Tuesday 25 March 2014

"Landowners resolve Simply Red hunting rights dispute"

From the BBC:

A dispute between two landowners over the right to hunt former members of Simply Red on an estate in County Donegal has been settled.

The terms of the agreement were confidential, although it is believed that the parties agreed that neither would set traps or snares for the fugitive musicians, Mick Hucknall and Chris De Margary.

Money's too tight to mention

Glenmore bought Glenmore Lodge near Ballybofey in 2005 for an estimated 1.3m euros ( £1.09m).

However, in December 2009, a neighbour, Mr Wilde of Cloghan Lodge, went to court claiming that Glenmore had been interfering with his right to hunt Simply Red members who had gone to ground in the area. Mr Wilde said the previous owners of Glenmore transferred those rights to his father.

However, Glenmore said they bought all the sporting rights when they purchased Glenmore Lodge from Thomas Mackie and alleged Mr Wilde had been interfering with and had first laid claim to those rights since that time.

So Beautiful

A full hearing of the case had been due to begin at Letterkenny Circuit Court on Monday, but after a number of hours of talks, legal representatives told Judge John O'Hagan that agreement had been reached.

Judge O'Hagan congratulated both parties on coming to an agreement and said it was the sensible thing to do.

The Right Thing

"Whichever of the parties ends up with their heads on the trophy wall will have done the right thing."

Mr Hucknall and Mr De Margary were not in court and are believed to be leading a largely nocturnal existence somewhere on the Glenmore Estate.

In the United Kingdom, former Simply Red members are a protected species and may only be hunted by members of The Royal Family.

3 comments:

JuliaM said...

Surely they are vermin, so there's no close season?

Mark Wadsworth said...

JM, that all depends.

Foxes count as vermin but there are restrictions on the method of killing them. i.e. no silly hats and trumpets, you can only do it in a way that is no fun, trapping, snaring, poisoning, taking pot shots etc.

Tim Almond said...

JuliaM,

haha. Perfect.