Here We Go Again....

Shadow Leader

Shadow Leader

At the Start
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Nov 9, 2003
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Watching the BBC news this evening I see that those arseholes from Animal Aid were protesting outside Plumpton today, handing out leaflets that banged on about how cruel racing is, advocating banning it, and claiming that 375 horses are killed every year (and 50-60 odd at Plumpton every year) "in the name of sport".

For the life of me I can't see why Plumpton would allow these tossers free rein to annoy their customers and try to put them off going - I'd have had them hauled away sharpish.

Come to think of it, if I'd realised they'd be there today I'd have gone along to tell the scummy tree-hugging parasites exactly what they could do with their bollocks assertions.
 
Sure why not tell us what you really think...

If you believe people should have the right to hunt as they wish, why can these people not air their views in a peaceful fashion (assuming it was so)?
 
For starters, they could try to get their facts right - I'm virtually certain that their numbers quoted are misleading at best, inflated or fictitious at worst.

Following on from your point, why should racegoers be subjected to these cretins telling untruths about racing and trying to get their sport banned?
 
Does that mean 1 in every 7 horses killed in racing perish at Plumpton. My God :eek: what are they jumping? piano wire??? or running in minefields aka Larkhill

I have to say though Dom your rant does smack of double standards. Why should innocent shoppers be subjected to country folk clogging up their streets protesting and galloping around on half ton animals, blowing horns, and dumping animal carcases on their doorstep? This is a damn sight more disruptive and dangerous than a few people standing on what is probably public highway, handing out a leaflet (which they can't force you to take) and holding a plackard. But I assume you think that's ok for the Countryside Alliance, because you happen to agree with it? I'm sure you'll understand if people struggle to take you seriously?

Perhaps you ought to consider that of all the contributors to this forum, you give this group more oxygen and exposure than any other poster.

I've long held reservations about the 'dead horses' log that TH helpfully maintains for the anti brigade to source their claims through. I'd have thought that 375 was too far off, given that we don't pick up on all the horses killed at home, or those who are alleged to be mysteriosuly spirited away periodically for basically not being good enough. I suppose there's a difference between killed and died, but I wouldn't have thought 375 was wildly off the mark, and certainly within the bounds of acceptable campaigning licence. It's a drop in ocean compared to the 20,000 people who the hunting industry told us would be unemployed :laughing:
 
Connected, sort of.

From RP

CHELTENHAM is to continue its policy of not announcing the deaths of high-profile horses despite further criticism of the racecourse from racegoers who on Saturday left the track with no idea that Macs Joy had died.

While viewers of Channel 4 and Racing UK were told that Macs Joy had been put down following the Boylesports.com International Hurdle, the majority of Cheltenham's paying customers were unaware of the news.

The failure to announce the death of Macs Joy came as a surprise, since Cheltenham chief executive Edward Gillespie last month admitted a need to "better manage the flow of information" after those on course were kept in the dark about the death of Granit Jack in the Paddy Power Gold Cup.

Cheltenham's solution is a paddock-side notice board, which on Saturday posted news of Macs Joy's death and which, for future meetings, will be brought to the attention of racegoers, the majority of whom were unaware of its presence last weekend.

Cheltenham communications manager Andy Clifton said: "Following the incidents at the Open, we talked to a lot of people, including racegoers, owners, trainers, vets and media members, and the almost unanimous verdict was that the best approach would be for us to make the information readily available but without actually using the blunt weapon of a PA announcement.
"Our view, and the view of several other people, particularly owners and trainers, is that announcing equine deaths over the public address represents too much of a blunt instrument."

It is understood that Cheltenham is concerned that a section of its racegoers, including corporate hospitality clients and those with young children, would not appreciate hearing public address announcements concerning equine fatalities.

Clifton added: "We make sure that Racing UK and Channel 4 know things as they happen, and there are clearly a lot of people on the racecourse who want to know as well, but both our view and the consensus view is that an information pitch is the right way of passing on that information."
 
