HUNTING is the major problem with tomorrow's countryside rally. Hunting is drowning out all the other, vital issues and it is going to prevent many millions of people expressing sympathy with the marchers' plight.

To most of the country, hunting is not a pressing issue. Health and education are, as is the worrying prospect of world war.

Hunting is unpopular because it is regarded as cruel, and to see people taking pleasure out of cruelty is regarded as distasteful. There will not be any wave of public sympathy for hunting, and so having hunting as the prime issue of tomorrow's rally will alienate a majority of the country.

If huntsmen were really concerned about rural matters, they would not allow their single issue to dominate. They would not be arrogantly boasting about how they intend to break a law if it is passed by the democratically-elected Parliament.

They would be trying to save their sport, and help the countryside, by quietly and sensibly devising a licensing system which removes the worst excesses of hunting and which the majority of the British people - and probably MPs - will accept.

Hunting out of the equation, let's look at the other issues that should be being aired tomorrow: the decline of traditional industry, the strangulation of red tape, the shortage of affordable housing, the decline in public transport, the closure of local services, the dominance of supermarkets, the worries of law and order, the incompetence of the Government.

These are whole nation issues. There is no divide between town and country.

Traditional industries, especially manufacturing, are all in decline - indeed, farming received £6bn of taxpayers' money on top of its subsidies following foot-and-mouth but 1,200 Teesside steel jobs disappeared with only a Government taskforce in their wake.

The shortage of affordable housing is as much of a problem to a young nurse in the town as it is to a farmworker; the closure of local schools affects people in Middlesbrough as much as anywhere else.

Privatised buses do not serve inner city estate, outskirts suburb or rural village very well. Post-Beeching, the train network is a skeleton service too distant from most people and too expensive for many.

The dominance of supermarkets has destroyed the character of most town centres and has driven suburban corner shops out of business while at the same time it has depressed rural incomes.

Practically every person in every street in every part of the country wants to see more policemen protecting them.

Finally, foot-and-mouth is one of the major triggers of tomorrow's march because the Government's incompetence has proved that it doesn't understand rural affairs. But equally the Government's incompetence over railways shows that it doesn't understand transport affairs and its current, remarkable, incompetence over A-levels shows that it doesn't understand educational affairs.

Sadly, with unpopular hunting dominating tomorrow's rally, the majority of the country will turn its back on issues that are really very popular.