As almost the whole of the UK looks forward to the coming Olympics in London with the opportunity to see the best athletes in the world in our country and to showcase Britain and its values to the world what of that bunch of thuggish bigots – the bloodsports minority?
Who can forget the emergence to great trumpeting in our hunt loving media of this squalid coalition dedicated to doing their best to stop the Olympics ever even coming to London? Here is our report from ACIG News 31 January 2005:-
“If you wondered just how vindictive the hunters could be here’s a challenge to your imagination. This is extracted from an article in the Daily Telegraph, December 13th 2004, by Kate Hoey:
“A new organisation, independent of the Countryside Alliance, are about to be launched, called The Countryside Against The London Olympics – CALO. Led by Robin Page, chairman of the Countryside Restoration Trust and former presenter of the BBC’s One Man And His Dog, it will be made up of a coalition of organisations already fighting what they term ‘abuses’ against the countryside. “Hunting is just the last straw,” Page says. “Urban Britain has not listened and has continued to interfere in things it does not understand so now the countryside will interfere with the town and try to stop the Olympics coming to London in 2012.“”
Some seven months later, at the end of July 2005, it was announced that Kate Hoey, the Labour MP for Vauxhall was to be the new Chairman of the Countryside Alliance. Kate Hoey was the Minister for Sport from 1999 to 2001 under Tony Blair’s Government. She had campaigned against London’s candidacy for the Olympics preferring Paris so clearly had no doubts about publicising this CALO. Both she and Robin Page have prospered with the passage of time but what of the Countryside Against the London Olympics?
Clearly and mercifully they failed in their attempts to stop the Olympics from coming to London. But experience has shown that when the bloodsports mob fail as they often do they never give up. They just become ever more vindictive and belligerent. Do you remember the threats in the run up to the hunting ban? If Parliament voted to ban hunting bloodsports fanatics would burn down the forests, hack down power lines, even poison the water supplies. Little of this of course ever happened but the threat and the intent were there.
What of this shameful CALO now in 2012??? This was you will note a coalition of “organisations” so not just some rogue nutter. It was announced in a national newspaper not a mere two bit free sheet from the wilds of rural Britain. It presumably enjoyed significant funding from someone. What has happened to it and is it really another significant threat that our police and military seeking to protect the Games have to consider?
Personally I am almost certain that there is nothing in it. CALO was yet another in a long line of dud organisations formed by our opponents. However it was created and promoted as above and that says a great deal about those responsible. They desperately wanted it to work and just suppose that they had succeeded?
Come the summer it will be interesting to see just how many of the UK equestrian team who participate in and promote hunting decline to participate in the Olympics in some kind of Countryside Against the London Olympics protest. I would confidently predict – none!
This article previous was previously published in the Animal Cruelty Investigation Group newsletter January 2012.