Originally posted by Shadow Leader@Dec 17 2007, 07:14 PM
Watching the BBC news this evening I see that those arseholes from Animal Aid were protesting outside Plumpton today, handing out leaflets that banged on about how cruel racing is, advocating banning it, and claiming that 375 horses are killed every year (and 50-60 odd at Plumpton every year) "in the name of sport".
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They obviously don't read their own website. The site below lists just six at Plumptonsince March 07. If fifty plus horses had lost their lives in the first three months I think we may just have noticed .

http://www.horsedeathwatch.com/
 
What are you talking about, Warbler? I assume you mean the one-off protest in Brighton during the Labour party conference, which I didn't claim to back at the time, I'm sure?

I am a fully paid up member of the CA, 'tis true, but to my knowledge "innocent shoppers be[ing] subjected to country folk clogging up their streets protesting and galloping around on half ton animals, blowing horns, and dumping animal carcases on their doorstep?" isn't something that either the CA condone, organise or participate in. They certainly haven't tried to get me to do anything of the sort so you are wide of the mark there!
 
Whilst there's a point to be made regarding Animal Aid lying about numbers, I have no sympathy for anyone who wishes to remain ignorant about the fact that horses die on the track and who has a problem with being made aware of it - whether that be by protesters outside or an acknowledgment over the PA.
 
I have no problem with people being made aware of it - in fact to make people aware of it can only help, surely.

However I cannot help but feel that the whole Cheltenham furore is somewhat misplaced - I do not know of a course which does broadcast over the PA that horses have lost their lives, it's certainly not a problem of Cheltenham's alone.
 
I was drawing on both the Labour Party conference and the much heralded countryside alliance march in London where they claimed to have mobilised 400,000. The influx of a population of that size for a day, would most certainly disrupt every day life and the public transport infrastructure etc for those wishing to use central London. I'm not sure why you should be so defensive over this though, I don't have a problem with it in honesty, and am quite radical in my own campaigning/ protesting philosophy. This I've developed over years, and I now believe there is only one way to change things, and history has proven that time and time again, (providing you're prepared to accept the consequences and sacrifices of course). What you need is a ground swell of convicted radical opinion, and then its game over. If the CA had sought to go down that route on their 'big day, lost' who knows where it might have ended. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who can give me an example of a sea change in government policy that resulted from a petition or a peaceful protest

Where I do have a slight problem is your apparent duplicity, but it's only slight. All you're doing in essence is selecting the bits you like and the bits you don't, but you shouldn't condem the method if employing similar yourself, and then hope to retain credibility. Animal Aid remain a very small and ineffective campaign group, and are likely to remain so unless people like yourself keep feeding them publicity, or stage a confrontational set piece for them, (as you were advocating) from which they could only grow, and owe you a debt of gratitude for it.
 
Duplicity? Where does that come in when you have a set of loony bins advocating banning something through the use of fictitious figures, and people protesting against having their jobs and livelihood taken away from them led by people with no comprehension of the subject?

I'd also say that the Countryside Marches didn't "subject innocent shoppers to clogging up their streets" having been held a few years back on a Sunday, mainly in non-retail areas!

The big problem I have with AA is that the organisation is made up of meddling tree huggers who have virtually no knowledge of what it is that they are talking about. In short, they are kicking up for the sake of it, and not paying any heed to the livelihoods of so many thousands that they are seeking to destroy through their ignorance of the subject in hand.
 
SL,

Every one should be entitled to air their opinions in a civilised and supposedly democratic society -

“I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend your right to say it, to the death”.

There are probably some exceptions to this - inciting civial disorder etc - however, this does not include when the opinion that they are espousing is different to yours, which you seem to have a problem with - as you do on here when anyone dares to present any evidence to support the fact that Katchit may not be the second coming of Istabraq after all.
 
