Queen's Birthday Honours

[P. G. Tipps]

Heretofore to be known as Trumpophilia.

What is it in fact you admire about this Scruton character?

Unfortunately, Trump is not really a maverick but rather a blatant and quite ruthless populist who has exploited the fears of many who feel restrained and cowed by suffocating Political Correctness.

Scruton is simply a man who is not cowed by others in expressing his own opinions and points of view, despite the absurd personal and intolerant attacks on him such as we have just seen here. I genuinely admire that.

However, maybe this is not the time and place to start a discussion about Sir Roger Scruton, Mr Barrett!

[Richard Barrett]

Scruton is simply a man who is not cowed by others in expressing his own opinions and points of view

You could of course say exactly the same thing about Trump. Or yourself. So what?

[MrGongGong]

Scruton is simply a man who is not cowed by others in expressing his own opinions and points of view, despite the absurd personal and intolerant attacks on him such as we have just seen here. I genuinely admire that.

He might be not cowed but he still talks b*llocks

[Richard Tarleton]

Heretofore to be known as Trumpophilia.

What is it in fact you admire about this Scruton character?

For a philosopher, he's guilty of surprising category error (or perhaps just ignorance) on the subject of foxhunting.....

https://philosophynow.org/issues/27/Roger_Scruton

http://www.rogerscruton.com/articles/2-books/29-on-hunting.html

[ahinton]

Scruton is simply a man who is not cowed by others in expressing his own opinions and points of view, despite the absurd personal and intolerant attacks on him such as we have just seen here. I genuinely admire that.

However, maybe this is not the time and place to start a discussion about Sir Roger Scruton, Mr Barrett!

It might not be the place - a new thread for that, surely, if anyone wants one? - but it could be as apposite a time as any, since he's just been knighted for services whose value has been questioned by some here (including, it has to be said, a few who might place a similarly low value upon knighthood itself).

[ahinton]

For a philosopher, he's guilty of surprising category error (or perhaps just ignorance) on the subject of foxhunting.....

https://philosophynow.org/issues/27/Roger_Scruton

http://www.rogerscruton.com/articles...n-hunting.html

I believe that he has indeed, although I don't think that it can be ascribed simply - or indeed at all - to ignorance, which is no excuse especially when there is no such ignorance, as is clear from the fact that Prof. Scruton has given considerable thoughts to the issue of hunting. I consider that his conclusions on this are very wrong and let him down badly.

"The sport of kings" is not today participated in by kings or queens but by an unacceptably large number (i.e. more than 0) of people, mainly but not exclusively well-heeled tawffs, as though it really is a "sport" when it is in reality no more an acceptable "sport" than bear-baiting, dog-fighting and the rest. The excuse that it is necessary to keep down pests that affect the farming community would be laughable were it not so serious; how scientifically credible, economical or serious is a bunch of tally-ho-ing people on horseback accompanied by dogs cavorting across the countryside in (usually unsuccessful) pursuit of a single fox? How many farm animals could that possibly hope to protect?

La chasse in rural France at least "pursues the eatable" (pace Wilde), is far more successful and its catches usually end up in the pot where they feed people who are often quite poor (although the traps set often kill or main domestic cats who have the misfortune to find themselves caught in them). Prof. Scruton, however, talks and writes mainly about foxhunting in England and the fact that the not inconsdierable thought that he has given to that subject leads him to the conclusions that evidently it does is, I believe, a grave indictment. Whilst I thought the governmental attempt to ban foxhunting to be almost as lamentable as foxhunting itself, it is a sad reflection on humanity (or at least on its practitioners) that this medieval practice continues anywhere, albeit in curtailed form, even in the 21st century.

[Richard Tarleton]

The excuse that it is necessary to keep down pests that affect the farming community would be laughable were it not so serious; how scientifically credible, economical or serious is a bunch of tally-ho-ing people on horseback accompanied by dogs cavorting across the countryside in (usually unsuccessful) pursuit of a single fox? How many farm animals could that possibly hope to protect?

Erm, yes....at the risk of derailing this thread completely, but RS has not done his homework, or talks to the wrong people.....
I was referring to the treatment of the issue as an animal rights one, as philosophers are wont to do, as opposed to an ecological and economic (as you say) one, entirely missing the point that the fox is in reality the farmer's friend . What do foxes mainly eat? Answer, the herbivorous, grass-and-seed-eating small mammals which compete with farmers for their grain, and the grass which their livestock eat. If you remove top predators from the eocsystem, you artifically tilt things in favour of wild herbivores. Enlightened farmers, and there are a few, know this. Lambs, chickens....the issues here are around animal husbandry, and here is not the place to disdcuss those.

[P. G. Tipps]

You could of course say exactly the same thing about Trump. Or yourself. So what?

I'm 'honoured' and flattered to be the put in the same category as the great Sir Roger ...

OTOH, I don't know what Trump really thinks. All I know is that he will use every method available to him to gain political power. He is also a blatant bully. And these are his better points.

By contrast, Sir Roger is a true gentleman and scholar, without any shabby political ambition whatsoever!

[Richard Barrett]

a true gentleman and scholar, without any shabby political ambition whatsoever!

He's been trying since the 1970s, with very little success as far as I can see, to establish a philosophical basis for conservatism. I call that a shabby political ambition to be honest, bearing in mind JK Galbraith's well known words: "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

[jean]

...the fox is in reality the farmer's friend...

That depends on what sort of farming you're talking about. Arable, yes of course.

Lambs, chickens....the issues here are around animal husbandry, and here is not the place to discuss those...

If you want to dismiss the damage done by foxes, I think it has to be!

Packing the chickens away in sheds solves the problem nicely, but has other disadvantages. And it doesn't work so well in the case of lambs.

[jean]

It's just taken me more than 20 minutes noting down some of his comments, leaving me feeling my precious life slipping away in giving time to this platitudinous twit, so if you'll forgive me jean, I refer you to the link you provided in your earlier message.

I should have asked what you found questionable - and having now listened to the whole talk, I'm still not quite sure, except that I believe we are more rather than less responsible for ribbon development than the European countries I know best.

But he's talking particularly about the Netherlands, which outside its historic city centres, I don't know at all.

[Richard Tarleton]

If you want to dismiss the damage done by foxes, I think it has to be!

Packing the chickens away in sheds solves the problem nicely, but has other disadvantages. And it doesn't work so well in the case of lambs.

Livestock farming too - sheep and cattle eat grass.

Most lowland ewes (the ones who produce multiple lambs) lamb indoors these days. Upland breeds tend to produce one lamb - a healthy ewe-and-lamb combo are capable of defending themselves against a fox. And it's possible to fox-proof free-range hens. The economic arguments come down heavily on the fox's side. Fox-hunting is a largely sociological construct.

PS worth adding that you find less fox-hunting in those parts of the UK where farmers tend to be owner-occupiers, rather than tenants, as hunts cause so much damage.

[jean]

That's not what my farming family told me (though you might argue that that was because they were partial to a spot of hunting themselves).

[MrGongGong]

Rob Titchener ?

[Serial_Apologist]

Rob Titchener ?

Of the ARCHERS?????

Not myself having come across his name before, I would never have had you down as an Archers devotee, MrGG!