A bad day for democracy

I am referring to the report in your newspaper (Sunday Independent, February 17, 2013) concerning the Scottish singer, Paolo Nutini, whose attendance at a hunt ball in Co Westmeath provoked yet another outpouring of rage from those who seek to denormalise hunting using a variety of tactics, one of which is to mobilise a social media lynch mob against anybody in the public eye who finds disfavour with them through any association – no matter how tenuous – with hunting.

Nutini joins a long list of those who have found themselves in this unhappy position. Recently celebrities such as Rachel Allen and Hector O hEochagain have been targeted, and the objective is undoubtedly to discourage other media personalities from touching hunting with a bargepole.

Animal rights radicals can never muster any more than a few dozen protesters at their events and understand well the only way they can leverage their numbers is to use social media such as Facebook and Twitter to do their heavy lifting for them.

Hence the Irish Council Against Blood Sports takes upon itself the role of judging which social events are unacceptable to its moral code, and must therefore be avoided. Those who defy this cultural boycott must face the consequences.

It is surely a bad day for fundamental principles of democracy in Ireland when a handful of activists wield such power through coercion.

Your report regurgitates the oft-repeated claim that the majority of Irish people want a ban on hunting, without adducing any evidence that this is the case and ignoring the thousands of people who vote with their feet and go hunting every weekend in Ireland.

Your report correctly states that hunting is banned in Britain but does not add that this ban is proving unworkable, politically toxic and was brought in by the same Blair government that invaded and occupied Iraq in 2003 – another example of a bad idea that seemed like a good one at the time.

Philip Donnelly, Chairman,

Hunting Association of Ireland,

Clane, Co Kildare