Decent doesn't begin to describe. He's a gentleman in every sense of the word.

I think one of the things that concerns people who might be reading and responsding to this thread (I know it's something that concerns me) is that if you start talking about policing and regulating one traditional custom, what's to stop all the others coming under scrutiny? If you've ever been to any of the traditional football games, for instance, you'll know that they're hardly the sanitised, folked-up, gentrified affairs that some first-time visitors may expect. Some of them are pretty red in tooth and claw; many involve a lot of drunkenness, injury to participants, and picturesque villages drowning in litter and filth.

But the thing about these events is that they haven't been taken over by "folkies" - they're folk events precisely because they really belong to the people, and because this is the way they have ALWAYS been conducted. This is England's living folk heritage, precisely because it's not folkies who do it and because it's not been regulated and sanitised.

I don't approve of animal cruelty. And I still believe that if abuse of horses is the crux of this issue, there are much worse institutionalised offenders than the participants at Appleby - numbers alone tell you that. But on the other hand, it's dangerous to turn a blind eye in the interest of preserving tradition. That's why the issues of who should be responsible for regulating certain activities at the fair, and how it could be done, is of paramount importance.