February 28 2005
Editorial & Opinion
Page 15
opinion@gairrhydd.com
Hunting: now illegal with a beagle By Dan Ridler
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hey claim that the anti-hunting law is unenforceable. "We’ll test the law," they cry. "The police can’t stop us" they jeer. Together, they vow that they’ll never stop hunting. Once again ‘they’ miss the point. I’m anti-hunting. I’m from a rural background and have lived in the countryside all my life, and my opinion is that hunting is brutal, outdated and bloodthirsty. Despite this, I know plenty of hunters I get on fine with. I’ve never been on a protest, never
signed a petition against hunting and never would. I try to hate hunting quietly, live and let live and certainly don’t normally get dragged into public newspaper debates about it. The reason for that attitude is because passions run too high around the issue. In Room 101 this week Mr. Rennison makes the valid point that fox hunting isn’t important in the great scheme of things. Its okay Andy, you didn’t need to tell us you’re a city boy, I can already tell. As he says, this issue isn’t important in world affairs and everyone knows that. It is important, however, to everyone in the countryside, because it is people’s lives and pastimes and immediate happiness that is affected. So if it’s an important issue to you or if your interested, then read on. If not, then by all means go and
talk about the plight of sub-Saharan Africa. Moving back to the matter in hand then, I would say that this ban is probably one of the most satisfying pieces of legislation to pass through parliament in the last few years. Not the most important piece, the most satisfying. Finally the hunters have been forced where, in my opinion, they belong. Outside of the law. The reaction to this law has, obviously, rightly, been one of outright defiance. Nobody expected this to be easy. Reform never is. When the death penalty was outlawed in Germany there was widespread outcry and protest. Now, Europe is proud of its human rights record. So it will be with hunting. The hunters are adamant though. In the age-old way of all dying practices,
they swear that they'll go out with mindless defiance and carry on hunting. Better to die on your feet than live on your knees and all that rhetoric. This is a healthy democratic response. Have your ‘brave last stand’. Devon and Cornwall Constabulary are already pursuing two cases of unlawful hunting. How long before hunters realize that it just isn’t worth it? This law has reduced hunting, thankfully, to the same level as cock fighting and badger baiting. Great traditions once, but now a practice for small minded folk with a couple of dogs and nothing better to do. The sooner the hunters stop fighting the law and start co-operating the more likely hunting’s traditions (apart from the bloodthirsty bits) will survive. As I see it, the more the hunters squirm and try to flaunt the law the
more the anti-hunt campaigners will force the law to be tightened. It’s self destructive. I know foxes will still be killed. I know that however that killing happens it is unlikely to be much more humane than hunting. That is not the point. What is important is that now the law stands where it should have stood for years. In a civilized society hunting is no longer an accepted practice, and that, my fox hunting friends, is the point. You may carry on hunting but now, if you do, you are in the wrong. To the hunters: keep on screaming guys, make the most of it. In days, your throats will be sore. In months no one will listen. In years no one will even remember who you are; except through searches on your criminal records.
