The fox-hunting ban illustrates an excellent example of the difference between the publicly expressed reason for holding a political view and the hidden true reason.
The publicly expressed reason for banning fox-hunting is because it is claimed to be a cruel sport. In fact, the lead hound that catches up with the fox grabs the fox’s neck in its jaw and immediately snaps it, killing it instantly. That which is subsequently torn up by the hounds is not a fox, it is the dead body of something that had been a fox. Tearing up a dead animal is not at all cruel. Foxes are vermin, killing ground-nesting birds and carrying out a lot of other unacceptable actions. Now that fox hunting has been banned, the foxes have to be shot. Shooting dead such a small fast-moving animal at a distance is extremely challenging, so many foxes which are shot are only injured and escape to die in extreme pain. How is this less cruel than having them quickly killed by a hound?
The true reason for banning fox-hunting is because it costs a lot of money to buy a horse, to pay it’s vet bills, to have a farrier visit to re-shoe it six-weekly intervals, to provide it with pasture to graze during the day and a stable to sleep in at night, and to buy and run a horse-box to take it to equestrian events, which means that anyone who can afford to do so must be a “rich upper-class toff”.
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