COMPARISONS between hunting and the violent miners strike are simplistic and somewhat absurd. Labour supporters seem unhelpfully obsessed with the strike which ended about 20 years ago (Letters, September 28).

The Labour Party has tried to ban hunting by voting in Parliament. The huntsmen and women are still legally entitled to hunt and have not broken the law (with or without dogs). A future ban remains theoretical and hopefully may never come into force.

If the anti-hunt lobby believes that by stopping hunting it can save foxes from "blood, fear or humiliation", its members are deluded. Foxes are vermin and would be exterminated by guns or other means if not hunted.

One way of ending hunting permanently would be to exterminate foxes. They are a nuisance to poultry farms and smallholdings. Comparatively few are killed by hunts.

Perhaps the Labour spoilsports may decide to ban pigeon-racing, angling, show-jumping, steeple-chasing and greyhound racing in future.

Hitting at fox hunting may be a spiteful parting shot of an unpopular and incompetent government.

This administration is more likely to be remembered for murder in Afghanistan and Iraq than for health and welfare improvements in its own country.

A Ogilvy,

East Parade,

Heworth, York.

Updated: 11:32 Tuesday, October 05, 2004