The consultation gives the public an opportunity to give further comment….here is mine.
Summary:
Politicians in the UK have isolated themselves from real people and live out their lives in a bubble. They only see and hear what they want from *political pressure groups and bogus charities that give them a high profile cause to champion and make new illiberal laws.
*From now on we refer to the political pressure groups and bogus charities as politicians/political cronies.
The cause is usually fake, has no grounding in reality and will only increase the burden on real people in both time and effort, they will be the ones affected by the ill-conceived law or the abuse and intimidation they receive as they go about their daily lives.
A perfect example of this is the move to limit a pack of hounds to just two in Scotland. First we had a review by Lord Bonomy, but this did not give the politicians and their cronies a good enough excuse to limit the number to just two, so they held a consultation looking to push it through on the numbers game. The numbers game involves getting unqualified, inexperienced, ideologically possessed internet trolls to cut and paste answers from the political cronies pre-written answer sheet in an attempt to skew the number of respondents in their favour. If this is achieved the politician claims victory and actions the illiberal law for his cronies. Real people are shat on.
The Bonomy review
The review was prompted by the League Against Cruel Sports AKA LACS. They funded a study from their ‘goto’ expert Professor Stephen Harris to write a report titled, “The utility of killing foxes in Scotland”. He, along with others, made a cool half a million pounds from political cronies in the past. This princely sum of cash surrounded reviews that mysteriously always gave the cronies a stick to beat real people with and support their narrative. He also has a dubious history of being linked to LACS in court and one trial was halted due to this association. No surprise then to find he found in his review for LACS the welfare of foxes to be better with just the use of two hounds.
More shenanigans over the review
At the same time LACS were handing over “The utility of killing foxes in Scotland” from Professor Harris he was being publicly debunked in the Italian senate over a review he wrote concerning the use of animals in circuses for the Welsh Government. Professor Ted Friend had jumped on a plane from the states at his own expense to defend his research, he accused Harris of twisting his data 180 degrees. This was significant because Scotland were looking to ban wild animals in circuses at the time.
Naturally I thought it best the Scottish Government know of this latest development so they can act on the latest information and better inform the politicians and wrote to them several times over the debunking. My emails were ignored, they only responded after they had brought in the ban on circus animals and my information would now have no bearing on the outcome.
They wrote back and said they had not banned wild animals on welfare grounds but ethical grounds and they had used a review by ‘Jo Dorning’ for the welfare science aspects. I wrote back pointing out they had in fact used the Harris review because Jo Dorning was his graduate researcher and his review was known in Wales as the Harris review and renamed it the ‘Dorning’ review for Scotland. It had been debunked under the name Harris in Wales and resurfaced in Scotland under ‘Dorning’ in case someone mentioned Harris had been debunked. See how these folk operate? And of course they had banned circus animals on ethical grounds, it was the numbers game I have previously mentioned, PETA put out a sheet of answers on the internet for trolls to copy and paste suggesting it should be on ethical grounds. Anyone in the world can take part as well, it was not just open to Scottish folk.
(See the bottom for example of PETA cheat sheet with three answered questions from the 24)
The first Hunting consultation
Having not found a way through with the Bonomy review the Scottish Government fell back on the good old consultation, the numbers game. As soon as Roseanna Cunningham announced the consultation the political cronies unleashed their weapons of mass abuse and intimidation.
How it works – Groups like LACS/Onekind will fall foul of defamation repetition if they use old information and recycle, so they need to create news with chums in the press or fund articles in their favour. So on Cunningham’s announcement they went out into the countryside to generate the fake news suggesting illegal hunting was taking place. Journalists shoved cameras in people’s faces and run roughshod over folks land demanding to know what they are doing in their quest to find illegal hunting. A constant supply of fake stories appeared in the press with links to the consultation. The farce peeked when Alison Johnstone from the Green Party went out to watch a hunt with the notorious hunt monitor ‘Terry Spike Stocker-Hill’. Amazingly (not) she claimed to have seen illegal hunting in the company of Spike, hardly surprising given his record at the circuses. The police were less convinced and dropped all charges and not one huntsman was successfully prosecuted through this campaign of harassment and abuse by the politician’s cronies.
I have serious concerns over Roseanna Cunningham as she knows how their cronies work and would have known this harassment was a logic outcome of the announcement of a consultation.
Hunting with Dogs Bill – Yes another consultation
By the very fact the original concern and solution of limiting a pack of hunting hounds to just two, offered up by LACS/Professor Harris to the Scottish Government and despite the aforementioned information, the politicians are still beating that two hound drum. They are just looking for a tawdry excuse to make honest hard working people’s lives more miserable as they go about their business, and all for the benefit of cronies that have false narratives built on baseless concerns that line their wallets. When will the ethical argument be rolled out I wonder, with cheat sheet and trolls? This whole farce that has yet to provide the Scottish Government with an excuse to make honest hardworking folks life miserable and waste their time however it does provide Westminster with a very good example of why they should abolish immature devolved Governments and their playground politics.
“Politicians are only interested in our science when it supports what they have already made up their minds to do…” Professor Ted Friend
Peta cheat sheet, how to answer the consultation.
thealdenham 
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