Calling Cards of Morons

[velo army]

6 minutes ago, 19QOS19 said:

The irony of 'horses have a right to life like us' being they wouldn't have a life if horse racing was banned. They're bred to race. They wouldn't suddenly be left to roam the fields. 

A life of luxury with a tiny risk of death while racing or no life at all. I'd still say the first option is the better of the two. 

To understand the protestors is to understand that they think (broadly) that all creatures are born innately deserving of living a natural life. I also believe this, but to me that means being hunted and killed rather than being farmed and a lot of the more vegan folk think animals shouldn't be eaten by humans at all. Anyway, your argument that horses "wouldn't have a life" if horse racing was banned carries the presumption that the humans who breed them have the right to decide what this animal's purpose and "life" is. Also, if the racing was banned the horses who were supposed to race would presumably be put out to pasture. Who knows, perhaps they would get to just roam about the new forest.

 

[strichener]

41 minutes ago, velo army said:

Very few jobs are horse-specific, and I refuse to believe that any full time jobs would be lost (that couldn't be employed elsewhere)

That is just utter bollocks.

[vikingTON]

18 minutes ago, velo army said:

Anyway, your argument that horses "wouldn't have a life" if horse racing was banned carries the presumption that the humans who breed them have the right to decide what this animal's purpose and "life" is.

A human does have that right in the case of domesticated animal breeds. It's not unlimited (as cruelty should be punished) but the idea of animal agency on the same level as humans is another giant stack of 21st Century, Western nonsense. 

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Also, if the racing was banned the horses who were supposed to race would presumably be put out to pasture. Who knows, perhaps they would get to just roam about the new forest.

If they were left to roam around the New Forest, they'd be dead of starvation within a few weeks.

[ICTChris]

We should ban horse racing and then slaughter and eat all the racehorses.  

[19QOS19]

1 hour ago, velo army said:

* To understand the protestors is to understand that they think (broadly) that all creatures are born innately deserving of living a natural life. I also believe this, but to me that means being hunted and killed rather than being farmed and a lot of the more vegan folk think animals shouldn't be eaten by humans at all.

 

** Anyway, your argument that horses "wouldn't have a life" if horse racing was banned carries the presumption that the humans who breed them have the right to decide what this animal's purpose and "life" is.

 

*** Also, if the racing was banned the horses who were supposed to race would presumably be put out to pasture. Who knows, perhaps they would get to just roam about the new forest.

 

* As I've said earlier in the thread - it's hard to listen to the protestors (in this instance certainly) when they clearly don't know what it is they're fighting for. The lassie on Jeremy Vine the other day changed her mind constantly. It was to ban in entirely, then she claimed they wanted to discuss with the Racing authorities how to make it safer, then she wanted jump racing banned specifically and when someone said "So flat racing is ok?" she gave some daft stat about how one horse had died of a heart-attack. 

If it's the deaths that upset them so much then surely their cause would gather sympathy and momentum if they focussed entirely on making the sport safer. Lower fences/less riders etc. But to go from 0 to 100 is only going to get people's backs up tbh. 

 

** I'm not presuming anything. All I'm saying is that if the sport was banned then racing horses wouldn't be bred and they'd eventually die out. Which again begs the question, are the protesters happy for a breed to die rather than it have a wonderful life with a small risk of death? 

 

*** If these horses are as pampered as the experts claim then I sincerely doubt they would survive long in the wild tbh. I think the more likely outcome would be that the owners put a bullet in their head to prevent them starving to death in the wild. 

[velo army]

9 minutes ago, 19QOS19 said:

* As I've said earlier in the thread - it's hard to listen to the protestors (in this instance certainly) when they clearly don't know what it is they're fighting for. The lassie on Jeremy Vine the other day changed her mind constantly. It was to ban in entirely, then she claimed they wanted to discuss with the Racing authorities how to make it safer, then she wanted jump racing banned specifically and when someone said "So flat racing is ok?" she gave some daft stat about how one horse had died of a heart-attack. 

If it's the deaths that upset them so much then surely their cause would gather sympathy and momentum if they focussed entirely on making the sport safer. Lower fences/less riders etc. But to go from 0 to 100 is only going to get people's backs up tbh. 

 

** I'm not presuming anything. All I'm saying is that if the sport was banned then racing horses wouldn't be bred and they'd eventually die out. Which again begs the question, are the protesters happy for a breed to die rather than it have a wonderful life with a small risk of death? 

 

*** If these horses are as pampered as the experts claim then I sincerely doubt they would survive long in the wild tbh. I think the more likely outcome would be that the owners put a bullet in their head to prevent them starving to death in the wild. 

Thanks for this response. I appreciate you taking the time to outline your arguments with such care.

I take your point about them being pampered and I'll fitted to wild survival. I wasn't being clear that I wasn't entirely serious. It is more likely that they'd be put out to pasture.

I think that these protests suffer from, amongst other things, a lack of intellectual integrity. There is, as you say, no clear line drawn between the actions of the protest, the goals of it and some clear, overarching philosophy which would elicit a modicum of sympathy or understanding from the casual viewer.

 

[Derry Alli]

2 hours ago, ICTChris said:

We should ban horse racing and then slaughter and eat all the racehorses.  

^^^ CEO of Findus corp.

[strichener]

1 hour ago, velo army said:

I take your point about them being pampered and I'll fitted to wild survival. I wasn't being clear that I wasn't entirely serious. It is more likely that they'd be put out to pasture

Again this is just pie in the sky nonsense.  If you were to actually look into it, 1000s of horses leave the race industry every year.  Keeping them is not on the radar for successful stables.

