Giok - where is the class prejudice? *You* seem determined to introduce class at every twist of the argument. *You* seem to be determined to defend hunting (despite the fact that you claim you "don't care either way"). *You* keep raising the spectre of rabies...

"when it eventually gets here [and it will] foxes will be the first casualty"

"I did not say that rabies was to be found on the UK mainland as far as we know, what I did say, and I will say it again, RABIES WILL COME TO THE UK, it is already endemic across the channel, and now that UK dogs can go abroad using a 'Pet Passport' it will come to the UK"

Funnily enough, rabies has, more or less, always been endemic across the Channel, & never has been here.

What you're actually saying is that rabies will be spread because of pet passports. So the less dogs around, the less likelihood of rabies spreading, eh? So bannning hunting will be a good thing. There'll be less dogs. And, I would have thought, hunting dogs are more likely to pick up a random infection than a pampered pet pooch...

Never mind... Ach! I cannae be arsed, mon! Giok, your arguments are terribly pro-, in all the most unacceptable senses of the phrase. The hunters claim that they control foxes (& yet at least 4 times more killed on the roads... we should hunt foxes with cars, then?). Then they claim that they "conserve" the countryside (in other words, we breed foxes & so there are too many of them. Ergo! We must hunt.