Shoo Minister

Ohh, ho, ho. It seems that Anti fox hunting Rural Affairs Minister Alun Michael has penned a letter to the Western Morning News from within his underground bunker somewhere beneath Whitehall. I feel sorry for the rural postman that had to deliver it. It’s not easy having to gallop at full speed through field and village these days, what with the rebel alliance and its sympathisers hiding behind every bush. Even stopping for refreshment in a local pub could end in disaster.

Have you noticed that the government never publishes official figures of the number of dispatch riders (or posties as they like to call them) who never return? It’s because they don’t want to scare you.

Anyhow, somehow (and the postie cannot be found to confirm this) the Minister’s letter has come to the attention of a local rebel printing press called This is Devon, probably based in a large barn and well hidden by stacks of straw bales. The type was set and this excellent rebuttal to the Minister is the result.

I will pick out some juicy bits (which is most of it) to save you having to find the nearest tree (or postie) to which it is pinned:

[The captured government propaganda], seeking to explain and justify the hunting ban, is a catalogue of misinformation, wrong-headed conclusions and downright nonsense.

…

…we have no respect whatsoever for the cynical, spiteful, two-faced, hypocritical manner in which the hunt ban has been introduced, and will now be implemented.

…

Mr Michael's first pious point is to plead for sympathy for the introduction of the legislation insisting: "No one could have tried harder than I did - for three years - to persuade hunt supporters and opponents to find common ground...But the hunters did not want to allow the slightest compromise on their pastime." That is questionable in the extreme. A more accurate assessment would have been to admit that Labour's own backbenchers, sensing an historic victory in the class war against hunting "toffs", could not be persuaded to compromise by ministers who were becoming increasingly anxious about the impact of the ban.

But it gets much worse. Mr Michael goes on to claim public support for the hunt ban alleging that opinion polls "have consistently shown that most people oppose hunting, although the vast majority do not feel strongly either way..." Here Mr Michael is playing fast and loose with the English language. How can anyone who doesn't feel strongly "consistently oppose hunting"? It doesn't make any sense.

…

In another outburst the Minister comes over all wounded, complaining that to suggest the law was based on bigotry and prejudice was "an insult to the integrity of MPs of all political parties." Do us a favour, Mr Michael. MPs only got the opportunity to tackle this issue because your Government and your Prime Minister was up to his neck in rebellious backbenchers furious over the war in Iraq and needed to buy them off. So no lectures on integrity, please.

…

But it's when he gets to the Act itself and the way it will be implemented on the ground that Mr Michael really begins to beggar belief. "The Act," he pompously writes "is simple to understand, obey and enforce." If the minister really believes that, then he must be the only person in Britain who does.

…

One particular phrase exposes Mr Michael's woeful failure to understand the countryside and the effect the hunt ban will have. He says we'll still be at liberty, once the ban is in place, to "shoo" any fox, hare or deer off our land, so long as no dogs are used. What a pathetic Islington drawing-room view of the countryside that conjures up; of landowners shooing away obliging little foxes, to keep the baa lambs and the clucking hens safe from harm. How depressingly that nonsense underscores New Labour's abject ignorance of the countryside.

I love that bit. Shoo. Hehe. Shoo. Nope, I can’t see it myself.

A little while ago I wrote on the subject of farmers not cooperating with state agencies and private enterprise as part of the rebel alliance plan to frustrate the authorities. I said:

So, let’s see if we can spot the first accusation from a government mouthpiece that this kind of behaviour is petty and counter productive. At that point we will know that it is starting to have an affect.

Which brings me to this bit of the remarkable rebel rebuttal:

As he founders on, the Rural Affairs Minister digs himself into an even deeper hole with a truly astonishing attack on the landowning hunt supporters who are fighting back against the hunt ban by refusing the public utilities and the Ministry of Defence access to their land. He says such tactics are "unacceptable." But since when has it been unacceptable, Mr Michael, for a land owner to use his own land as he sees fit? Or is that the next thing New Labour is planning to clamp down on?

Unacceptable; a stronger word than I expected for the first sign that things were biting.

When I was retrieving the This is Devon dispatch from the side of a large old oak I was startled by a youth who jumped out from a nearby bush and pointed a rather large farm implement at me.

”Are you a postie!?”, he demanded.

”No, I’m a friend.”

”Be on your way. You look like city folk to me an’ I ain’t gonna be avin’ any of that I can tell you. Go on, ya big tosser ‘for I stick me fork in you!”

Sticks and stones may break my bones but you’d have to catch a train to London to find the rural affairs minister.

Posted by John at December 17, 2004 02:14 PM | TrackBack