Skip to main content

The Grand National - why it just isn't fun any more

As the Grand National approaches tomorrow, we've already had one death at Aintree, this year: http://metro.co.uk/2013/04/05/battlefront-death-at-aintree-shows-organisers-have-grand-national-meeting-safety-badly-wrong-3584482/. The macabre 'betting slip' above, drawn up as a reality-check by smart opponents of the race to illustrate the nature of the problem here, is in that sense, sadly, already out of date. (If you had your money on the 4-1 outsider, you've already lost...)

Despite 'the National' being part of our annual life when I was growing up, I won't be betting on any horses or taking time out of my weekend to watch it.

So why the opposition? There will be activists from the Fight Against Animal Cruelty in Europe (FAACE) protesting outside Aintree station to raise awareness of the number of fatalities of horses in the race.

The thing is: it is one thing for humans to take part in a risky sport, if they choose to. It is quite another to subject animals who have no choice in the matter to even greater risks.

It is just wrong, it just ain't fair, to gamble with horses' lives every year in this way.

It's time for the Grand National to fade out, and for jump-horse-racing to be put on hold.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

More on why 20's plenty -- without need for any further 'trials'...

There are a number of reasons for setting a default speed of 20mph throughout the 'unclassified' road network in residential parts of a city such as Norwich. Most important perhaps is that of driver recognition as to what the speed limit is. If you have 20 mph as the default then you not only establish this limit clearly, but you also adjust the driver's recognition as to what is the "normal" speed in such residential areas. The most important aspect is that drivers set 20 mph as the norm with those 30 mph areas or roads being seen as 50% faster, rather than seeing 30 mph as the norm with 20 mph as 33% slower. The psychological adjustment of normal speeds in residential areas is key to the success of reducing speeds and therefore danger to pedestrians and cyclists. Therefore any trial, pilot or whatever, that only implements 20 mph in a tiny proportion of the city is not modelling 20's Plenty in any realistic manner.   When considering the val...
2 comments
Read more

Stansted: a reflection

The key question, in relation to protsts like that at Stansted last week, is: which side are you on? Are you on the side of big corporations profiteering from completely unsustainable climate-destructive behaviour? Or are you on the side of people with no vested interests just making a non-violent stand, at considerable cost to their own time and money, for the sake of all our futures? It doesn't seem to me a hard judgement to make... Rupert Read Green Party Councillor, Norwich, and Lead Candidate for Eastern Region for the Greens in the 2009 Euro-elections. DID YOU KNOW: A vote of about 10% across Eastern Region on June 4 2009 would be enough to get me elected to the European Parliament... http://rupertsread.blogspot.com
2 comments
Read more