Originally posted by Gareth Flynn@Dec 17 2007, 08:32 PM
I have no sympathy for anyone who wishes to remain ignorant about the fact that horses die on the track .
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Ascot did offer condolences to connections over the PA when Persian Punch died, but then a sthe whole thing happend right in front of the stands one could hardly miss it. The atmosphere had already been funereal for an hour by then.

I suppose if the board is positioned somewhere fairly central that's OK, but Cheltenham is big and on a busy day it can be hard to get around. As usual we'll have to rely on the tomtom system - ie mobile phones. And the fact that at most courses they do tell you when a horse has got up, so if they tell you nothing...

I agree it's mealy-mouthed but I can see their point about not wanting to put off the young or the rookie racegoer. It's a hard one to call as you can't accomodate everyone here - And owners' feeling should come first.
 
On the subject of the number of horses which die on the track each year, it's difficult to say whether they are including horses which die in training or just on course. I doubt c375 is much of an exaggeration, being just over 1 per day, which given on some days in winter we lose 2 or 3 seems possible - if you include deaths in the stable and at excercise it's probably an underestimate.

Again, it's data which Weatherby's should be able to collect very easily, given every horse is regiestered with them - all they have to do is make it obligatory to inform them when and how a registed horse-in-training dies, inc at home [in box, gallops etc]. It would be in everyone's interest for this data to be collected - for one thing it would show up those trainers who lose a higher % at home.

How to stop AA disseminating obvious lies like the number of horses killed at Plumton is difficult. Since they have published demonstrably false info in their leaflet, the course should be able to take out an injunction against them. And the Police can break up a demo for any reason inc breach of the peace.

Warbler: the CA march was about much more than hunting, and there were probably 500,000 there - I was an Eastern Area monitor on the day helping people through the tube systems etc and out onto the march, and didn't get to the 'counting arch' at Westminster til late. There were still many thousands queuing to come down through Westminster from our direction [city & embankment] and from what I know of the march from the centre of Lodnon [Hyde Park, where coaches had dropped people form rest of country] tens of tousands got nowhere near Westminster, since coaches were still disembarking folk from the SW, Wales and esp the North/Scotland in mid afternoon, far too late for them to reach the counting point. When the police demanded the arch through which people were counted was removed at c4pm, the numbers had reached c425,000, and I reckon that was an underestimate - they were counting through 500 at a time, but there were nearer 600 for each 'click'.

[I understand from my N London friends something similar happened on the anti-Iraq-war march - most people never got anywhere near central London; the police always grossly underestimate march numbers, as you should know].

As one who lived in London most of my adult life, I can assure you there was no disruption to everyday life! Sundays are dead in most areas. And Westenders in the main showed huge support - I counted no more than 30 antis all day. Some Essex folk on the train going back out to the coaches told my neighbours - ex missionaries in their late 60s! who had never been on a demo before - that it was the first time they'd ever felt really safe on the train out to Dagenham, with all those lovely country folk LOL - that's true btw. There was no hostility at all from the public, and certainly not the police on duty who told us they wished we'd come more often and that the locals were so considerate and well-behaved! Rubbish was cleared up by monitors, such as it was. You had to be there...
 
Originally posted by Shadow Leader@Dec 17 2007, 07:29 PM
For starters, they could try to get their facts right - I'm virtually certain that their numbers quoted are misleading at best, inflated or fictitious at worst.

Following on from your point, why should racegoers be subjected to these cretins telling untruths about racing and trying to get their sport banned?
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Sounds like Animal Aid and the Countryside Alliance have more in common that you might think - both are intolerant and incapable of seeing any other point of view .

Why should racegoers for example have to tolerate endless pro hunting propaganda when many disagree with it , find themselves intimidated if they did not agree to put one of those tedious stickers on as they did at Cheltenham - or get abused and threatened as the late Nick Hagan , a one time member of this forum did .

As far as I am concerned AA and CA are entitled to their views and to present them peaceably no matter how much I might disagree with both of them .
 
