"Just wonderful, old chap. Spiffing, first class, top-hole and banana cakes".

Spiffing, first class, top-hole and banana cakes

That was Tarquin Lauder-Themanor's reaction to the news that his cunning plan to circumvent the Scottish Parliament Bill banning hunting with dogs would succeed.

"These bloody socialist buggers. Bloody thick as pig shit" chuntered Tarquin, sipping his fourth gin and tonic, even though it was only seven thirty (in the morning).

Tarquin explained how he had managed to get a Tory MSP chum to slip an amendment into the Bill which will allow him to have wonderful new fun. "Bloody, buggering simple actually old bean".

"I put a teensy weensy, ittle bittle old paragraph in and now life is going to be much more jolly".

The paragraph, which Tarquin showed to FirstFoot, says that an exception to the hunting bill will be made for anyone flushing a mammal out into open ground using a dog, but only, and here is the clever bit:

"but only if that person acts to ensure that, once the target wild mammal is found or emerges from cover, it is shot, or killed by a bird of prey, once it is safe to do so."

"Spiffing good fun"

Tarquin plans to breed and train a humungous number of hawks and eagles on his Dumfries estate and has plans for a new type of hunting.

"Bloody simple. I charge every bugger who comes along for the hunt £200 for the hire of a bird of prey. 200 huntsmen, four big ones for Tarquin. Bloody good ain't it. Twenty hunts a season, work it out for yourself old chap. It's a few bottles of Bolly".

"Anyway, they all get a bird and we go galloping after a single hound whose job it is to flush out the fox. Then we let the bloody birds loose. I don't feed them for a week before the hunt. They make a complete bloody mess of the fox and it takes an age to die".

"And it's all above board and I make a fortune."

"Bloody good show. Parliament is a wonderful place when it's full of thicko local government lefties".

Although this article is light-hearted, the Roxburgh Hunt is planning to exploit a loophole in the Bill to continue their centuries old tradition of having dogs rip a fox to death.

FirstFoot gets mighty pissed off when a high profile piece of legislation is so poorly drafted that it can be easily circumvented.

It smacks of incompetence and naiveté.