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Not all thoroughbred’s born make it to stardom on the racetrack. Injury or just not capable of making the grade, sees thousands of ex-racehorses leave the industry every year. The sad fact is that many are sent for slaughter without being given the chance of an alternate life.

https://www.racehorserehoming.co.uk/

The BBC covered this in an episode of Panarama called "The dark side of horse racing".  I don't think it is still available but it showed horses being slaughtered in inhumane ways.  2000 a year from the UK and Ireland horse racing industry.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57881979

[tamthebam]

4 hours ago, welshbairn said:

 If aliens looked at some of the things humans do for fun they'd think it was outrageously cruel and we must be being forced. 

Like supporting Falkirk 

[welshbairn]

Put out to pasture is a euphanism for being melted into glue most likely. 

[vikingTON]

4 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

Put out to pasture is a euphanism for being melted into glue most likely. 

Like playing for Falkirk. 

[velo army]

2 hours ago, strichener said:

Again this is just pie in the sky nonsense.  If you were to actually look into it, 1000s of horses leave the race industry every year.  Keeping them is not on the radar for successful stables.

 

Well aye it was my best case scenario. I'm well aware that horses that aren't useful meet a sticky end.....

 

[BillyAnchor]

Watching ex football hooligans on podcasts. Even more moronic to buy their books.

[coprolite]

9 hours ago, velo army said:

It isn't in the same category if you believe that horses have a lesser right to life and freedom than you or I. However the animal rights protestors I've spoken to and heard on TV tend to be of the belief that horses being made to race for the amusement of humans at a risk of death for themselves isn't a bawhair away from them as animals have, in their eyes, the same rights to life that you or I do. A more germane example for the average punter might be fox hunting. Jobs were no doubt lost there, but nobody gave a shiny shite because they felt that an economy based around foxes being killed by a bunch of gammon horray Henries on horseback wasn't one worth preserving. 

The arguments in favour of the grand national, given the death and suffering among horses that it causes, are mostly deflection or emotive strawman construction. The chat about protestors "causing distress" to the horses might sound valid, but given the protestors were trying to stop the race to prevent horses being needlessly killed it seems  piss-weak. Horses will bounce back from being distressed better than if they had a broken leg.

The argument that stopping the Grand National would cost jobs is ludicrous too and I'm annoyed that the protestor flubbed it on the news. Very few jobs are horse-specific, and I refuse to believe that any full time jobs would be lost (that couldn't be employed elsewhere) with the banning of jump racing in general or the GN specifically. As said before about fox hunting, an economy that exists for gambling (which, when its for football purposes is portrayed as a cardinal sin in the media) and causes the deaths and injuries of horses annually isn't one that, if we are to aspire to some level of compassion and civility, should be preserved. 

Back to the thread, the snooker boy is either a complete moron or a plant.

I’m no fan of horse racing but the harm that comes to the horses from racing is incidental to the point, and it isn’t the object of the exercise to kill them, so it’s quite different from hunting in that respect.

If animal welfare was the only concern I’d say it should be banned but then I’d not eat meat or have proper shoes and horses would have enslaved us if they’d thought of it first so f**k em.

[tamthebam]

27 minutes ago, BillyAnchor said:

Watching ex football hooligans on podcasts. Even more moronic to buy their books.

If there's money to be made from this shite I'll pen my memoirs about running with the Meadowbank Mental Crew...

I actually did go to Airdrie v Meadowbank once at Broomfield and a wee Airdrie ned said "Bring on your casuals"

My reply was "We're Meadowbank. We don't have any f*cking fans let alone casuals"

[MONKMAN]

17 hours ago, velo army said:

 

The argument that stopping the Grand National would cost jobs is ludicrous too and I'm annoyed that the protestor flubbed it on the news. Very few jobs are horse-specific, and I refuse to believe that any full time jobs would be lost (that couldn't be employed elsewhere) with the banning of jump racing in general or the GN specifically.

There's 50k thoroughbred racehorses currently in training in the UK and Ireland alone.  How many people do you actually think are employed within the industry?  Also, where are the 50k horses suddenly going to go, when the stables are closed down and the thousands of people employed to look after them are currently on the dole?

Thoroughbreds are literally bred to race.  It could be argued that elite racehorses are amongst the best treated animals in the world, with a better standard of living and care than half the humans on the planet.

 

[Leith Green]

18 minutes ago, MONKMAN said:

Also, where are the 50k horses suddenly going to go, when the stables are closed down

[velo army]

1 hour ago, MONKMAN said:

There's 50k thoroughbred racehorses currently in training in the UK and Ireland alone.  How many people do you actually think are employed within the industry?  Also, where are the 50k horses suddenly going to go, when the stables are closed down and the thousands of people employed to look after them are currently on the dole?

Thoroughbreds are literally bred to race.  It could be argued that elite racehorses are amongst the best treated animals in the world, with a better standard of living and care than half the humans on the planet.

 

 

I was referring only to the Grand National. I imagine that horse racing as a whole obviously has a lot of employees. 

 

[Cosmic Joe]

Can they not just ditch the fences altogether? I'm sure there are far fewer fatalities in flat racing.

[Billy Jean King]

2 minutes ago, Cosmic Joe said:

Can they not just ditch the fences altogether? I'm sure there are far fewer fatalities in flat racing.

More racehorses die from accidents out in the stables / fields than die under both codes of racing combined. Horses like humans and any other animal on the planet die, that's just a fact we all face. The numbers that die actually racing are tiny yet it's seized upon by the rent-a-mob "causes" simply because it's a high profile sport with large numbers of spectators and tv viewers.

 

People die doing all sorts of pastimes / sports but I don't see rock climbing or motorcycle events coming under the same scrutiny.