Cynical votes chase by pro-hunt Labour
IT WAS with much disappointment that I read that the Labour Party will not be supporting the Wildlife (Amendment) Bill due to be passed this week.
This bill aims to ban stag hunting.
The hunters, known as the Ward Union Hunt, terrorise a stag that has had its horns cut and is then let loose to run for its life through fields, pursued by up to 50 hounds. Subjecting farmed animals to terror, and sometimes death, in the name of entertainment has no place in a civilised society.
Over the years, members of the Labour Party have taken a strong anti-blood sports stand, and campaign groups have received correspondence from 16 of the current 20 Labour TDs in which they state their opposition to blood sports, including stag hunting.
Yet last week they announced, astonishingly, that they would be opposing the bill and, therefore, voting to keep stag hunting in place.
I believe this is an extremely cynical move, designed to try to capture rural votes in constituencies where Labour candidates will be running for the first time in the next election.
I find it hard to believe that a progressive socialist party would vote to retain such a barbaric practice. I urge it to reconsider its position and voters to bear this in mind.
The Labour Party needs to know that anti-hunting voters (of whom there are thousands) will remember this at the next election and vote accordingly.
Nicola Sartia
Dublin 18
I LIVE in the US, which has not had the benefit of the thousands of years that Ireland has had to become civilised.
They kill animals for sport here and shame on those who do so.
But Ireland has had time to grow up and become civilised.
Why, then, would any decent Irish person oppose banning the savage practice of shooting innocent animals for sport?
Or the setting of a pack of mad dogs on an innocent deer?
I have to admit that I would derive a tremendous amount of satisfaction out of seeing a hunter suddenly finding his gun not working and the deer standing over him, stomping on his head.
What fine karma that would be.
John Doyle
Odessa, Florida
Irish Independent
