READ FORRISTAL, NO SO MUCH HARNEY & THEY HAVE IT IN FOR US.

In today's Racing Post, the paper's Irish editor, Richard Forristal, asks if horse racing should be concerned by both the Welsh and Scottish parliaments ban on greyhound racing. And the answer is a resounding yes.

If you do not know the how and why the Welsh government have banned greyhound racing, I advise you to read Forristal's article as the how was not so much based on the issue of greyhound racing but on political expediency. Greyhound racing's fate is due to historical intransigence by those involved in the sport. There were just too many scandalous news stories in the News of the World and similar national newspapers regarding cruelty, the 'dumping' of dead or unwanted greyhounds, the need for outside charities to step in to find homes for retired greyhounds, that sort of thing. Horse racing is not immune to the same criticisms. I was horrified to read that the Grand National winner Hallo Dandy had to be rescued from neglect - I believe he was discovered on or near a council tip -, though his story kickstarted the movement of equine charities that has now led to R.o.R. and the requirement for owners and trainers to find good homes for their horses in retirement.

The fact that horse racing read the room far quicker than greyhound racing will not safeguard our future as our opponents, the naive idiots who make-up Animal Aid, for instance, now, because of the legislation in Wales and Scotland, have their tails up, chalking the banning of greyhound racing in Wales - there are no greyhound tracks in Scotland - as 'a battle won, and now on to the next battle', which will, no doubt, be our sport.

The B.H.A. were wrong to say that horse racing has nothing to fear from the actions of politicians in Wales and Scotland. We are fully in the gunsites of Animal Aid, as we will doubtless discover at Aintree next month, having already gained in-roads with the Aintree management accepting the charge of 'cruelty' and reducing their prize asset to something akin to an equine fancy-dress parade. 

Times have changed. We now live in a world where health and safety rules, where all danger must be wrapped in cotton-wool, where the launching of missiles at countries disapproved-of by countries of a different continent is permissable, yet the possibility of a horse or greyhound being injured through the actions of people who care and love them is objected to by a small yet seemingly powerful minority who have influence enough to have their views upheld over those who will lose their livelihood through their, largely, illegal activities.

Read Richard Rorristal; he has a greater talent for saying it as it is than I will ever have.

Opposite Forristal's highly considered piece, in the Another View column, his compatriot, Denis Harney, has a moan about trainer's 'laying one out' for the Festival, believing this is unfair on punters, and no doubt people of his occupation, and that something should be done about it. Harney is wrong-headed here: the history of the sport has been laced together since its inception by great coups landed and by others being financially ruined by a coup that went astray. I would suggest more coups went astray at Cheltenham than were landed, and those punters who were on one of those laid out for the Festival went home just as happy as the trainer, jockey or owner connected to the winning horse.

To further kick an industry when it is down, the government have rejected the B.H.A.'s proposal for a review into the Levy. Along with the endless wait for an announcement on 'frictionless affordability checks', this is further evidence that this snide and anti-people government we are saddled with, have it in for us. I have said since the time of the restriction on our freedoms that anyone who read the W.E.F.'s 'Great Reset' project could have no optimism for the long-term future of horse racing, nor indeed any equine discipline. And Starmer is a keen advocate of the W.E.F., publicly saying that in 'Davos they get things done, which Westminster does not.'