Best Of

Some of you may wish to watch the 1970s Jon Pertwee Dr Who serial "Frontier In Space", which is on Freeview channel 57 U&Eden. The Master has just turned up.

Well that’s not worked. My freeview goes from 56 to 58

Hmm. https://www.freeview.co.uk/tv-guide?userNid=64257

I know selection of specific channels can be difficult depending on menu options. It may help if you press "57" directly but I don't know if that will mess up your specific settings. ☹️

Invalid channel comes up

I’ve tried to refresh too.

Maybe we don’t get it in Tyne Tees.

I’ve got the Blu Ray as well as the DVD anyway.

And it’s on iPlayer.

Indeed. I watched the glorious Power of Kroll on it on Xmas Eve.

...

So a plurality of Tory supporters oppose a trail hunting ban and less than half of Reform voters want to ban it either. The Boxing Day hunt also is a crucial part of village and rural life in areas like where I live. Hundreds turn out on the village green and the pub serves mulled wine as the hunt gathers and for its supporters in rural areas it is a big deal. Even if they have to hunt a trail or drag hunt now not a fox (whose numbers still need to be kept down).

Labour may try and ban trail hunting as most of its supporters want as it banned fox hunting but with Farage and Badenoch opposed to a trail hunting ban, if Labour lose power at the next general election it will be restored

There are perhaps only 170 hunt packs in England so this romanticised notion of every village welcoming its hunt with drinks and applause really needs to be challenged.

My only experience of this was in St Ives (Cornwall) several years ago when the Western Hunt paid the town a visit and it was all very congenial with a few supporters shouting and a small crowd applauding. For most, it was a curiousity and I suppose if there's a purpose to it, it shows urban people an aspect of rural life with which they would otherwise be unfamiliar.

I just think rural communities have a lot more serious issues than the future of the local Hunt.

Those foxhunts are spread across the country from Pembrokeshire to here in rural Essex, from Dumfriesshire to Wensleydale, the Cotswolds and Devon and will of course often stop at more than 1 village on a big hunt day than Boxing Day.

I would have thought this useless Labour government had more serious issues to deal with too than another act of class war against the supposed rural posh by trying to ban trail hunting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foxhound_packs_of_the_United_Kingdom

If Trail hunting supposedly doesn't kill foxes, what objection would hunts have to converting to Drag hunting? There doesn't seem to be one.

Also you keep bringing up the hunts keep the fox numbers down. If Trail hunts don't kill foxes how do they do that?

Also when fox hunts were allowed to kill they did not keep numbers down because that is not how Fox territories work. if you want I can go through the numbers for you but a simple example is to compare the City Fox to the Rural Fox. The City Fox has a much much much smaller territory than a Rural Fox (the territory is not controlled by extermination but food supply). Yet the City Office is effectively hunted and relentlessly so by the car. It is the major form of death for City Foxes and the average life span for a City Fox is 12 - 18 months but 3 years for a Rural Fox with some living up to 8 years.

So although the City Fox is culled and far more efficiently than a hunt its numbers are far greater. That is because food supply and not hunting is the determinant of the number of foxes.

Hunts used to kill 20 - 25,000 foxes a year. About 1.500,000 - 2,000,000 foxes are born each year. A killed foxes territory is simply taken over by another pair of foxes who will now breed.

If Trail hunting supposedly doesn't kill foxes why does it need to be banned?

Trail hunting also follows an animal based not artificial scent so is closer to the traditional sport of fox hunting Labour banned

Doh. Because they do kill foxes when they shouldn't. I think that has been shown quite clearly.

Which was of course the original purpose of the hunt until Labour in its class war banned it

I suspect it's becoming arguable that we should re-introduce deer hunting round here; both native species and muntjac are beginning to become pests.
Guns, though, I think. Not packs of dogs.

Why Britain has a deer problem - leaving damage that costs millions

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9d93xzey70o

Too expensive to fix.

Eat more venison.

Wouldn't that mean fewer people eating beef?

*Grabs tinfoil hat and ducks*

A lot of venison isn't wild these days, it's farmed. There's also a lot imported. I agree that having a lot more wild venison hunted and going into the food chain would be good.

We lead the world in country sports and coming over here to hunt should be far better promoted.

Wild deer are becoming quite a problem in parts of Highlands and Scotland. I would expect a fair bit more venison to end up on dinner plates soon

I was reading about this the other day. There are no predators to keep their numbers down so they are exploding.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9d93xzey70o

There’s quite a few close to me. Get them in the local woods and along the coast to coast cycle path. As the years have gone on you see them more and more too.

Which is why we need to reintroduce lynx to the British Isles!

Other brands of shower gel are also available.

It’s Alan Partridges favourite so probably not for the trendy out there.

Some of you may wish to watch the 1970s Jon Pertwee Dr Who serial "Frontier In Space", which is on Freeview channel 57 U&Eden. The Master has just turned up.

Well that’s not worked. My freeview goes from 56 to 58

Hmm. https://www.freeview.co.uk/tv-guide?userNid=64257

I know selection of specific channels can be difficult depending on menu options. It may help if you press "57" directly but I don't know if that will mess up your specific settings. ☹️

Invalid channel comes up

I’ve tried to refresh too.

Maybe we don’t get it in Tyne Tees.

I’ve got the Blu Ray as well as the DVD anyway.

And it’s on iPlayer.

More calm analysis in the Telegraph:

"Against this backdrop, thoughtful dissenters will consider whether an early election could be forced by via some kind of general strike blended with a dose of fuel and port blockades."

Britain is dangerously radicalised. Time is short to turn things round
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12/29/britain-dangerously-radicalised-time-short-turn-round/

Little dig at the Telegraph there. Sure the article can’t be irrational and is well reasoned.

Clicks on article

Sees it’s Isobel Oakshott.

Clicks off promptly.

Reform know their only chance is to get an early election - within the next 12-18 months - while it is still Labour vs Not Labour and they can look an attractive and viable alternative to the current Government.

After that, it becomes more problematic as one of a number of things might happen (and I stress these are neither in order of likelihood nor desirability).

Labour gets its act together and economy starts improving
The Conservative messaging on the economy in particular starts to resonate
Reform's own internal contradictions start tearing it apart

Speaking of blood sports. As a teenager I witnessed a scorpion fight a few doors down from my local Wetherspoons in an abandoned building, which was rather random.

Never heard of a fox hunt with dogs in these parts, despite being pretty rural. Pheasant shoots are ten a penny.

Any scorpion that fights a few doors (presumably winning some) is obviously a hard bastard of a scorpion.

Bet he gets lots of space at the bar at the ‘spoons.

I’m more intrigued by the Wetherspoons being in an abandoned building

To be fair to Spoons, plenty of their pubs have given a new lease of life to abandoned buildings, especially former banks.