The hunting debate still rages but all polls seem to have taken the view that is prevalent in the country, that hunting for sport is part of our history and now has no place in our modern society.

You only have to cast your mind back to our feudal past and look at the parallels between hunting and slavery; even the vocabulary is the same with terms like Master, Whip, Land/Plantation Owner, Hunt Servants, Field Marshalls etc.

I suspect that the same people involved in slavery have descendants that are regular hunters as one per cent of the population owns 70 per cent of the land with the church and the crown making up the rest.

But as the Countryside Alliance so eagerly states we must fight prejudice and of course fight the ban!

With so many letters and comments regarding the hunting issue I have always maintained that hunting is only the tip of the iceberg in this debate; it's just a window into the political and social world we all live in.

I – and I'm sure many others – feel the same anger over the blatant and despicable behaviour of many of our MPs over their expenses.

We had moat cleaning and heating fuel and repairs on the second country homes.

But when MPs or prospective MPs are controlled and manipulated by political pressure groups then our trust in them sinks even lower.

The Countryside Alliance is by far the most successful pressure group of modern times.

It has managed to get the police forces nationwide to leave the Hunting Act un-enforced and has seen one of its strongest supporters, David Cameron, elected to be leader of the Conservative party with a "cast iron" promise to repeal the hunting act.

This once proud party is now led and controlled by the like thinking people who sought for nearly a decade to ensure that hunting would never be effectively banned.

If this ban is repealed then we as a nation move backwards and if this new future government places at the top of its agenda the repeal of the hunting act then this is a clear statement on where its priorities and true loyalties lie.

Already we see in Europe the newly elected Conservative MEPs opting to be marginalised and on the edge of the major centre right political groupings.

Threats have already been echoed about opting out of the social chapter and this could lead to the repeal of the minimum wage and an emphasis on eroding working conditions and placing dividends and profits at the centre of its economic policies. Here we could see one per cent of earners taking 70 per cent of the profits as the rest of us fight divided over the remains!

GRAHAM FORSYTH

Fairway Rise

Chard