WHAT ON Earth motivates people like Christopher Hodgson (The Issue, October 9) to come out with such crass statements as “repeal of the Hunting Act would be a public service”?

Has he lost his marbles while out terrorising our wildlife and infuriating the non-hunting majority?

As one of the rural community, whom he mistakenly claims to represent, I can assure him that there is no mass uprising against what he calls a misguided law, and educated people know full well that management of any aspect of our wildlife is certainly not safe in the hands of hunters and their supporters.

Perhaps alongside humanity’s selfish gene there is a regressive gene that blocks compassion, motivates the primeval urge to hunt and kill, cultivates class control and an unhealthy addiction to the past.

Education, wealth and power, so sharply represented by hunters desperate to cling on to the influence and control enjoyed by their ancestors present a less than edifying spectacle as the hunters exploit every loophole in the Hunting Act while their followers harass and intimidate monitors with cameras.

This is modern day Britain: welcome to the unlamented past and the rural mayhem generated by hunters throughout our countryside, the very people who David Cameron, as Prime Minister, would reward.

Will history record a 21st century nation proud of its technological achievements but with one foot firmly stuck in the unenlightened past?

BEA BRADLEY, Cuxham Road, Watlington