Get his leg over the waitresses, and 2. Survive the German Occupation. Priorities appear to be in that order. Stereotypes are at their most inflated here, with the Gestapo dressed top-totoe in black leather, complete with a stiff leg and living in a sado-machistic style dungeon. The stupid French policeman whose greeting was always "Good moaning" became one of the many favourite sayings of the programme. The issue of translation was never contested, or even considered, so delighted was I by the idiosyncrasies of French culture; namely his silly hat and costume. The vocabulary of the two British air pilots, complete with handlebar moustaches, is frequently punctuated with grammer school words such as "spiffing", "ripping" and "I say." Fortunately Enid Blyton has
ensured such exclamations live on. Issues, which in today’s manic fairfor-all-ness world, would be contentious and cause controversy could simply be funny thirty years ago. The classic ‘Don’t mention the war’ episode from Fawlty Towers is the best example here. Another is Rigsby’s many prejudices which have ample opportunity to express themselves amid an African tribal chief, neurotic woman and Richard Beckinsale, who plays the part of a continually lovestruck young man. All three, particular the first, treat him as you would a puppy Rottwelier whose bark is so much worse than his nonexistent bite. Racism and sexism are not being endorsed in Raising the Damp, because the subjects themselves understand the inferiority, ignorance and
very deep down goodwill of the character Rigsby. In addition, the greatest strength of Dad’s Army is that it is an example of the British poking fun at themselves. More amazing still, the subject concerns the threat of invasion and an inept Home Guard led by one Captain Mainwaring, who is not unlike that other famous icon, the British bulldog. Saturday and Sunday childhood teatimes used to revolve around whichever series happened to be playing at the time, with the plot and characters appealing to a wide-ranging audience. Admittedly I didn’t quite get all of it. To me Mr Humphries, from Are You Being Served? was simply a cute little man, with a funny walk, who was forever drawn in the direction of the men’s changing room. This pro-
gramme is also an example of the battle of the sexes with mini-ambushes being the order of the day as Mollie Sugden and Miss Brahms fight it out with Captain Peacock, Mr Humphries, Mr Lucas (a deliciously delectable offering), and Mr Grainger. Incidentally, the latter (cross between a gremlin and a poison spitting toad) epitomises sexism, his secret desire being to batter Mrs Sugden to a bloody pulp. The two sides are fighting for the Ladies’ Intimate Apparel and the Gentleman’s Ready-Made departments, who unfortunately share the same floor. Genius! Battle of the sexes, battle of the nations, and inflated stereotypes; then you had it all. Today’s teatime offering consists of an idiotic superhero, freaky talking baby, and the vainest doctor in the world. No contest.
What happened to the 70s shows?
By Bethany Whiteside
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adly the golden age of British TV comedy has long since passed, only to be occasionally revived in time for weekend tea. British comedy enjoyed its hey-day in the 1970s with such classic characters as Basil Fawlty and Mollie Sugden. The former is possibly the meanest hotelier to ever exist in the world, and the latter’s chief interests include her hair colour, and her pussy. The cream of comedy from this era displays every human emotion in existence. For Rene Artois, from ‘Allo ‘Allo, war is very annoying and interferes with both his morals and his conscience. His sole aims in life are to 1.
Poet, Philosopher, Journalist, Icon By David Griffiths
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wo weeks; two great chroniclers of American life. First Arthur Miller, now Hunter S. Thompson. Both were inspired by the satirical, journalistic impulse that runs through American letters. The same radically democratic principle of showing America to itself, of speaking truth to power, that infuses Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, and Twain, through to Ginsberg and the new poets of the fifties, to today’s writers such as P. J. O’Rourke, will hopefully pervade into the new century when it is needed more than ever. In its intent Hunter S. Thompson’s style bears comparison with other American writers of (roughly) the same period, such as Joseph Heller. Both used comic hyperbole and grotesque fantasy to expose the insanity in America’s Establishment. With Tom Wolfe (another of the sixties New Journalists) Thompson shared a love
of incandescent, over-the-top prose that placed the author at its centre. Rather than pretend that an article was written by some dispassionate, merely curious spectator he placed himself in the thick of it, as much a part of the story as its chronicler. As with the young Bob Dylan (‘Even Jesus would not forgive what you do’, he had sung in 1963 to the Masters of War) he had boundless reserves of righteous anger and malice, and turned it on everyone that came within his sights. To be sure, railing against corruption and hypocrisy in America (or indeed any country’s political establishment) is like shooting very big fish in a very small barrel, but we should be grateful that here was someone who did it with such comic verve and righteous ire. Neither timidity nor a lack of irony are desirable in our moralists. Far better that it is a man with fire in his belly (and a wicked grin on his face) who shouts ‘J’accuse!’; even if that fire then consumes him.
Presumably, the people of America will sleep as well as usual tonight. But perhaps they should feel aggrieved that they have lost a valuable (if unpredictable) sparring partner, a man ready to show America the ‘fear and loathing’ at the heart of its vision of itself as ‘the shining city on the hill’. Only several months ago Thompson had written a bitter polemic against the re-election of George W. Bush, for Rolling Stone magazine. In the piece he unfavourably compared Bush to Nixon, a man that Thompson had boundless loathing for. Fine praise indeed. That Hunter S. Thompson chose the method and time of his own leaving should bring some measure of amusement to his admirers, and that he chose to do it with one of his beloved guns will bring a wry (guilty) smile to those faces. The echoes of Hemingway are too obvious to ignore. Thompson surely chose this form of suicide as much for its significance as for its ease.