Rural Ireland Says Enough

marlin vs

Some pictures.

fodda

From their policies

Renewable Energy is the only way forward for Ireland creating local employment.

End to meat factory and supermarket control of food means local produced food. All of this good for farmers and local employment.

Phasing out of factory farming thus making more food produced as it once was, so good for farmers and also more need for those who control pests.

Just banning horse and hound hunting and giving alternatives to those people, nothing on shooting or fishing.

Maybe their policies may actually benefit shooting and country folk.

Sparks

I dunno - do we even have the capacity to be self-sufficient nationally in all the basic foodstuffs anymore?

ianoo

a few more pics of a great day

fair play to all who turned out from all corners of the country

there was easily 6-8000 people there at one stage it stretched the whole lenght of the quays

ian

oldzed

some pics from today:)

SpringerF

Whoever took this photo deserves his place in history.
It should become the front piece of the rise campaign.

Brilliant simply Brilliant

aylazara

hi , wonderful day to day, great turn out . i was a there today as stewart, nice peace full protest. i just feel i was very dissapointed wiith the rte coverage of such a huge event. rise was never mentioned once.everyone put a huge amount of effort between orginisation and travel and every thing. let us keep it going, we can get them out before they do damage to our countryside. well done all.

bunny shooter

Love the picture of the counter demo...All four of them?...Wouldn't you think the other 10-11 would have left the conference to stand with them :rolleyes:

Birdnuts

oldzed wrote: »

I was in the crowd today and it was a great march , I hope it is the start of something good . I have a hoarse throat from shouting at a hotel but it sure feels good . Rise estimated the crowd at 5000 but the gardai estimated it at around 8000 , if I can figure out how to add a few photos I will stick them up later .There was a great cross section of the community from falconers ,shooters , pony clubs , hunts , coursing, fishing, stalkers etc etc. Gavin duffy from dragons den gave a great speech he is a brilliant orator and I hope to here more from him in the future.there were people there from as far away as monaghan .tyrone , galway and god knows where else . I found it a truly uplifting experience and for once feel like there is hope for the future. I finished off the day with a march in clonmel to save our local hospital . I have never marched against anything before in my life but I think I will be getting the hang of it . by the way the counter protest consisted of a total 4 people hiding behind a banner grumbling about bloodsports and as usual they had as much or more radio coverage as the 8000 rise supporters ,ZED , ps well done to everyone who went I recognised quite a few heads there today

Gavin Duffy is a dangerous egotist who doesn't give a dam about the ordinary GC member around the country(who by the way are in no way affected by this simple updating of Irelands primitive animal welfare legislation) and simply wants to whip up unfounded hysteria among ordinary sporting folk for his own selfish aims - ie. to protect the Ward hunt which is a hangover from the dieing days of the British empire in Ireland. This chap is the same breed as one Edward Haughey and is problly hoping for a knighhood for his efforts at maintaining a very British upper class tradition:rolleyes:

bunny shooter

The Greens & Fianna Fail presumed the Ward Union Hunt would be thrown to the dogs and now the terrible truth has dawned that they now have the whole fieldsport community backing them against this unjust legislation :cool:

Birdnuts, if the Greens had controlled their looney fringe this might not be happening :P

Traumadoc

Birdnuts wrote: »

Gavin Duffy is a dangerous egotist who doesn't give a dam about the ordinary GC member around the country(who by the way are in no way affected by this simple updating of Irelands primitive animal welfare legislation) and simply wants to whip up unfounded hysteria among ordinary sporting folk for his own selfish aims - ie. to protect the Ward hunt which is a hangover from the dieing days of the British empire in Ireland. This chap is the same breed as one Edward Haughey and is problly hoping for a knighhood for his efforts at maintaining a very British upper class tradition:rolleyes:

Kind of ironic then that the Antis at the march had English accents, and are funded by a British high street chain.

The anti-upper class thing does not work in Ireland .

Rosahane

bunny shooter wrote: »

Love the picture of the counter demo...All four of them?...Wouldn't you think the other 10-11 would have left the conference to stand with them :rolleyes:

That is unfair to them!

