Queen bans fox hunting!

[Dinner]

Smiley, you are attempting to be logical.

[Dinner]

The sad thing is this is just one less way for a farmer or land owner to make money off of his rural land. Farming is already marginal in the UK and would go belly up without subsidies and now there is one fewer way to make extra cash.

What do you suppose will happen if these people can't find a way to make that land valuable enough to be worth paying taxes on? They'll sell it to a developer who will plow it up and make a strip mall on it. What do you think will happen to your precious foxes then?

[Starchild]

Originally posted by Oerdin
What do you think will happen to your precious foxes then?

They'll end up living on the vast estates owned by the landed gentry?

[Dinner]

The estate taxes put in place in the UK make being landed gentry pretty hard for more then a generation. More and more rural areas will be sold to developers if country folk aren't given the chance to preserve rural ways of life. Would you rather have a pretty English countryside or a big piece of urban sprawl?

[Gibsie]

Originally posted by Ming
Face it... the animal is KILLED just so you can eat.

Ming the Merciless, or Captain Obvious?

[Gibsie]

Originally posted by Dissident


do you not know how nature works?

In nature, there is no case that I know of where three different species team together and spend hours hunting a single creature for sport. It's nice that you think nature is a suitable argument though, as this is the perfect counter to anyone that thinks that foxes need to be controlled in this manner since they're a danger to livestock. It's nature, so leave the ecological balance alone!

[GePap]

Originally posted by Smiley
What is so inhumane about animals eating other animals? Hello, dogs are carnivores.

The dogs don't actually eat the fox, IIUC-the idea is using the hounds as the weapon, as opposed to a gun.

The hounds would be just as happy being used singly to help hunters with guns.

And Dogs are NOT strickly carnivores-look at thier teeth-they have teech capable of chewing plant matter.

Cats are true carnivores, not dogs.

As for the population control argument, that has already been demolished here.

[Spiffor]

While I have no opinion on the topic, I'm amazed that it went that high on the British agenda. This measure (the ban of a specific form of hunting, that concerns a few thousands of people at most) is the big news in the UK today, and it's creating a real ruckus.

It seems to me that the UK has an extreme behaviour toward animal rights. I can't think of any other country where there are significant animal-rights violent activists, nor where such a ban would make it to the huge news.

[Az]

Animals are not people. They have no rights.

Eating meat

Killing for fun

[Kuciwalker]

To go further:

Animals are not people morally, not just nonhuman. They aren't sentient (my basis of morality) - and if you extend your basis of morality beyond sentience to animals, there is NO justification to stop there and not extend it to plants and bacteria. Nonsentient beings cannot feel pain - they merely feel certain stimuli that make them act in certain ways. Sentient beings are the only ones that actually can feel any sort of sensation; animals are no more than fantastically complicated machines.

btw, if you do believe that animals ARE sentient, then you have no basis for not extending them any of the other rights of people, such as welfare, police protection from other animals, etc. And you also have to jail them when they commit crimes.

[Shi Huangdi]

If this is simply to be banned in England and Wales, can't the hunters just go up to Scotland to do this?

[Az]

nimals are not people morally, not just nonhuman. They aren't sentient (my basis of morality) - and if you extend your basis of morality beyond sentience to animals, there is NO justification to stop there and not extend it to plants and bacteria. Nonsentient beings cannot feel pain - they merely feel certain stimuli that make them act in certain ways. Sentient beings are the only ones that actually can feel any sort of sensation; animals are no more than fantastically complicated machines.

Just "sentient" is a bad definition. Since sentience is basically the sum of the brain processes going on, it's impossible to put a clear-cut border on that.
Sentiense is a false border. Humanity is a better limitation, since it defines the group that has created, and the only group that can understand the concept of ethics, and any concept at all, for that matter.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Nonsentient beings cannot feel pain - they merely feel certain stimuli that make them act in certain ways. Sentient beings are the only ones that actually can feel any sort of sensation; animals are no more than fantastically complicated machines.

Whan an horribly Pascalian idea. Animals can not feel pain? What have you been smoking? Next, you'll tell me animals are unable to feel fear as well?

About sentience: I agree with you that animals are not self-aware, and haven't developed any conceptual thought about their place in the cosmos (duh). But to equate the lack of sentience with the lack of feelings, like you do, is utterly absurd.

[Kuciwalker]

Just "sentient" is a bad definition. Since sentience is basically the sum of the brain processes going on, it's impossible to put a clear-cut border on that.

Yes it is. There is an exact, qualitative difference between a self-aware being and a non-self-aware being. There is no "degree" of self-awareness.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Spiffor
Whan an horribly Pascalian idea. Animals can not feel pain? What have you been smoking? Next, you'll tell me animals are unable to feel fear as well?

Yes. There is no such thing as sensation, beyond simple response to stimuli such as plants growing towards the light or, hell, an electron being repelled by a negative charge, in a nonsentient being.

About sentience: I agree with you that animals are not self-aware, and haven't developed any conceptual thought about their place in the cosmos (duh). But to equate the lack of sentience with the lack of feelings, like you do, is utterly absurd.

Sentience has nothing to do with conceptual thought about their place in the cosmos, it has to do with self-awareness - the thing that actually feels the sensations we have. Electrons are not self-aware, or sentient, people are, because electrons simply respond to stimuli, but people actually feel stimuli.