Hunting Ban

About a week ago, The Government passed a bill to ban fox-hunting, deer-hunting and coursing in England and Wales, to start from February 2005. Of course, it needed the Parliament Act to pass it (a seldom used act that allows Parliament to overturn the decision of the House of Lords, who historically how opposed any anti-hunting bills. Ahhh, democracy, eh.)

It just remains to be seen what the pro-hunting lobby can do to overturn the law. They are expected to take it to the European Courts of Human Rights. Interesting they choose Human Rights, when one of their biggest arguments is that foxes need controlling. They’ll doubtless go for the “hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost” line.

Still, for the moment I revel in the victory.

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Posted in Jon

Scrabble Part 1

Played last night and, despite a terrible draw of letters for us both, managed to get a respectable 600 something.

New word : rakee

As Jo is well aware, this is a brandy of Turkey and the Balkans, distilled from grapes or plums and flavored with anise. Also spelt raki.

Found out that avgas is also in the dictionary. It means aviation gas. How I love similarities, sometimes.

Diving

We went to Babyswim today, and Freya had her first experience at diving. Well, I say diving ; it was more like dunking.

Still, she enjoyed it lots (at least after the first dunking), and came away as tired as she usually does.

England Visit

Spent the first part of last week with mum and dad, before heading off to London to visit Leigh and Carrie.

Wasn’t sure how they would handle Freya, since they aren’t the most emotional couple I know. That doesn’t mean I didn’t expect them to be happy, just how they would show it. Mum was more reserved, though her arm and general body-frame didn’t allow her to hold Freya too much (she did call her “china doll” more than a few times.) Dad surprised me most, spending a lot of time with Freya, carrying her around the house, talking to her.

Also took the opportunity of picking up the games that I’d got from e-bay.