This weekend the fox-hunting ban came into effect here in the UK. The hunts, it seems, were out in force doing what they could to demonstrate their opposition to the ban. Last night I caught what appeared to be a special BBC South programme presented by South Today’s Sally Taylor which covered the events of the weekend. From what I saw having missed the beginning, it was remarkably balanced. In fact, I think more air time was given to the hunters than the protestors.

Of all the views expressed by interviewees and email correspondents during the programme, none of them seemed to nail the crux of the issue. The fox-hunting ban is not about class warfare or regulating the best way to control fox numbers, nor is it about preventing hunters from enjoying the spectacle of a helpless animal being torn to shreds. It’s not even really about my pet hate: interfering with what people do privately on their own land.

The difference between those in favour of the ban and those against is whether or not they consider that needs of the animals match or outweigh the needs of the people. I don’t think animals have rights at all, but that is to get into a philosophical argument that probably leads nowhere. I would not myself like to take part in any activity that was needlessly cruel to animals, nor would I condone others doing so. (Not that foxhunting seems any more cruel than lions hunting wildebeest or foxes hunting chickens.)

But it’s one thing to try to convince people it’s cruel and wrong to hunt foxes with dogs, and quite another to use force against them. You can debate whether or not animals have rights all day long, but as soon as you enact legislation to protect them you are using force against people to protect animals. To jail a man for killing a fox is to treat the fox’s life as more important than the man’s. This is clearly wrong, it’s why the fox-hunting ban is wrong, and it’s where the real flaw in the animal rights protestor’s thinking lies.

As if to prove my point, the South Today fox-hunting programme sent a reporter to spend the day with a hunt saboteur. As I was watching the protestor being interviewed about evidence gathering techniques I noticed that he had a red star on his hat. Here is a man who is more concerned about dead foxes than about millions sent to their deaths in the Gulag.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Civil Liberties, Introspection at 11:35 PM EST

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Ever wondered where your taxes go? It turns out that there are 529 quangos supported by the taxpayer. So says a report entitled The Essential Guide to British Quangos 2005 published by think tank Centre for Policy Studies.

The BBC quotes the the mission statements of what the report calls the nine most useless quangos. The funniest is that of the British Potato Council:

Our main functions are to fund research and development, transfer technology, collect and disseminate market information, and to advertise and promote potatoes at home and in export market

Potatoes need promoting?

Perhaps the most insidious sounding quango is the Economic and Social Research Council:

The UK’s leading research funding and training agency addressing economic and social concerns. We aim to provide high quality research on issues of importance to business, the public sector and government. The issues considered include economic competitiveness, the effectiveness of public services and policy, and our quality of life.

This doesn’t sound at all quasi-autonomous to me. This sounds like a body set up to prove whatever the government wants it to prove so that the government can come up with convenient evidence to justify whatever mad-cap policy it has most recently come up with.

Update: I take it all back. Apparently, “1 in 3 people don’t know where chips come from.” So obviously we need the National Potato Council to tell us. And what better way to do so than National Chip Week. I’m sure it all fits in with the government’s food and health action plan somehow…

Posted by Rob Fisher as Authorised Theft, Links at 11:25 PM EST

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The Times summarises recent events in Northumbria. Police spent ridiculous amounts of money prosecuting a woman for driving while eating an apple. So The Sun, posing as doughnut sellers, managed to photograph a Northumbria police officer eating a doughnut while driving, much to everyone’s amusement.

Clearly what is needed are specific laws targeting apples and doughnuts, as existing laws covering dangerous driving are not sufficient.

Thanks to ThePresentOccupier for the link and the title for this post.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Civil Liberties, News at 9:28 PM EST

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There was much better signal propagation the night before last, and the Iranian worldband radio station Voice of Justice (”for people around the world, especially Americans”) is still covering the Iraq elections.

Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C. gave an interview [1MB, 8m27s] in which she said that the reason for the high turnout was that, “many Iraqis saw this election as a chance to vote for their hopes.” They hoped for more water, electricity and jobs, but most of all for, “an end to the US occupation.”

The message between the lines is that they’re false hopes. After all, “many Iraqis believe that this will lead to an end to the occupation” but, “so far there is no indication of that.”

But the real reason that it’s such a disater that this election was successful is that, “the main winner, I think, of this election, however, is going to be George Bush, who will use this election to claim legitimation of his occupation of Iraq.” In other words it doesn’t matter that these elections were made possible in the first place by Bush. The success of this election is just a stroke of good luck for him that is ultimately disatrous because Bush is wrong and was wrong all along.

Later in the broadcast, we hear Voice of Justice’s own opinions [940K, 7m40s] about “the Iraq occupation crisis” and the issues related to the election. Their angle is that the elections were hugely important for Iraq — but if only it wasn’t for those damn Americans! “Despite all threats from those affiliated to the United States, the interim government as well as popular groups and parties joined forces to hold a secure and great election nationwide.” But the Americans might have rigged the votes. “Some reports say there has been some collusion between some political parties that are [allied?] to US [policies?] with the occupation force in order to obtain the results that are favourable to them. That is why the election is prone to manipulation.”

Like Phyllis Bennis, Voice of Justice thinks that the sooner the Americans leave, the better. “Without the slightest doubt the election is the first step for the Iraqis to rid themselves of the plight [imposing?] them now. For Iraqi people have stayed under Saddam’s tyrannical rule for years, and under occupation for the past two years, January 30th 2005 is a day when they can pave the way for an end to occupation and lay the foundation of another Iraq,”

Posted by Rob Fisher as News, World Band at 11:35 PM EST

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I have disabled trackback until there is an easy way to stop trackback spam. Shooting is too good for some people.

Update: It affects the best of us.

Posted by Rob Fisher as General at 8:44 PM EST

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The prolific Alex Singleton has another blog, this time at the Globalization Institute. It’s well worth a read.

What first caught my eye was the article on fair trade coffee. I’ve been meaning for some time to write a definitive article about the problems I have with the fair trade movement, partly so that when people ask me why I avoid buying fair trade goods I can point them to it instead of having to explain it all yet again, but I never quite got around to it. Alex, however, has all the points covered, including some I hadn’t thought of, and puts it all more clearly and concisely than I would have done, rather saving me the trouble.

To the extent that Fairtrade is successful, it also has a negative effect on the price of coffee. By encouraging coffee farmers to stay in the market and increase production, it leads to further oversupply in the market.

There’s more to it than that, so read the whole article.

Oops, deja vu: I’ve written about why I haven’t written about fair trade and linked to one of Alex’s articles about it before.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Introspection, Links at 12:11 AM EST

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I wanted to report on the Voice of Iran’s reaction to the Iraq elections, but alas the ionosphere was not helping last night. Tuning around the dial, I instead came across a broadcast from Voice of America. According to Passport, this transmission was targeted at South Asia — such are the properties of shortwave radio.

Anyway, here is a clip of a segment [289K, 2m15s] introduced as “the views of the US government” — although I didn’t hit the record button fast enough to get the introduction, it’s repeated at the end — on the subject of the elections.

One Iraqi voter had lost a leg in a terrorist attack. He told a reporter, “I would have crawled here if I had to. I don’t want terrorists to kill other Iraqis like they tried to kill me.”

There’s gumption for you.

As […] an Iraqi schoolteacher put it, “today for the first time, I feel like an Iraqi.”

Meanwhile, Scott Burgess sizes up Robert Fisk’s disappointment at the success of the elections, and R.C. Dean and the Samizdata Commentariat have their say.

Posted by Rob Fisher as News, World Band at 11:48 PM EST

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