Stefano I do hope you will be sticking around on the TFF for many years to come and if you do you will learn a few things about me. One is that I’m sometimes guilty of grabbing the wrong end of the stick and sometimes fail to read posts as they were written. This mostly happens when a post has a few words that jump out at me and the result is often I then get blinded to everything else written in the post, just ask Merse as he will confirm it. The good news is I always put my hand up when I get pulled up because I misread a post, I then go and read the post again and the second time I normally see what was really written...........
Alternative thread title:
BOXING, FOXING, F1, AND OTHER STUFF
A very well written and well thought out post Dave which is what I always expect when you contribute, and is why I have often given one of your posts a vote for Best Poster of the Week. I was tempted not to reply purely on the basis that I had not introduced fox hunting as a subject for debate so did not really feel motivated to continue. However having thought about it there are a couple of issues I feel I should raise on the basis of balance.
I know that on this very well run forum you always welcome adult debate as long as it is within legal boundaries and is not abusive or insulting. I would have to say that I agree with many of the things you said in your post Dave, but there are others where you have stated things to be definite when there are two sides to the issue and I think the 'other' side should be acknowledged as existing, even if not agreed with.
The fox hunting issue was picked up on because I had mentioned it, almost in passing, whilst saying that I did not like boxing and I made a comparison between the two. This was mis-interpreted as me saying that fox hunting should be legalised, when what in fact I was saying was that boxing should be banned.
I am not pro hunting with hounds although when it was lawful to do so I accepted the absolute right of those who wished to do so to participate.
In my response to your initial post Dave I did state that foxes kill for fun, not just for food or to defend territory, and I still believe this to be true. You have stated in your post that this is definitely not true and foxes do not kill for fun.
If you research the subject particularly using internet search engines you will indeed find many articles supporting your view. However these were largely written in quite recent years by academics aligned to the anti-hunt lobby. Their research was certainly not unbiased and neither was it scientific in it's approach. Certainly no foxes or chickens were interviewed!
If one delves deeper though you find that there is still a lot of support for the opposite view that foxes do kill for fun.
If you have been into a hen house the morning after a visit by a fox then it is unlikely you would be in any doubt. Scores of dead and mutilated hens, a handful of terrified survivors, and very very often no hens missing. This view is the collective knowledge built up over hundreds of years of the farming community, who know far more about the countryside and nature than city academics but whose views are normally arrogantly dismissed as the musings of country yokels.
The only other real issue on that point of your thread Dave (I will touch on boxing in a moment) that I think needs thinking about is your statement that only human beings kill for fun. That is certainly not correct as there is lots of properly documented scientific evidence that a lot of animals kill for fun, which makes it all the more likely that foxes do as well given the evidence of the morning after the night before hen house.
Amongst animal species who during properly authenticated scientific research have been found to kill for fun are the Big Cats, Orcas, Dolphins, Hyenas, Opussums, and many different bird species.
It is accepted that animals kill for food and to defend territory, as indeed do humans, but there is now ample evidence that animals as well as humans kill for fun.
The thought of an attractive and intelligent creature like the dolphin killing for fun is not an image that we want to have, but they do, and their victims include fellow dolphins as well as porpoises. Not all animals within a species will kill for fun, but then again thankfully not all humans do.
The best example though to get the point over is the domestic cat. Well fed and in no need of extra food, they continually stalk, catch, play with, and then kill various rodents and small birds. They do not eat them (well some do, that's the fat ones!)
These are alternative views to ones you gave as being definite Dave and I am certainly not demanding that they be accepted, just considered. On this issue we are not really too far apart if at all, I like animals and abhor cruelty, and I am not pro fox hunting.
I blame Aussie for this. He started looking forward to the Monaco Grand Prix, I said I didn't like F1 and then went on to say I also didn't like boxing, and then made the mistake of comparing boxing to fox hunting!
So on to boxing where I think we are poles apart in our thinking and would never agree. I would emphasise that I have certainly not "muddled up" what happens in the boxing ring with the violence that happens on the streets, and my opinions on boxing have been formed over a number of years.
