IN reply to C Haynes' letter (Gazette, July 28) I would like to point out that the hunting with dogs issue is not over until the fat lady sings.

She hasn't sung yet, and it could well be that when we British people tire of warmonger Blair and his loony Labour backbenchers inviting every assassin in the world to have a go at us, an elected Conservative Party will repeal the Hunting Act.

Meantime, the Countryside Alliance is pressing on in the law courts questioning the validity of the Parliament Act so ill-used to axe centuries of English countryside tradition and to fight this wronging of our human rights through an appeal to the European Court of Justice.

And whose fox is it anyway? Vicious, sneaking, smelly, snatcher of lambs meant for our table, who wants one for a bedfellow? That's what we'll have without control of their numbers. Nature is hard at work as I write, a bevy of neighbours cats is hunting down in my back garden the newly-flown fledglings of a blackbirds nest one by one, their parents powerless.

Don't tell me the cats are carrying out an unenjoyable cull. Tonight the fields of England will be smudged with the loping of foxes on the hunt. It makes you wonder how the trivial Hunting Acts fits the grand scheme of things in God's creation.

W Fowler

Corsham