Today I received a leaflet through my door asking me to vote out the Tories next year because of their aversion to badgers.
For foreigners from countries not possessed of badgers, the badger is a large and vicious rodent, capable of tearing a dog apart with its large digging claws in the badger-baiting pit or taking off a man’s hand with its powerful jaws in a boxing ring. Traditionally feasting on baby rabbits and the vermiform inhabitants of their chthonic realm, badgers are a traditional children’s favourite to be seen in such children’s television programmes as “Bodger and Badger”.
Now, however, the badger faces a new threat. Due to recent changes in the law the aristocracy, distinguishable from humans by their weak chins and bright red coats, have been deprived of their traditional pass-times of hunting foxes on horseback and raping children in the Channel Islands. Now they have the badger in their sights.
The Tory government have started a programme to cull the badger populations in the South West of England, supposedly to reduce the spread of Bovine TB. Not reverse, mind, just reduce.
The plan was to kill most of the badgers in Somerset and Gloucerstershire, but has failed miserably killing far less than half, while the plan relied on killing at least 70%. One reason such a large number had to be killed was to stop numbers of infected badgers from spreading the infection to neighbouring areas.
The cull was supposed to reduce the cost of compensation payments to farmers, but has cost as much as would be saved, if the plan had been as successful as the government hoped, in thirty years.
Part of the absurd cost was a repressive, heavy-handed police presence because of the public opposition amongst non-farmers. Farmers love only two things, death and public expenditure, and therefore largely supported the cull. It also saves the problem of vaccinating the cattle, which would be a solution with the advantage of actually being effective but the disadvantage of requiring farmers to do some work rather than battening on hand-outs and ravening for blood.
The cull, therefore, is
ineffective;
expensive;
opposed by the majority of the public;
cruel to animals; and,
soon to be expanded across the country.
Vote Badger!
