As our pictures – and those submitted by Western Daily Press readers – indicated, hunts gathered all over the region for their Boxing Day meets.

As they did so, Farming Minister Jim Paice suggested that the ban on hunting wild animals with dogs "simply doesn't work". Some commentators have taken his statement as a clarion call to bring forward the Government's promised parliamentary vote on repealing this controversial legislation.

We are not sure that to construe so much from his words is wise. Was it not simply an acknowledgement that the 2005 Act is proving hard to enforce? Former Prime Minister Tony Blair has said it was, for him, little more than honouring a promise to Labour backbenchers from town and city.

The hunting debate may be one that all of us need to rejoin, but at this moment in time, the electors and the elected are surely better occupied concentrating their minds on the hard graft required to drag this country out of recession.

The 2005 Act created a poisonous split between town and country that spilled on to the streets of Westminster and here in the West Country. We could do without a repeat.