The Government is considering the possibility of making incitement to religious hatred a crime.

While in no way claiming country sports to resemble religion, those of us who hunt or even just support the right to hunt or fish are, ourselves, regularly the recipients of incitement to hatred.

How many letters to the editor have we read, how many speeches have we heard in Parliament where words such as "barbaric", "sadistic"' and "uncivilised" are employed to vilify us?

It is quite obvious to anyone who talks to hunting folk that we are ordinary, decent people who just happen to enjoy hunting.

Yet certain campaigners and politicians seem to have no problem in using or endorsing language that creates hatred and intolerance towards us.

It is also worth noting that here, locally we, too, have fundamentalists who have resorted to bombing, physical assault and intimidation in pursuit of their aims, namely that of animal rights.

Fundamentalism and moral absolutism of whatever kind have been exposed as anarchic and destructive.

Those who pay lip-service to, or actively endorse, the demonisation of those who hunt should realise this plays right into the hands of the hate-filled, anti-human animal rights extremists.

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