"We will protect hunting, shooting and fishing, for all the benefits to individuals, the environment and the rural economy that they bring.

A Conservative government will give Parliament the opportunity to repeal the Hunting Act with a free vote, with a government bill in government time."

page 80 of their manifesto.

Also from last month.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2016/02/14/fox-hunting-ban-repeal-hancock-_n_9231084.html

OcTaViOuS is as cRaZy as a coconut.

It wasn't put there for fun, but to keep the large number of people who demand a vote on it happy.

Country Tories more often than not are in favour of traditional fox hunting. City Tories, on the other hand, have very different constituencies and are quite often opposed. The SNP have little to do with it. In a free vote all of Labour will vote against fox hunting for class reasons, the Lib Dems will vote against it for cute fluffy animal reasons, and the Tories will be split. A free vote in this instance means the status quo wins. Having said that Labour made such a hash of the law in the first place it doesn't really do much anyhow.

Yes, a large number of people in the Tory party are pro-hunting and the hunting lobby is very influential within that party. So why all this fuss about me calling the Tories the party of fox hunting I'm not quite sure.

And the SNP did have something to do with it because the Tories wanted to bring it up last year but the SNP intervened, prompting all sorts of complaints from Tories about SNP interference in English affairs.

The Tories complained about SNP interference in English affairs because SNP interference was a large part of the election narrative. Practically speaking it would have made no difference to the fox thing.

In terms of "all this fuss", you were the one who brought it up and made most of the fuss. I just said you were wrong. People saying you're wrong is hardly an unusual occurrence :).

Has anybody mentioned this yet, that the title of this thread grates in the ears of pretty much all Americans? For better or for worse, we think of "The United States" in the singular, not the plural. I know it's a grammatical atrocity, but I just feel unpatriotic not mention it here. :)

I like how this thread about America's nuttiness turned into a bunch of Britons calling each other nutty.

Putin33 is not British, Letho.

The Dutch likely learned their English from the English where they inexplicably pluralize collective nouns all the time.

"Putin33 is not British, Letho."

No but I'm glad people find it hard to believe I'm American. Does wonders for the self-esteem.

God Bless America

To be fair, we went completely nuts around 1994 or at the latest 2001

https://www.facebook.com/snl/videos/10153955723081303/

I'll just bump becuse of this comment in the above video. Trump answering what's 2+2:

"I have to say a lot of people have been asking this question. No, really. A lot of people come up to me and they ask me. They say, 'What's 2+2'? And I tell them look, we know what 2+2 is. We've had almost eight years of the worst kind of math you can imagine. Oh my God, I can't believe it. Addition and subtraction of the 1s the 2s and the 3s. It's terrible. It's just terrible. Look, if you want to know what 2+2 is, do you want to know what 2+2 is? I'll tell you. First of all the number 2, by the way, I love the number 2. It's probably my favorite number, no it is my favorite number. You know what, it's probably more like the number two but with a lot of zeros behind it. A lot. If I'm being honest, I mean, if I'm being honest. I like a lot of zeros. Except for Marco Rubio, now he's a zero that I don't like. Though, I probably shouldn't say that. He's a nice guy but he's like, '10101000101,' on and on, like that. He's like a computer! You know what I mean? He's like a computer. I don't know. I mean, you know. So, we have all these numbers, and we can add them and subtract them and add them. TIMES them even. Did you know that? We can times them OR divide them, they don't tell you that, and I'll tell you, no one is better at the order of operations than me. You wouldn't believe it. So, we're gonna be the best on 2+2, believe me."

The PVV is admittedly just as bad, if not worse, than the Donald.