THE letter from Pauline Burgess (Your Letters, June 7) made a lot of contradictory and unfounded remarks about hunting and countryside, matters of which she obviously knows little.

If so many people are against hunting then why are there crowds of 2,000 or more in Ledbury on Boxing Day to support John Holliday, his hounds and the Ledbury Hunt. The idea that the 20,000 hounds now in hunt kennels could be re-homed should be taken with a pinch or two of salt.

The Kennel Club is against a hunt ban because of the threat to the future of the hounds and the National Canine Defence League has voiced it's great concern and doubts about the hounds being re-homed.

Country people are fed up with being treated as second class citizens by this Govern-ment, schools are closed, Post Offices are shut and farming, at the heart of the countryside is being allowed to wither away. The possibility of being made a criminal just for following a pack of hounds is the last straw and is not going to be accepted, never mind how loud Pauline Burgess shouts or how many times a few bigoted MP's vote.

ALAN COOK, Bishop's Frome.