OPPOSED to foxhunting, I nevertheless acknowledge a case for it arising from the centuries-long primacy of the fox as the chief and most cunning farm predator and, counting more in my book, the social role of the hunt in rural life.

Dividing opinion (even among country folk) as it now does, the hunt until relatively recently enjoyed a position as uncontroversially close to the heart of country life as the cricket club, the Women's Institute, or the church. That is what makes the fight about it so bitter.

Can any of this be said about foxhunting's close relative, the hare hunt? No.

The large picture which The Northern Echo published the other day of a hare hunt at Alston is a real cut-out-and-keep job. Due to the lowering day and the 'ancient' horns of the French hunstsmen - admittedly chance circumstances - the picture possesses all the atmosphere of a scene from a dark and disgraceful past.

No way is the hare ever likely to present a serious threat to farming - especially in the uplands. And if it ever should, no way would hunting it with dogs be necessary to deal with it.

Arguments about hunting are largely futile - you either recognise the horror of it, or you don't. But I'd like to quote to these hare hunters a short poem.

'Twould ring the bells of Heaven

The wildest peal for years,

If Parson lost his senses

And people came to theirs,

And he and they together

Knelt down with angry prayers

For tamed and shabby tigers,

And dancing dogs and bears,

And wretched blind pit ponies,

And little hunted hares.

The hare hunters might care to reflect on this: that of the four forms of animal abuse that inspired this poem, written in the 19th century by Ralph Hodgson, only the last continues in Britain today. A proud survival - or a shameful one?

THE 60th anniversary of El Alamein. Veterans gathered, some in wheelchairs. Very moving. Less so is the estimated 20 million pieces of unexploded ordinance that still litter the desert battlefield. Since 1945, this deadly legacy has killed 600 people and seriously injured almost 8,000.

Our Government disputes the figures. It insists there are only 900,000 mines in the immediate Alamein area, half of them British. We have contributed but miserly to a clean up - nothing since 1996 when we gave £600,000 of equipment, dwarfed by £4m since spent in Afghanistan.

Egyptians claim we don't care about the maimings and blindings that still occur. The 60th anniversary is a chance to prove that we do - by launching a final clear up, at whatever cost.

AMAZEMENT has greeted research showing that one in four young adults over 20 lives at home, and that parents often still provide money for their offspring at 30. Well to the grey-haired generation of parents, namely my own, this is no surprise at all. Not yet considered are the implications for young couples of today who believe it is a good idea not to have kids until they are about 40. Think about it, adding in the advancing retirement age and possibly shrinking pensions.