As I stated I now refuse to watch it, although that has not always been the case. My first memories are the black and white television images of Henry Cooper and Cassius Clay in the 1960's, and over the years I watched many fights on television.
The last boxing match I watched was in 1979 in a packed and smokey RAOB Bar on Belfast's Crumlin Road. An Irishman called McGuigan I think it was was boxing, although I remember more his father introducing the concept of karaeoke to the world with an awful rendition of Danny Boy from the ring before the match. It was this boxing match that put me off. It was competitive with both boxers getting many hard blows to the head, but what really disgusted me was the behaviour of the large audience who were all baying for their local hero to cause serious damage to his opponent.
It got me thinking about boxing as a sport. I thought about the objective and the possible consequences. I also thought about the audience, what messages they were getting from watching the fight, and what messages and values they were passing on to their children. I decided that I would never watch another boxing match again and I never have.
Having said that though I acknowledge and accept that anybody who wishes to participate or spectate has an absolute right to do so as boxing is a lawful activity. That stance is not the one of everybody who does not agree with an activity though, a good example being the physical violence directed towards the hunt when it was a lawful activity by people who were against it.
I believe that boxing should be banned. That view is also the view of the British Medical Association (and endorsed by the World Medical Association and many MA's in different countries) who since 1982 have been campaigning for boxing to be made illegal. Evidence collected by the BMA is that at the end of their careers three out of every four professional boxers have severe brain damage, as well as eye, ear, and nose damage. Death or disablement is frequent.
The BMA accepts that as a percentage of those participating the number of deaths in some other sports is higher, notably horse riding, sky diving, mountaineering, skiing, and scuba diving. However the difference is that boxing is the only sport where the purpose is to cause harm, whilst in other sports it is an accidental side affect.
The influence of the BMA should not be under estimated. Who would have thought twenty years ago that smoking would be banned in pubs and other enclosed public places? But it is,and the BMA were one of the leaders in making it happen.
Boxing is already banned in some other European countries and efforts have been made in Parliament to have it banned here.
Labour MP Paul Flynn introduced a Private Members Bill in both 1998 and 2005 to make boxing illegal. Flynn, a former boxer himself, said in introducing the bill that boxing had a glorious past but had become an ignoble art and a degrading spectacle of gratuitous violence that exploits the least advantaged people.
So boxing isn't something that we are likely to agree on Dave, but that should not be a problem as this is a football forum after all so we will not be likely to be discussing it regularly. In fact having given my views on the subject I think it is unlikely I will jump in and give them again.
On the subject of the television scene you described from your childhood I think you will find the film was 'Paul of Tarsus' which was serialised over several weeks on Sundays.
Dave will know what I have been referring to as they are references to his and my posts on these issues, but if anybody else feels absolutely infuriated by anything I have said and feels motivated to bang away at the keyboard in response, please do first have a look at the previous related posts to put it into context.
Plenty to think about on the football front. Colin Lee leaving (I can remember watching him playing for Torre Trojans in what may well have been his first ever appearance at Plainmoor), Muzzy by the look of it gone, Mo gone apparently, and a worrying financial outlook for the club.
I think Aussie has got a weekend off from his F1 this week (see nicely back on thread!
) I have driven through the streets of Monaco used in the Grand Prix and although it is not a sport I like I have actually been to a F1 Grand Prix, many years ago in Belgium (not following the sport I don't even know if Belgium still hosts one of the races). The main thing I remember? .... very noisy!
Just like driving around Torquay but without the traffic wardens isn't it?
. I can remember hosting the New South Wales Police FC down here in Devon, beat them of course because we had at least five ex-professional footballers playing in that game, and then in the evening we took them down to our police club at Heavitree Road. Nigel Mansell, who apparently used to drive cars quite fast and was one of our staff, was there having a drink and the Aussies were creaming themselves! Very strange behaviour I thought. I suppose I can say that I have driven around the circuit at Monaco but didn't go too fast and still nobody overtook me!