The antis have 20 members not 15:D

I enjoyed Gormless's comments about seeing their policies through in the interests of democracy, particularly since the Greens have 5% support:rolleyes:

Grizzly 45

Just got home today from a 12 day work search on the continent.Really Pi%%ed that I missed this:mad:.But well done to all who turned out and organised this.So of the "hundreds " who support anti fieldsports in Ireland they could only muster 6??? And a
"minority" sport could put 6to 8 thousand on the street??:D:D
Be worried Greens and FF!!! Be VERY Worried!!!
I would suggest upgrading the old CVs.You might be needing them soon.:D:D:D

endasmail

Birdnuts wrote: »

Gavin Duffy is a dangerous egotist who doesn't give a dam about the ordinary GC member around the country(who by the way are in no way affected by this simple updating of Irelands primitive animal welfare legislation) and simply wants to whip up unfounded hysteria among ordinary sporting folk for his own selfish aims - ie. to protect the Ward hunt which is a hangover from the dieing days of the British empire in Ireland. This chap is the same breed as one Edward Haughey and is problly hoping for a knighhood for his efforts at maintaining a very British upper class tradition:rolleyes:

as far as i know
gavin duffy is not a member of the ward union and hunts out of kildare
am open to correction

Sparks

From the Sunday Business Post:

Red light for Greens’ move against stag hunt
28 March 2010 BY TOM McGURK

I suspect that some Green Party members, at their conference in Waterford this weekend, have been enjoying a growing sense of satisfaction.

They now have two senior ministers and two juniors in government and, very soon, environment minister John Gormley will attempt to ban Meath’s Ward Union hunt. But I have a feeling that new Green junior minister Mary White - seeing the protest outside the conference by Rural Ireland Says Enough (Rise) - will be fixated by what she’s reading in her tea leaves. She is, of course, the Greens’ only rural TD but, given the equestrian and hunting background of her constituency in Carlow/ Kilkenny, her parliamentary future now looks grim.

A few months ago, a crowd of thousands - led by local Fianna Fáil TD John McGuinness - turned up at Gowran Park in Kilkenny at a rally to protect traditional rural sports. They were unimaginably angry and - in a new sight for Irish politics - the wrath of the ‘pony-mums’ was on display.

White knows very well what I mean. The hunting ban and other animal legislation represented the Green leadership’s deal with the party’s lunatic fringe to get them to support Lisbon - and the Ward Union hunt is about to pay the price.

Watching the Greens and others attack the Ward Union hunt on television last week for its alleged cruelty, I was struck by their extraordinary arrogance and moral self-righteousness.

Our own homegrown, suburban Taliban were telling decent rural people - whose DNA has a thousand generations of animal husbandry - that they knew better. There was even one who wanted the hunt banned because ‘‘some of the big property developers are members’’.

Has class politics arrived in Ireland at last? I didn’t know the Greens had a North Korean branch, but are we now to assume that places like the Royal Irish Yacht Club, the Kildare Street Club and the K Club had better watch out?

What is fascinating about the Greens’ position on hunting - and on rural sports in general - is how they have managed to turn the particular into the universal, and then pretend it’s a moral imperative.

To argue about animal cruelty in field sports, and to ignore utterly the overall and compelling context of our free market economy’s wider relationship with the complete spectrum of animal husbandry, is the work of an ideologue, not an idealist. Here is as compelling a brew of muesli and moral relativism as you will find. You’ll look hard to find Francis of Assisi on a bicycle around here.

Perhaps it’s time to have a grownup look at their argument. For a start, all animal husbandry since the beginning of the domestication of animals has involved varying degrees of intrinsic cruelty. Is it not cruel in the first place to capture animals from the wild, imprison and then enslave them - to bend them totally to our purposes? In fact, at the outset we divided the entire animal kingdom in two - those we regarded as useful to us, and the rest which were not useful and which we regarded as pests.

Countless millions of animals and birds have been kept in a state of intrinsic cruelty to supply our food needs. Regarding a few farmers and their hounds chasing a fox or a stag across the countryside as somehow the epitome of cruelty, while ignoring the wider context of how we treat animals, is simply being disingenuous.

Is fox-hunting somehow intrinsically and morally more cruel than a veal calf doomed all its life to live in a cage, or a hen among thousands in the darkened prison of a broiler house, spending its entire life in a space four times its body size? Is it worse than the store bullock (dehorned and post-castration) locked up on slated floors, being deliberately over-fed and doomed never to see daylight?

Every day, millions of animals and birds have their throats cut, their necks broken, are electrocuted to death or drowned. Every day, thousands are hung up on chains by halal butchers, have their throats cut and are allowed to bleed to death. (Come to think of it, when will we see the anti-hunting brigade picketing halal butchers?)

And since fox are only vermin, can we compare hunting them with how we deal with the rest of our vermin? What about the rat we legally poison who will swell for 48 hours and then die an agonising death; the mice smashed to death in traps; or the crows and other birds we legally shoot to ‘‘curb vermin’’, as the Department of Agriculture puts it? Would the Greens prefer we poisoned the foxes or shot them, running the real risk of wounded foxes dying slow, agonising deaths?

Incidentally, on the same television programme, some of the Greens were extolling the virtues of the new hunting legislation in England - a country where, one has to say, moral relativism has finally disappeared up its own hypocritical fundament. How else to explain a society which happily bans foxhunting and legalises abortion up to and including 24 weeks?

