Hunting foxes does not befit the dignity of our ruling classes!

Is it about urban vs rural lifestyles? The countryside lost that battle during the Industrial Revolution. Is it about controlling pests? Small farmers, many already on incomes near the poverty level, can be hit hard by lamb losses, agreed. Although one would imagine using shotguns, snares or poison would be more efficient, if not hunting from a helicopter gunship.

Is it about cruelty to animals? We are stabbing nearer the heart of the problem here, though it is more to do with the fact that people are enjoying cruelty to animals. As Samuel Johnson once observed, the Puritans were not against bear-baiting in itself, but the fact that people enjoyed it. If culling foxes were a low-status minimum wage job, we can assume no one would give a damn.

Is it a class conflict thing? Unavoidably, yes. Ever since the Norman invasion, hunting has been the monopoly of the upper classes. Robin Hood first became an outlaw, if you remember, after killing one of the king’s deer.

The connection between fox hunting and aristocracy is not an obvious one. It is not exactly like shooting tiger from the vice-regal howdah on the back of an elephant. Not related in any obvious way to a warrior-class test of manliness and courage, stalking dangerous prey. Nothing to do with providing game for the aristocratic table.

There is, to the Socialist Wanker eye, nothing terribly dignified about it. If anything, there is something vaguely embarrassing about admitting to hunting fox. This inexplicably English pursuit only fully makes sense when viewed as a highly stylised and symbolic expression of the hunting instinct. Displeasing a victim as it is, the killing of the fox and the ritual smearing of its blood on new hunters’ faces is essentially symbolic of the kill, rather than merely the disembowelment of an inedible ginger rural pest.

Therefore the Socialist Wanker calls on the Government, as a matter of urgency, to restock the countryside with prey more suitable to the dignity of our ruling classes.

This laughable pursuit can only inspire the contempt and scorn of both the lower classes within our country, and the elite among the real hunting nations of the world. We suggest that the countryside be re-seeded with bison, wild boar, or other dangerous prey which befit our courage and manhood, such as woolly mammoth. Crossed with porcupine. And equipped with missile launchers and bouncy springs on the soles of their feet.

Thereby the hunting lobby would forever render itself criticism-proof, for no one could object to hunting heavily-armed airborne woolly mammoth, which are obviously a menace.