"Up goes a guinea, bang goes a penny, down comes half a crown"

Tame pheasant on the doorstep soon to be "sportingly" shot

It's  1st of November, I'm in Northumberland and it's the first day of the pheasant shooting season. Soon tens of thousands of tame pheasants, will be used as living, moving targets for shotguns. The people doing the shooting must enjoy it because  it a very expensive pastime.

The economics of pheasant shooting were nicely summed up 100 years ago as above," up goes a guinea, bang goes a penny and down comes half a crown." The ratio is about the same but the actual costs must be ten times higher.

The costs are probably higher for grouse shooting; so in order to make it a bit cheaper for the bankers, oligarchs and wealthy land owners  we, the taxpayers,  do help out by giving them generous subsidies via the EU Common Agricultural Policy. They keep a few sheep on the grouse moors so qualify for this dole, it's socialism for the rich.

The sheep are needed to soak up the parasitic ticks that would otherwise kill lots of the grouse. So we  are in effect directly subsidising the grouse shooting. Just thought you might like to know this!