The current Green anti-rural campaign is, of course, political suicide. The right of the native Irish to enjoy the ownership and pleasure of the land their ancestors died in the ditches to regain is not something that will be lightly surrendered. The Greens are stirring up feelings that are so deep in the Irish cultural and emotional memory that they may be about to inflict generational damage on Fianna Fáil. Rural Fianna Fáil TDs (much more than the suburban deputies) are discovering how the Greens are threatening their traditional support base.

Already, Meath Fianna Fáil TDs Mary Wallace, Johnny Brady, Thomas Byrne and even minister Noel Dempsey are facing an enormous dilemma over the Ward Union hunt. I suspect that, before this is all over, there will be more than stags jumping the ditches down Navan way. Fianna Fáil’s electoral survival in Meath will be difficult enough - and the Ward Union issue could be the tipping point.

As I understand it, there is a already a group of 14 to18 Fianna Fáil rural TD’s who are actively considering taking a stand on Gormley’s move to ban the hunt. In a country where a government once fell over Vat on children’s shoes, surely the red lights are already flashing? Tally ho!

bunny shooter

Was grand until he lumped shooting in with poison :rolleyes:

Birdnuts

bunny shooter wrote: »

Was grand until he lumped shooting in with poison :rolleyes:

Indeed, though I agree with most of the rest of the article which highlights the stupidity and clumsiness of th Green Party who instead of dealing properly with legitimate animal welfare issues in this country have instead made the likes of Gavin Duffy look like some poor oppressed minority:rolleyes:

Birdnuts

Looking at some of the banners in the protest on the previous page the people behind RISE would be well advised to disassociate themselves from those puppy farm types responsible for much cruelty to dogs as well as churning out thousands of "damaged" puppies every year which are then bought by well meaning members of the public. They are trying to avoid tighter laws which would focus more light on their cruel and disgusting activities which are crying out for stiffer laws and inspection regimes. They are no doubt turning up at these protests to hide their own selfish interests in preventing animal welfare laws tightened.:mad:

bunny shooter

I would be against "puppy farms" myself.

However, without demand for puppies there would be no "puppy farms"?

The Celtic Tiger and the noveau rich all want "pedigree" dogs of various breeds and are willing to pay for "pedigree" puppies.

When I was young (er ) nearly everyone had a mongrel dog that needed a home when it ws a puppy 'cause somebody's bitch "got out" while on heat.

How many puppies and dogs are destroyed each year by councils in the dog pound?

And how many "pedigree" puppies are registered with IKC?

Birdnuts

bunny shooter wrote: »

I would be against "puppy farms" myself.

However, without demand for puppies there would be no "puppy farms"?

The Celtic Tiger and the noveau rich all want "pedigree" dogs of various breeds and are willing to pay for "pedigree" puppies.

When I was young (er ) nearly everyone had a mongrel dog that needed a home when it ws a puppy 'cause somebody's bitch "got out" while on heat.

How many puppies and dogs are destroyed each year by councils in the dog pound?

And how many "pedigree" puppies are registered with IKC?

Thats why the whole business needs to be inspected and registered to weed out the scumbags, as well as a countrywide mass neutering, micro-chipping drive for all non-working, non-breeding dogs. This would end the scandal and waste that is the slaughter of thousands of perfectly healthy dogs every year. This should have been done years ago(like the UK, Germany etc.), instead we now have a total shambles thanx to our poxy politicians.

Is it any wonder the country is up the creek in every way when our so called leaders cannot even get something as simple as this right without making a complete balls up of the issue:mad:

bunny shooter

Seen as you completely ignored one of the main points I was trying to make I'll expand on it further...............I reckon the recession will drive a lot of puppy farms out of business as people won't have the cash for pedigree puppies anymore.

Who is supposed to pay for this mass neutering and microchipping ?

Birdnuts

bunny shooter wrote: »

Who is supposed to pay for this mass neutering and microchipping ?

Most Vets now offer neutering of pets to people on Social Welfare for around 20 euro - I know because my granny availed of it recently and was chatting to the Vet about the situation. Many animal wefare orgs also offer the procedure cheaply to families on low incomes.

Micro chipping a dog is a very cheap and simple procedure.

The money saved in the form of not having dog wardens, welfare organisations etc. spending charity and state money on dealing with thousands of strayed and abused dogs would be signficant in itself if the government deceided to deal with this problem once and for all:)

bunny shooter

Neutering for €20. That's not bad :cool:

The wifes dog (female) cost €95 a few years ago to neuter and €25 to put to sleep when her time came.

12 months before her time came we spent €1,500ish on vets bills after the dog was hit by a car and had to have it's front left leg removed.