Quite so - as long as no-one peddles demonstrably dishonest statistics in support of their view surely?
 
The 375 figure strikes me as being plausible and certainly more credible than some of the obvious rubbish the CA have come out with before now. To listen to some of their claims by contrast, you could be forgiven for thinking the UK economy would go into terminal economic meltdown if hunting were banned such was our dependency on it. For a start there's still this question mark concerning what happened to a job lot from a leading Newmarket (nay global) operation which has never been adequately resolved (for understandable reasons too) which if correct would account for nearly half the figure alone. I can only assume the Plumpton figure must be some kind of historical body count, as it's palpable nonesense to think that the Sussex course has wracked up that many in an 18 month period.

It's a shame AA aren't able to monitor the number of fallers by course and jockey, and convert that into a percentage listed in alphabetical, or rank order as that would be useful statistic for a punter to arm themselves with. I did consider putting their site up as 'a favourite' precisely in the hope of capturing that kind of information, but in it's current format it's not really user friendly. I was surprised how many had lost their lives at Rasen, as I always their fences had a reputation for non fallers, although I think Carlisle might have overtaken them recently as the most non falling course, mind you, they seem to routinely doll off half the fences there, so perhaps that explains that.

As regards the police under estimating protest numbers, that's been going on for centuries. I often think it's more reliable to double their estimates. The Iraq protest was the biggest in UK history by some considerable distance. Even the government acknowledge 1 million (the police claimed 750,000). Organisers said 2 million. I wouldn't call it a march, as shuffle intersperesed with periods of standign stationary would be more accurate. It took me 50 minutes just to get through Piccadiliy Circus, I'd have thought upwards of 1.5M would nearer the truth, as many people used side streets to head straight for Hyde Park.

It struck me at the time that if the crowd had turned poll tax nasty, and stormed Whitehall that would have been it. The PM would have to have been evacuated etc as the police/ army would have to have fired on their own population. Even then it would be extrememly doubtful as to whether they had the capacity to hold enraged crowd of that size. As it happens of cours eit passed of peacefully, and because it did, Blair took no notice. I friend of mine however did remark on the journey home that we'd just "taken part in the end of Blair" and that "he'd be gone in 12 months". I took his bet, as I thought he was wrong. He was as it transpired, but at another level, he was probably right, as Blair never recovered from Iraq, and the issue would hound all the way to the point where he was levered from office. The thing about that protest though, is it brought people who weren't the usual suspects into play, and for the first time a lot of the surburban commuter C1 voters were saying 'No' and for a brief period some felt empowered and a sense of sincere conviction in what they were doing. To some extent a dye was cast in their mind set that Saturday in February, and the government never recovered it. Remember too that we still represented a minority view in the country and the media when that took place. Over the following months the whole Iraq lie was stripped naked and exposed for what it was, and despite being called lots of names at the time, (including by some servicemen who would go onto to be killed and have their case plastered over the media by relatives) peopel gradually came round to our way of thinking, to the point where I'm struck to day by the numkber of people who claim to have been against the war from the outset. You could be forgiven for thinking that 80% of the country were to listen to the retro re-writing of history, when in actual fact it was more like 30%.
 
Originally posted by Shadow Leader@Dec 17 2007, 10:34 PM

The big problem I have with AA is that the organisation is made up of meddling tree huggers who have virtually no knowledge of what it is that they are talking about. In short, they are kicking up for the sake of it, and not paying any heed to the livelihoods of so many thousands that they are seeking to destroy through their ignorance of the subject in hand.
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I'm with Shadow Leader here, although I didn't realise that Britains premier breakdown service were quite that bad.

The answer is surely never employ a mechanic who has lived part of his life in a forest.

I'm not sure about them putting my livelihood at risk though as I'm sure my boss would understand if I was late because my car wouldn't start.
 
