The law doesn’t change just because you’re on horseback

I’ve just sent off a cheque to the RSPCA in the hope that they will put it towards the costs of bringing another prosecution against those arrogant pink-jacketed psychopaths who continue to hunt foxes with hounds despite the fact that it is against the law to do so. It’s a small contribution towards the upholding of law and order in our increasingly fractious society. I’ve always been in favour of law and order; tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime and so on. If society passes a law saying we shouldn’t do something, then we shouldn’t do it. We can protest our right to do it, we can petition MPs, we can rail from the pages of expensive magazines. But we should abide by the law of the land, no matter how absurd we consider it to be.

I feel very comfortable making this point in what is, of course, a conservative publication, because I know that you all share this conviction with me, this requirement to abide by the law. You’re with me on this one, all the way. Even if you disagreed with the outlawing of hunting with hounds, you would not be so hypocritical as to assert that the law should not be obeyed.

The law is not a buffet at your local Harvester — you cannot pick and choose the laws to which you intend to adhere and those which you will flout. That sort of thinking smacks of the blinkered absolutism of the liberal-left, doesn’t it? I assume Melissa is on her own with this one. Oh, and those Tory MPs who have been sticking the boot into the RSPCA. And some district judges… so, quite a few people then.

Hell, maybe I’ve got wrong. Maybe hypocrisy and blinkered, bone-headed absolutism is alive and well on the right, too.