continued defiance of huntspeople throughout the country. Over the centuries, it had undoubtedly been an iconic aspect of country life, its traditions celebrated in prose and poetry, and its turns of phrase passing into general usage. Its central character, the resourceful fox itself, has been represented in traditional folk tales down the ages as a wily and dangerously clever creature, capable of "outfoxing" his many opponents. In our own day, the fox has responded to the disappearance of much of its rural habitat by setting up camp in the towns."

Please remember that we're English and we don't want a "Sarah Palin shoots Gabrielle Giffords" moment so nobody is going to name the minister responsible. Though it would be difficult not to describe him in a single short and pithy epithet and the actions taken in this affair with the matching adjective. Toolbox 14:00, 31 January 2011 (UTC)