This dog was a stray we took in and homed. She was obviously abused, possibly by a man, in her previous home/s, as for the first 6 months she was very nervous around me or other men.

She was a mongrel and the sweetest and most loving little dog I have ever seen. She is buried in the back yard and has a little head-stone over her grave

Birdnuts

bunny shooter wrote: »

Neutering for €20. That's not bad :cool:

The wifes dog (female) cost €95 a few years ago to neuter and €25 to put to sleep when her time came.

12 months before her time came we spent €1,500ish on vets bills after the dog was hit by a car and had to have it's front left leg removed.

This dog was a stray we took in and homed. She was obviously abused, possibly by a man, in her previous home/s, as for the first 6 months she was very nervous around me or other men.

She was a mongrel and the sweetest and most loving little dog I have ever seen. She is buried in the back yard and has a little head-stone over her grave

I know - normal vets fees like every other profession in this country are ridicoulously expensive. I was in Kenya recently, volunteering, and spoke to a local vet out there who nearly collapsed when I told him what fees are charged back in Ireland.:rolleyes:

Traumadoc

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2010/0329/1224267279699.html

Perhaps FF are waking up?

Birdnuts

Traumadoc wrote: »

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2010/0329/1224267279699.html

Perhaps FF are waking up?

From that link I can't see how FF are going to gain much ground outside their hardcore base for getting in the way of measures that tackle corruption and bad planning - the very issues that have turned this country into the basket case that it is. Like it or not, issues such as whether the likes of Gavin Duffy et al get to chase a pet deer around North Dublin aren't going to grab the average voters attention given the wretched economic and social state of this banana republic:rolleyes:

thelurcher

Birdnuts wrote: »

Gavin Duffy is a dangerous egotist who doesn't give a dam about the ordinary GC member around the country(who by the way are in no way affected by this simple updating of Irelands primitive animal welfare legislation) and simply wants to whip up unfounded hysteria among ordinary sporting folk for his own selfish aims - ie. to protect the Ward hunt which is a hangover from the dieing days of the British empire in Ireland. This chap is the same breed as one Edward Haughey and is problly hoping for a knighhood for his efforts at maintaining a very British upper class tradition:rolleyes:

Duffy is fairly harmless in fairness - his speech went on a bit though and he ruffled a few feathers by crediting the wrong person with organising the event :rolleyes: but he succeeded in giving the journalists something to write about which is why a guy like him is so useful to our cause.

Are we going to have to listen to this 'hangover from the dieing days of the British empire in Ireland' argument for much longer - birdnuts golf soccer rugby could all fall into that category too - as well as many other facets of Irish life including the language you're writing in

Sparks

Ugh, golf. What a waste of good land, used to repeatedly interrupt a nice walk...

cavan shooter

The old "Horsey set" may exist in some peoples mind around Dublin/meath, and I remember a couple of idiots when I was growing up that

a. Mortaged their houses to keep horses/stay in the hunt
b. Had accents as cultivated as a crisp head of ice berg lettuce.

But drink was agreat leveller, and the "howyas" would come out and my Mothers expression of "new money, no class" always sprung to mind. funny they arent around much these days:rolleyes:.

Society is full of people who think their something their not and has been for years. The young Dad pushing his young fella at football even though he was crap etc etc. The same for some people who get up on a horse or own a horse because they see it as a step up the class ladder, but hey, there are people in all walks of life that way, I just laugh at their general direction.

Lets be honest horses cost money to own, Livery etc etc and in some peoples mind owning a "pony" is seen as a step up, why God knows

a. They sh*t alot
b. ruin grass
c. The price of horse meat is rock bottom.
d. Vets are expensive

The hunt around me are mainly local farm owners etc...

Its time this argument of a throw back to high Class WASP ishness should stop its becoming boring.

Grizzly 45

Sparks wrote: »

Ugh, golf. What a waste of good land, used to repeatedly interrupt a nice walk...

More like the waste of a perfectly good rifle range..;)


"But drink was agreat leveller, and the "howyas" would come out and my Mothers expression of "new money, no class" always sprung to mind. funny they arent around much these days."

Called Neuvieu Riche in polite company:D.
Well,owning a horse or a" Harse" in Limerick or parts of Dublin isnt that expensive if you.
1] Keep it on public greens,soccer pitches,other peoples front gardens,or public roads.
2]Stables,no bother if you have a garden of 20ft by 20ft and a walk thru front door to kitchen back door.Failing that,a caravan in the front garden makes a fine stable.
3]Dispense with bothersome tack ,saddles etc.An oul bit of rope and a bit will do grand.Did red indians use girlie saddles like um pale faces???Nope most kids around here ride like Apaches.
When you get bored with it.Just abandon it to die of starvation or let a humane society have to deal with it.:mad:.simple really.