Okay, I'm going to start with a rant, so if you want to avoid it, scroll on down to the section break.

There's been a lot of crap published in British newspapers recently about the impending ban on hunting using dogs. The newspapers, which are mainly right-wing in leaning, have decided that it is an impingement upon civil liberties for fox hunting to be banned.

What crap. It is not impingement upon civil liberties that it is illegal for a bunch of kids to kick to death a dog. Nor is it so for it to be illegal for a bunch of (mainly) adults to use dogs to tear apart a fox.

Let's be clear what fox hunting involves. It is not hunting for food. It is not even a quick killing with a gun. It is a deliberately prolonged chase followed by a cruel death, which is carried out purely for the purposes of entertainment.

It is to misunderstand the concept of civil liberties to believe that to do anything, no matter how cruel, inconsiderate or dangerous, is our civil liberty. It is not. If we accepted that proposition, or even simply the proposition that hunting foxes in using dogs is a civil liberty then we would have to remove all legislation surrounding animal welfare. We would bring back bear baiting and badger baiting and cock fighting. We would allow unlimited cruelty to pets and livestock and wildlife.

It has also been said frequently that fox hunting is a great part of the British heritage. Again, this is nonsense. Fox hunting is a late-18th century entertainment which came about when deer populations had been so depleted that hunting them no longer provided sufficient entertainment.

It is well past time to ban all intentional cruelty to animals. It is a sign of the advancement of our humanity that we have come so far in improving animal welfare; it is a sign of how far we have to come in that we balk at this anomaly based solely on the fact that it is an entertainment of the "gentry" rather than the common man or woman.

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We listened to the first episode of the third series of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy last night. It was pretty good. They'd assembled almost all of the old cast, with the exception of Peter Jones, who played "the book" (and who is now dead). The actors who played Zaphod and Trillian sounded rather different this time around, but it's been a long time since the original series. So far, it looks like a brilliant continuation of the original series. After Thursday evening, you should be able to stream the first episode here.

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I made a little more progress on the new story this morning. I'm past that easy set-up phase and into the bit where I have to decide exactly how the story is going to progress. That means I'm going to have to force myself to sit down and do some plotting tomorrow, which I never enjoy that much.