You set out with high ideals of achieving some lofty goal – and end up doing precisely the opposite.

So it is with the banning of hunting with dogs. Almost three years after the ban was imposed in 2005, the sport of fox hunting has never been healthier.

This Boxing Day more than 250,000 hunt supporters gathered at over 300 meets around the UK – the numbers apparently swollen by people who previously had no interest in hunting, but who now turn out in protest at what they see as an illiberal and nanny-statist law.

So those people who set out to destroy fox hunting have succeeded only in reinvigorating it. Those who wanted to save foxes from the
hounds have engineered a situation where more of them are killed
than ever before.

You'd need a heart of stone not to laugh.

Before the tree huggers start accusing me of being a bloodthirsty animal killer, I should declare a lack of interest. The only thing I was hunting on Boxing Day was the television remote control that was lost down the back of the sofa.

The only time I attended a meet was as a reporter to cover a noisy protest by hunt saboteurs a few years ago. The passions – and occasional violence – aroused on both sides frankly baffled me. But as a general principle I reckon the state has absolutely no business banning an activity that many people enjoy and which causes no harm to anybody else.

What I do resent is the 700 hours of parliamentary time that was devoted to the hunting ban – more than was spent discussing the Iraq war.

I've never seen MPs so animated since the last time someone suggested cutting their expenses.

Can anyone honestly argue that at a time when our health and education systems are in a meltdown, Britain is threatened by jihadist lunatics and people's pensions have gone down the tubes, this was the best use of valuable parliamentary time?

The result is a law that is such a mess that it is widely ignored – and the police believe is virtually impossible
to enforce.

Meanwhile, the net impact on animal welfare of the hunting ban is precisely zero.

Farmers still need to control the fox population and more are being killed than before the ban was imposed.

But, of course, the hunting ban was nothing to do with animal welfare – it was all about politics.

How else could you explain why other "cruel" pastimes, such as fishing, horse racing or factory farming, have been left well alone?

Labour's old Left had swallowed the dumping of Clause 4 and Tony Blair's aping of the Conservatives in order to woo Middle England.

As a reward they were tossed a bit of red meat in the shape of the hunting ban so they could imagine themselves sticking it to the toffs.

How pathetic. The hunting ban is as nasty a piece of naked class warfare that has ever disgraced the statute books.

Let that be a lesson to other busybodies who want the state to ban everything they disagree with.

I for one am glad it has backfired so spectacularly. Tally Ho!

TV timewarp

I woke from a post prandial snooze over the holiday and immediately thought I was being haunted by spirits of Christmas past.

There on television were Russell Harty, Les Dawson and others whose grip on fame was so tenuous that they were not household names even in their own households.

Aren't these people long dead?

Had I fallen asleep and somehow woken up in 1984? Were the neighbours about to invite me over for a game of Twister and a glass of Malibu?

No, the mystery was soon solved with a glance at the TV listings.

The BBC in its wisdom had decided that at the highlight of the viewing year it was going to give us a repeat
of Blankety Blank first shown more than 20 years ago.

I can report that it is no funnier now than it was back then.

And isn't it marvellous how much value we get from the £3bn –
yes £3bn – a year we pay the BBC in licence fees.