Whatever your views on fox hunting, no-one can argue that the current legal situation is a sensible one.

For a variety of reasons - many of them based purely on the need for political expediency within the Government ranks - we have been left with a piece of legislation which is full of loopholes.

We now face a winter of "cat and mouse" between hunters and anti-bloodsport campaigners.

And quite how the police are going to enforce this new legislation has still not been properly established.

So the hunters are determined to continue with their sport and the protesters are equally determined to stop them.

This, however, was the situation this time last year.

It says a lot - and none of it very complimentary - about the Government's legislative procedure that so little has changed.

We have effectively been left with a law that is both difficult to enforce and toothless, even if one could turn out police officers at every meet.

And all because our Prime Minister threw the hunting-with-dogs bill to his backbenchers as a political sop.

You do not need to be particularly for or against hunting to recognise the nonsense of this.

Poorly framed legislation is worse than no legislation at all because it will simply waste more people's time as one group tries to enforce it and the other attempts to circumvent it.

In such situations, the law has to be clear and well-framed.

This law is not.

It is likely, however, to stand as a monument to the folly of allowing political expediency a role in our law-making process.

And that is not a satisfactory situation - wherever you happen to stand on this particular debate.

Mine casts a £2m shadow

The end, when it came, for Ellington Colliery - the region's last deep mine - was swift indeed.

The workforce had been wrestling with flooding problems for some time and there was, obviously, a threat to the mine.

But union officials who turned up for a meeting with managers did not expect UK Coal boss Gerry Spindler to simply declare the mine closed there and then.

It will, therefore, be interesting to see which way an employment tribunal views the decision which put 350 men out of work.

We will find this out early next year, when the NUM makes its claim that the miners were illegally made redundant because the workforce were not given the required 90 days' notice and consultation.

UK coal will argue that the decision was made on safety grounds and, thus, this statutory period could not be complied with.

The NUM say there was "still plenty to discuss" when the final decision was taken.

At stake is up to £2m in compensation payments to the former workers if the action is successful.

Ellington is no more but it is casting a long shadow.

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