Sunday October 2nd 2022

Luke, you must be in France. It did return at 42/1 on course but I can see it is officially 66/1 for this competition.

I did specify e.w. for Place Du Carrousel in the 15.50. ParisLongchamg.

ALPINISTA 7/2 i BELIEVE

Did u bet tabors 25/1 winner i n st snita jeeees

I had 1 mehmas at 28/1 ew 2nd paris.

I backed him ew at 25s.

I don’t think he quite saw the trip out.

Stablemate Vadeni, will take some stopping next season.

He's still inexperienced and needs a year on his back ,much like Sottsass did in his first Arc run.

Vadeni is off to stud .

"The banning of it was yet another step in the dismantling of working class culture in this country in a consistent project by the liberal "elite" to tell the common man (and woman) what is good for them."

I don't regard the working class to be so stupid that they would allow a legitimate sport be taken away from them as you describe it. The "liberal elite" is just a slogan used as propaganda, much like "woke", to legitimise an attempt to go back in time and re-instate a society that has long since been consigned to the dustbin of history.The adoption of civilized values in terms of care for ones fellow men and women and respect for animals now holds sway.

I remember that Harold Wilson, when leader of the Labour Government tried and failed twice to get hare coursing banned. I never counted him as a member of the "liberal elite".

Presumably bear baiting, cock fighting and dog fighting is in the list of "sports" that the liberal elite has stolen in its "consistent project"? Another description for this process of banning cruel "sports", less paranoid, is progress.

I don't regard Sir Mark Prescott as a member of the working class, either. He inherited his title from his uncle, his parents were upper middle class, he went to Harrow school, and so on. He has enough money to satisfy his appetites elsewhere.

I think your argument that the purpose of the contest is to assess the skill of the dogs (which is no doubt the case) is irrelevant as the cost of the sport is dead hares. That, it seems to me, is the reason that it was banned: cruelty to hares.

The Burns Inquiry, set up by the UK Government to examine hunting with dogs which included coursing, concluded that "We are ... satisfied that being pursued, caught and killed by dogs during coursing seriously compromises the welfare of the hare. It is clear, moreover, that, if the dog or dogs catch the hare, they do not always kill it quickly. There can also sometimes be a significant delay, in driven coursing, before the picker-up reaches the hare and dispatches it (if it is not already dead). In the case of walked-up coursing, the delay is likely to be even longer".

Who said that the purpose of the "sport" was to kill as many hares as possible? Certainly not me. Do you really think that were the matter to be put to a referendum, British "working class" would vote to re-instate hare coursing? It's hard to take that seriously.

We saw the reaction of the general public to Gordon Elliot sitting on a dead horse. Outrage.

"If you said you'd be prepared to protest against the tearing out of hedgerows, draining of wetlands and arable cultivation of wild meadows and heathland, I would say that your concern for the fate of the hare matches mine."

I don't see this as some sort of contest about who cares most for the hare, as apparently, you do. I don't want to see any hares ripped to pieces by dogs just to satisfy the inclinations of some dog owners who want to score points when their dogs are pursuing living hares. That goes across all such misuse of animals.

If the liberal elite's project is to "Tell the common man what is good for them" then why have they left angling alone, one of the most popular of participatory sports. Surely those liberal carpet slippered feet would be on the necks of working class men and women, the sale of maggots would be banned, the penalty for breedling brandlings would be 6 months hard labour and the possession of a keepnet, life imprisonment. No doubt it is coming?

Can you remind me how we got on to this topic?

Of course Sir Mark Prescott is not working class. He a sportsman who was keen to keep a great traditional country sport going in the shape of hare coursing. It was much enjoyed by ordinary country people who loved dogs, worked with dogs and could afford to breed specialist animals to compete and gamble on in competitions like the Waterloo Cup. People who lived all their lives on the land understood the natural world; they worked with the master's animals all day and kept a few at home to eat and to hunt with at their leisure. But the lore of the hare and the fox is now fading into oblivion because politicians have legislated it to become extinct. Not only workers on the land but men who worked hundreds of feet beneath those woods and fields. If you have ever visited the old pit villages of the Durham and Northumberland coalfields you would understand that the pitmen were essentially country people who loved their lurchers and whippets, their pigeons and bee colonies, and of course their vegetable plots. These vestiges of a rural past were a saving grace in a life spent underground in the darkness, hewing the coal that fuelled the tidal wave of the industrial revolution.

This unique pastime has its roots in ancient cultures across the classical world and even the prehistoric - see Greek and byzantine ceramics, mosaics in Pompeii, and Palaeolithic cave paintings. So it was a working class pursuit closely allied with the world of labour in the countryside but administered by the sporting aristocrats who founded organised horse racing. It was the Earl of Sefton who instituted the Waterloo Cup and also leased land to the Waterloo Hotel which was to become Aintree racecourse. All these deep roots have been gouged out over time by a rising suburban middle-class, middlebrow population with more interest in tennis clubs, Toby Inns and pay and display car parks. Now all that is left of that world is badly behaved posh dogs being paraded in vast numbers in our parks, and thin mangy foxes tearing open our bin bags and strewing Waitrose food wrappers across our streets under the baleful eye of the inevitable CCTV cameras.

I do not subscribe to the romantic view that it was better in the old days. It sounds much like William Cobbett's view that the old masters with their privileged life and social structures were better than the arrival of a new world of industrialisation. He had good reason to lament the passing of that age faced with the horrors of industrialistion in the early 19th century.

It was always hell working in the pits and the miners were grossly exploited by pit owners. The organisation of labour in the 19th century when workers were rooted out of their agrarian lifestyle made it possible to establish rights for workers and this was extended in the 20th century. (E.P. Thompson "The Making of the English Working Class"). If the alternative to serfdom is mangy foxes eating out dustbins, that is a very good bargain. This does not mean that I approve of our current society or have serious concerns about many aspects of it.

Hope you backed it Alan! I did at SP.

I did🤣

Well done. Being a long odds fanatic and something of a dreamer, I also backed Rumi in the Prix de l'Opera which came fifth at 100-1 (Skybet paid on five places).

Autocorrect. You know who I mean.

Have you got room in your wallet for any more euros? Put it in the flippers.

Fab day for you EGS, in spite of the rain. Enjoy Paris.

I think we were all rooting for Sir Mark's filly, whatever we backed. It was fabulous to see her maintain the margin in the last furlong.