Opinion
Rich kids…who’d ‘ave ‘em?
Somebody please buy the Shropshire village of Annscroft a set of medieval stocks for their village green? Then please put local man Otis Ferry in those stocks (chuck rotten eggs at will) and keep him there beyond the next General Election, and until the free vote on the Repeal of the Hunting Act 04 is won, done and dusted.
This “attention junkie” has already been arrested five times bringing disrepute to the public face of hunting. We have a real opportunity to win a democratic Parliamentary free vote to repeal the Hunting Act 04. It may be our only chance: ever. Let’s not blow it.
Opinions will be formed, votes will be won and lost, by what we say and how we conduct ourselves in the next six crucial months: public relations. We will only win by means of open debate, intelligent persuasion, and decorum. Let’s not lose the vote because of bigotry and belligerence from attention-seeking political activists.
In 2002 Ferry was seized at 4am as he approached Tony Blair’s constituency home ‘armed’ with a pocket knife and pro-hunting posters. In 2005, he lunged over a barrier in London’s Downing Street and shouted in the face of PM Tony Blair and his wife as they made a walkabout while celebrating an historic third term in office. Ferry would be well advised to stop attacking Prime Ministers before a highly-trained British Security Officer pumps six bullets into the back of his head.
In October 2005, Ferry somehow escaped a driving ban despite drinking at least seven shots of vodka. During a ‘special reasons’ hearing in Gloucester Magistrates' Court (NB: one law for them - another law for us). Ferry claimed friends bought him treble vodka Red Bull drinks, but he believed he was drinking single shots. (Must remember that one…)
The special reasons Court heard Ferry was persuaded to spend the evening at a nightclub with friends from Cirencester Agricultural College instead of driving home, and added: "They were insistent for me to get involved." Ferry escaped a driving ban, was fined £500 and ordered to pay £364 costs...?
How does that work then? Either you are over the drink limit - or you are not? Money talks...?
His latest fracas with the law saw him arrested for ‘robbery and common assault’ allegedly against two little old ladies with flowery skirts and a camcorder (the old dears had probably been holding the camcorder the wrong way round...); and a further arrest pertaining to the same incident - this time allegedly on ‘Suspicion of Perverting the Course of Justice’. He was held in remand and spent four months in prison.
If we ‘normal folk’ get chucked in the clink we’d have to bunk-up with the prison’s resident Fagan, and his bad guys. But hey-ho, not Otis; he’s a rich kid…the son of a pop star…don’t-you-know; he gets a single cell to himself (ensuite, of course) with ‘protection’. Surely if you break the law, you are a common criminal? So why the privileges?
Ferry does not hold a monopoly on being passionate about the future of hunting. Many of us have hunted 40 years and more, and all through the dark years when the hunt saboteurs were at their most sinister (something Ferry has no experience of) yet we have managed to stay within the law. And we were respected for that.
Otis: “They put me in jail for my beliefs”
No...Mr Ferry. They put you in jail because of the seriousness of your alleged offences. As part of your ‘release deal’ four months later, you admitted you did commit a public disorder offence, and you were given a one-year conditional discharge for causing: "fear, stress and upset" to one of the hunt monitors.
You also said: “I picked up the camera and jumped on my horse, galloped up the road as quickly as I could with the camera gripped in my mouth because my hands were on the reins. I got 200 yards up the road and there was a police car. So I chucked the camera into the verge, opened the gate to a field, and rode off."
That sure sounds like robbery to us Mr Ferry.
As Prisoner RB7994 he claimed the police and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) targeted him unfairly: "This has been politically motivated. I am a Tory-supporting master of foxhounds, and the current Government is anti everything that someone like me stands for. This is a socialist Government and I am the epitome of everything they detest."
What kind of role model is this for the young people we are trying to encourage to come out hunting? What happened to embracing all cultures and creeds in a modern society? How do these relentless criminal arrests benefit hunting? Why is he still a member of the MFHA? What is the point of the new Hunting Regulatory Authority when the Hunting Office continues to turn a blind eye to all his criminal behavior?
Answers in an email please: info@themastersvoice.co.uk
Sources include: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/5412582/Otis-Ferry-They-put-me-in-jail-for-my-beliefs.html
Stop this war of attrition...before it turns ugly, again…
Why all this vitriolic attack on Lush Stores? What purpose will this serve? There’s even talk of pro-hunters making threats to Lush shop attendants inside their stores. This is crazy. The ‘antis’ have every right to hold their views. And Lush has every right to support who they choose. They are not going to ask you for permission they don’t need.
In this free country - it is called democracy. We don’t agree with Lush, or the antis, and that, in turn, is our right to freedom of speech. Lush want to ban hunting, shooting, fishing - and horseracing: that’s a tough call by Lush, but don’t be playing into their hands with foolish deeds.
Banging on about boycotting Lush this Christmas only serves two purposes: one, it will boost the traffic to the door of Lush Stores; and two, it increases the number of ‘antis’ and that is a very dangerous thing to do.
Creating antis - is creating terrorists: terrorists deal in real terror, and gruesome intimidation. Death has already visited our covert sides.
Almost all of those creating the current hatred on Facebook and elsewhere were not born when the last hunt sab battles in the countryside were taking place. Those that were around were never anywhere near the coal face of hunting where we had to take the repercussions of others actions. Once started, the confrontations just get nastier, and nastier: to no purpose; to no end.
Out in the hunting field, back then, it was common to see fist fights, arrests, spitting, swearing, shouting, and all manner of aggression. Sometimes three busloads of antis came, and the atmosphere rose more violent by the day.
On one occasion, while hunting hounds, 60 antis followed me into covert (I counted them in couples). They were hooded with black balaclavas, and armed with hockey sticks; they spray your hounds with stuff that makes their eyes stream and they sneeze incessantly; it kills their power of smell for half an hour or more. The antis can a lift a pack at a check, and some of them should be entering hunting horn-blowing competitions.
While living at hunt kennels, firecrackers were shoved alight into the kennel hedges - firing at intervals with the velocity of a 12-bore shotgun; car horns blaring outside our house at 3am awakening and terrifying our children; suspicious people hovering about the road outside our kennels and our family home: it’s the stuff of nightmares, and it’s always the hunt staff who take the brunt of it all.
The likes of Mr Ferry have only been in hunting five minutes. He has no practical knowledge or experience of what the HSA, the LACS and other sinister clusters can, and most certainly will do. Yet here he is proactively creating terrorism and driving up hatred within these groups against hunting - the reverberations of which will undoubtedly come home to roost on others. Not him.
While Mr Ferry is with his posh Chic, in his posh London night club, the ‘antis’ will be antagonising outside the home of some unsuspecting young hunt staff family, in a lowly hunt staff cottage, attached to a hunt kennels somewhere. Think about it Mr Ferry; as you could very soon have blood on your hands.
Here we are with TMV, out to promote hunting’s place in a futuristic and modern light: a sport which has much to offer the future British countryside as shooting does, given a fair and democratic society: not least its considerable annual contributions to the rural economy. But we cannot do this while these Machiavellians rage-around daggers drawn, recreating a senseless conflict in our countryside, all over again.
We may not be able to pick up the pieces this time, as there may be nothing left to pick up.