Is the Countryside Alliance now running the badger cull? Labour’s Graham Forsyth from Chard believes so and puts his case:-
The Countryside Alliance’s hand in this bloody badger cull is beginning to emerge with Guy Robinson who was previously the head of political research at the Countryside Alliance has been appointed to support the Blood Sports mad Environment Secretary Owen Paterson, who writes exclusively for the Countryside Alliance magazine.
Mr. Robinson was working for Lynton Crosby’s company; and Lynton Crosby himself has been put in charge of the Tory election machine to get the Tories elected with a working majority at the next general election. Mr. Crosby’s PR and lobbying firm Crosby Textor has long-standing links with the tobacco industry and its recent successes have included the dumping of the planned introduction of plain packaging for cigarettes and promoting a powerful group that campaigns for fracking in the UK with government provided tax relief.
The Countryside Alliance is a political pressure group working to overturn the hunting ban and promote blood sports in the countryside and has been very active in a smear offensive against the RSPCA following the society’s successful conviction for illegal hunting against the Prime Ministers local Fox Hunt. They have also been at loggerheads with the RSPB over the use of lead polluting ammunition used for game bird and water fowl shooting!
Now if you look at the locations of the two badger cull zones in West Somerset and Gloucestershire; both these locations are home too many pheasant shooting estates and are awash with an array eager and keen of blood sports enthusiasts all to ready to participate in the cull. They are various other grouping within the countryside that has the view that wildlife is a nuisance and the badger in particular in relation to the many pheasant shoots.
With the advent of solar farms and bio-fuel crops being developed, then in the rush for quick profits the overarching desire is to have no legally protected species of wildlife for many countryside businesses, it simply gets in the way of profits. Hunting, shooting, snaring and poisoning are the traditional wildlife management techniques deployed and why should they be force to change; “it’s our tradition!” is the usual cry for the indefensible actions that they deploy against our wildlife.
But perhaps the worst aspect of the Badger Cull is the way that the shooting has been allocated to private companies and then to individuals. These companies are then able to recruit the local blood sports hobbyists, who generally tend to be members of the Countryside Alliance and so the circle of evil is complete.
A Bloody Holy Trinity of Un-Natural England, National Farmers Union and DEFRA have baked together in Hell this wicked and unnecessary Badger Cull with the Countryside Alliance emerging as the “Prince of Darkness’” in the English countryside!
I’m disgusted that the government (particularly Cameron and Paterson), the NFU and Defra have got away with the inhumane and totally unnecessary slaughter of a protected species when it’s the farmers who caused the problem in the first place. So much lies and deceit, why have their opponents not done something to stop them? I am ashamed to be British.
I have been in the Gloucester cull zone and it all seems to be a cruel, pointless shambles. I would ask the Labour government o to speak out strongly with regard to any extension of the cull. All the experts are against culling and the government saiud that the cull must only last 6 weeks. Any talk of introducing gassing must be disallowed immediately. This is being done illegally by some farmers with blocking up setts, and thereby burying badgers alive, is also now happening all over the country. Badger baiting incidences are also increasing. this cull has given the green light to all those nasty people who enjoy killing and torturing wildlife. I have found badgers tortured to death before the cull was introduced when out walking with my dogs. A white van load of dead badgers, being driven by a bunch of travellers from the cull zone, drove into a bus stop and crashed. The calibre of the people hired to shoot has also been questionable when we were initially told that they would all be highly trained marksmen.
The Countryside alliance have been running a smear offensive over the recent RSPCA successful conviction……..which in itself is a smear against the Countryside alliance. The smear campaign was started by the RSPCA and their cohorts the IFAW and LACS fifteen years ago,
Complaint upheld: The ASA determined that the RSPCA’s claim that “Independent polls have consistently shown that most people in this country agree with us” was not true.
Complaints upheld: The ASA determined that the IFAW implied a 30-year-old practice was current; that ‘full of soil’ was an exaggeration; that submitted evidence was insufficient. Complaints upheld:
The ASA determined that LACS was misleading and inaccurate in their use of a quote from the Burns Inquiry.
Complaints upheld: The ASA determined that LACS was misleading and inaccurate in a pamphlet about hare hunting and coursing, including using no-longer-accurate data from 1951 when current information was easily available.
Coupled with a Million pound payment from the IFAW into Labours coffers for a ban and other monies funding Labour MPs in the constituencies a very mucky dirty picture emerges.
If you are in the cull area and hate it, you have to say something. If enough people cause enough fuss, they will have to stop it. (It’s looking like it is failing anyway. Not enough badgers killed apparently.) But if people don’t complain, it will just carry on. So very sad and wrong.
Labours silence on all matters country side is embarrassing .Where are the announcements from high rankers about the badger cull ,Where are the announcements on making prosecuting Fox hunting etc a police matter not the RSPCA’s . A huge number of voters are behind this and it exposes just what a buch of underhand ,sly ,murderous bunch Tories are but just silence from ED .Has Brian may got to do all the bloody work?
Martin
It seems that there have been attempts to bribe the police to their side in Gloucester already from at least the Forthampton estate, by a Mr John Yorke, the owner. A copy of which is available on the internet.
I first became aware of all this when I sat down to watch the parliamentary debate in June. I was very unaware of what happened last year when the original cull was stopped due I believe to insufficient scientiic evidence having been obtained. I was outraged by the cynical manouvering of the government against a free vote of people who supposedly were representing the people of this country. (Since proved by over 300,000 signatures on the biggest e petition ever)
I started digging into The Cull companies which some of the websites had named and found out that they were registered as Limited Liability Partnerships which are usually used by non profit making companies like clubs and charities.I FOId Defra to ask how much the farmers would be paying in to these companies and got short shrift.
Non of the companies so far have put in End of year reports that I can find, and when digging a bit more you will find a very incestuous club of people belonging to the farming, hunting clique.
There is no way these people are at all concerned with the small farmer trying to make a living or, in fact the survival of the countryside – only feathering their own nests.
Thank goodness for people like you who are prepared to speak up in defence of the countryside and wildlife. Why is there not more coverage from the BBC and some newspapers of the cruelty and horror unfolding? We have a small farm in the cull area and cannot believe what is happening to our wildlife.
A very interesting and enlightening article. It doesn’t surprise me one bit to learn that the Countryside Alliance may well be involved in this bloodletting. It was obvious that there are some extremely unpleasant and nasty people involved, and that includes the Minister Paterson.
Why are you not on the television and Newspapers speaking out very loudly about this.You could have many votes including 300,000 from Brain Mays petition for the next election.But we are not hearing you.Where are you?