Responding to last week’s letter on Hunting with hounds bill

sadly the stories we are hearing from Tigray are shocking.

After the two-year civil war, so many children are still out of school, and many of those who are in school can’t learn due to debilitating hunger.

Before the conflict Selemon and his parents lived a happy life.

Now his father has suffered a mental breakdown and is unable to support the family.

With no food at home, nine-yearold Selemon comes to school without eating anything and sits in class feeling hungry, instead of being able to focus on the lessons.

He used to be bold and active in class, whereas now, he often seems to get confused when he’s asked a question. His teacher says: “He always gets sick. He even has a skin disease, which I think is a symptom of hunger. His family is one of the poorest.”

The past few years have stolen so much from Selemon. Mary’s Meals is striving to reach his community and start serving meals to the children in his primary school.

Alongside our local partner, we are ready to expand our school feeding programme to more schools like Selemon’s but we urgently need more funds to do so.

With your help we can reach these desperately hungry children with food and boost their chances of engaging with education again.

You can provide them with hope of a brighter future. Please visit marysmeals.org.uk to give what you can to our Crisis In Ethiopia appeal – at just 10p a meal no donation is too small.

Matt Barlow,

Executive Director,

Mary’s Meals

Dear Sir,

May I take the opportunity to respond to last week’s letter [hunting with hounds’ bill is to be welcomed] and point out the inaccuracies contained within it. The said letter went from hunting bill to badger baiting with nothing in between

How dare Mr. Fitzgerald label the countryside hunting fraternity as criminals as the the way that he has done in his correspondents to your newspaper. Mr. Fitzgerald obviously knows nothing of field sports legal or illegal and has obviously got his lines blurred in relation to these matters.

Hunting with hounds is a very efficient and humane way of dealing with the fox population as pest control as opposed to shooting, snaring and poisoning where the animal might suffer a prolonged death. Badger digging is a totally different activity to hunting with hounds and is absolutely is no way connected to hunting whatsoever.

Badger digging has taken place for centuries and will continue to do so regardless of bills being pushed through to ban other field sports.

If Mr. Fitzgerald really cared so much about animals then he would not be opposed to fox hunting