Makes me laugh when these protestors are called "parasites"...by the Countryside alliance

which is made up of

.....Farmers



How many other industries would die for the laughable subsidies thrown at this arrogant, inefficent and sometimes downright negligent sector?


and the idea that they "shouldnt be allowed" to spread their beliefs on the basis of "facts" is ludicrous. On that basis just about every media outlet in the country would have to be shut down
 
Originally posted by Maruco+Dec 18 2007, 02:56 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Maruco @ Dec 18 2007, 02:56 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-Shadow Leader@Dec 17 2007, 10:34 PM

The big problem I have with AA is that the organisation is made up of meddling tree huggers who have virtually no knowledge of what it is that they are talking about. In short, they are kicking up for the sake of it, and not paying any heed to the livelihoods of so many thousands that they are seeking to destroy through their ignorance of the subject in hand.
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I'm with Shadow Leader here, although I didn't realise that Britains premier breakdown service were quite that bad.

The answer is surely never employ a mechanic who has lived part of his life in a forest.

I'm not sure about them putting my livelihood at risk though as I'm sure my boss would understand if I was late because my car wouldn't start. [/b][/quote]
I am surprised they have the time for tree hugging when they are trying to crack their alcohol problems .
 
The Iraq protest was the biggest in UK history by some considerable distance. Even the government acknowledge 1 million (the police claimed 750,000). Organisers said 2 million
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There was another way of looking at this....

Could well be seen as a protest against the democratisation of Iraq

Could well be argued that it was a protest against the right to protest





Not as simple as that of course.... but
 
it's really not worth arguing the toss about the CA on here, since there is such wilful ignorance demonstrated by people who clearly have no knowledge of its membership, nor of what it campaigns for. If you get its 'grassroutes' email service you'd soon understand it's about the rural economy and how that is constantly undermined by the incomprehension of this totally urban-centrist Govt in almost every respect. Its current campaigns include the closure of rural post offices, rural flytipping stemming from the loony council refuse policies, and as ever the support of locally produced food, inc small retailers, cheesemakers, game etc etc.

The remarks on here from people who appear to just blindly dislike both the middle/upper classes and the country way of life while comprehending neither, make reasonable argument a waste of time. There are plenty of 'workers' who belong to and support the CA - I can count at least 15 who use my Suffolk local out of a crowd of 'regulars' numbering maybe 35 - inc a car mechanic, a taxi driver, two gamekeepers, and a farm inspector {poultry} [who was once a submariner]. All of them shoot, most of them fish - and none of them hunt.
The President of the CA is of course Kate Hoey, one of only c10 MPs in the Labour Party for whom I have any respect. If she were PM and the party were full of people like her, I'd be happy to vote for it again. The previous President was Baroness Mallalieu, a Labour peer.

Of course the economic arguments for hunting - in fact for field sports in totality since we all know that that's what is at stake here - aren't predicated on their effect on the national economy - it's the effect of bans in specific localities, some of which are among the poorest in the country eg rural Wales and Northumberland which matter. But for Leftists the will of the masses, however ignorant, must always prevail even at the expense of individuals' homes and incomes.

Ardross: the CA is NOT intolerant of other lifestyles and opinions; it was founded to counteract the intolerance of others. CA members are happy to let and let live so long as they are offered the same courtesy. It does object to the propaganda based on a systematic repetition of lies based on malice and ignorance which fortunately seems to have rebounded on the perpetrators. A long campaign based on putting out the true facts has resulted in a change of public opinion in support of country sports. I'm not currently a member of the CA btw.

Warbler I don't know if you are referring to Darley by instancing a 'Newmarket global operation', and insinuating that a lot of their horses have been sent off to slaughter? - in fact Darley have now set up their own re-homing programme and there is a link to it from the ROR website. As you may remember about 2,000,000K was given to Retraining Of Racehorses by Sheikh Maktoum following the sale of the RP title for their work in re-homing racehorses, so any criticsm of Darley on that score is wide of the mark.
http://www.ror.org.uk

SL: We understand your passion but in some cases agressive and intemperate language really is counterproductive :brows:
 
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