It would have been interesting to find out from people contributing to this thread, irrespective of the view they held, whether or not they were urban or country dwellers.

The fact that Parliamentary time is being taken up with this issue is scandalous, they have got far more urgent matters to attend to.

Guest Harvey above said a couple of things in his mail:

"I campaigned for the Labour party in the full belief that it would do what it said it would do."

Come on Harvey - like all politicians they just wanted you to flog your guts out to get them elected. Once elected they couldn't care less why you did it and even less for your expectations.

As for:

"We should try to leave the world a better place when we go than when we arrived and I feel deeply that banning foxhunting in England would make the world a somewhat better place."

Exactly how the banning of foxhunting in England makes the world a better place I just cannot imagine. Try campaigning for debt relief for third world countries. Try campaigning to make the IMF more accountable for the moral aspects of their decisions. Try campaigning for legislation that makes multi-national conglomerates honour their promises. Any environmental issue, there are masses of good causes out there that would benefit the world and the more disadvantaged inhabitants of this planet.

As Dave Bryant has said above the car is the biggest killer of foxes. A hunt, on the rare occasions, when they make a kill - it is beyond doubt that the fox is dead.

Banning foxhunting by act of Parliament introduces another law that restricts what people can do. In Scotland the ban is on hunting with dogs. Any dog will chase a rabbit, cat, etc. I am waiting for case to come up where a member of the anti-lobby is brought before the magistrates because some law abiding citizen reports them because they saw their dog chasing one of the neighbourhood cats (strictly speaking the dog is hunting and it is under your control - the dog doesn't have to kill anything, it's the activity of hunting with dogs that's been banned not the result).

Alternative means of control are inefficient, brutally indiscriminate, harmful to other forms of wild-life and to the environment.

Among the costs of banning foxhunting would be that mankind loses one of his earliest skills and some breeds of dogs pass into extinction, or worse are paraded round a ring at Crufts interbred to the point where only their appearance counts and they no longer retain any of qualities that actually marked them as a breed apart.