Half a million people who shoot will not have to buy a £6 game licence
in future, the Government will announce at the CLA Game Fair today.
…

A recent study showed that 98 per cent of the revenue
raised went on administrative costs. In a further change, wholesalers
and retailers will not be required to obtain a licence for the sale of
game.

As part of the same proposals, the
Government is to remove the ban on the sale of game – which includes
peasants, partridges, grouse, heath or moor game, woodcock, snipe,
hares, rabbits and deer – out of season, provided it was shot within
season.

That rule was invented, again to deter poaching, before the invention of the freezer.

Expensive, valueless, bureaucratic, wasteful…and this government are abolishing it? What’s come over them all of a sudden? Something of a sausage to fortune when we come to discuss ID cards isn’t it?

Launching the final version of the Government’s
proposals for revising the scrapping the licences, Lord Rooker, the
rural affairs minister, said: "Many of the laws surrounding game
licensing are outdated and irrelevant. We don’t need laws that were
originally intended to stop pheasants killing peasants.

"These
proposals remove an unnecessary burden from shoots and retailers alike,
making it easier for people throughout the country to buy local game."

(Note, this post may have been infected by the "1066 And All That" virus.)