In rural England, Boxing Day AKA St. Stephen’s Day is the day of the traditional Boxing Day Hunt!
The problem with democratic politics is that politicians have to appeal to those who MIGHT vote for them without annoying the people MOST likely to vote for them!
This results in governments throwing a “little red meat” to appease the zealots on their back benches who are annoyed at the compromises the “front bench” have made in order to win the election they won!
This applies to BOTH main parties (Conservatives and Labour).
With the Labour government we saw the self destructive policy of levying VAT in private school fees; a policy that many knowledgable persons (not only the Tory politicians) told anybody who would listen that far from helping the education of British children, it would in fact hinder it! This because the monies raised by the additional VAT receipts would be MORE than offset by the additional cots incurred – of education at taxpayers expense the children of parents who could no longer afford the increased school fees and thus had no choice but to send their children to the state schools. This was for children who were not classed as children with “Special Needs”. In many of these cases, because the state had to reassume their legal responsibility for eduction these children, many local authorities found that they had to take over the school fess of those parents as the ONLY school offering a service to cater for such needs were the very schools that the child had been attending!
The outcome?
The reform has resulted in poorer results for higher cost!
In 2026, the UK is to be faced with another example of legislative stupidity: To ban trail hunting (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8dylz375g8o)!
You see the no so little “local difficulty” this example of statutory idiocy will be what to do with the fate of the many thousands of fox hounds in the kennels of the fox hunts!
Now of course, Labour activists – who would ave difficulty in “acing” the cognitive tests aced by President Trump – will suggest that these redundant hounds be farmed out to members of the public who would like a dog!
Oh Dear!
These dogs are NOT pets and cannot be trained to be pets!
The only PRACTICAL solution is to “put the dogs down”. In other words, humanely kill them.
Of course, once the thousands of fox hounds have been euphemistically “put to sleep”, an incoming Farage administration will have to face the fact that decriminalisation of trail hunting will be pointless as the required dogs will no longer be in existence!
So the choice these Labour activists will have to make is which collection of animals do they kill: Foxes OR Foxhounds!
Decisions, decisions!