SIR – The fox hunting discussion drags on and on in your letters pages. Not helped, of course, by the Conservatives who have promised another vote to try to bolster up their core vote.

Well, we’ve seen and heard all the arguments trotted out ad nauseam by hunting’s apologists over the years, each one increasingly ludicrous and unsustainable, but the one undeniable fact is that hunting has no moral justification in a civilised society. It is cruel and vicious. I was a regular attender as a child, brought up in the country. There is plenty of evidence on the internet for doubters. Hunt supporters are notoriously economical with the truth and make pretty unreliable witnesses. Certainly foxes can be seen as a pest and may require control in specific areas just as other animals in the wild require culling, nothing wrong with that. It is perfectly easy to trap and then humanely kill a fox as it is any other animal but that just takes the fun out of it for those with an unhealthy bloodlust. This is an inconvenient truth they choose not to acknowledge.

Tim Palmer
Worcester