As we approach another official start to the fox hunting season on Saturday October 29 we should perhaps pause and reflect as to what fox hunting is today in the modern countryside. This is where vehicles, riders and hunters are all wired with navigation and mobile communication, providing detailed terrain mapping and route management.

Hunters often claim to be guardians of countryside traditions. But with all these modern trappings the terrier men, sometime called countrymen, will be out driving their quad bikes with boxes of terriers, spades, metal rods and root cutters ready to unearth any fox who dares not to play ball with the hounds and seeks refuge underground. All these facilities together with dozens of dogs and human followers to persecute a defenceless wild animal in a one-sided ritual to titillate sadistic humans out for a day's so-called hunting.

The Countryside Alliance will again be promoting hunting. The spin will go along the lines of "Fox hunters are the true representatives of rural England, binding the countryside together as farmers and landowners unite in a common cause." But in reality they are as representative of rural England as Eton and Harrow are of our education system.

The hunts will be saying that they meet with organisers laying a scent for the hounds to track.

Monitors nationwide, however, testify that for many hunts this is merely a charade, designed to thinly disguise the fact that they are carrying on hunting as if the ban didn't exist, with the same callous disregard for the welfare and feelings of their animal victims and with many individuals appearing to arrogantly consider themselves above the law. Time and time again reports emerge of the chaos caused as hounds riot and trespass, attack livestock and people's pets, stamping over gardens and damaging property. Journalists are apparently taken in. Police forces up and down the country do little or nothing to enforcing the Hunting Act.

The ban on hunting is overwhelmingly supported by the general public, but hunters riot around the countryside; the untouchables in full purist of the inedible.