[Posted to Save-Me]
More current Badger talk as promised.
I’m always interested when Caroline Spelman speaks. Here is a new interview: www.independent.co.uk
Of course it’s print – it’s Press, and we know how little they can be trusted to report the conversation truthfully. But this is essential reading. It’s perhaps significant that this article does NOT feature Ms Spelman shouting about culling badgers. Her style is entirely different from her (subordinate) colleague Jim Paice – who has become the unacceptable face of DEFRA – having spent the last 6 months constantly telling the Press and the Farmers that a free-for-all on killing badgers is definitely immminent. It has been suggested in certain quarters that Spelman and Paice are playing Good Cop and Bad Cop, to confuse the Hell out of anyone who speaks on behalf of wild animals. But I cherish the belief that Caroline is a good soul in a hard place, and is genuinely looking for a way to act humanely and decently, whilst not enraging the sadly misinformed and vengeful farming community, on which the coalition certainly thinks it depends on for support.
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PERHAPS VERY SIGNIFICANTLY, this week a Coalition MP bravely voiced his disapproval of the proposal to allow farmers to kill badgers.
www.thisissouthdevon.co.uk [link no longer available]
Adrian Sanders has voiced a strong objection to the proposed do-it-yourself cull proposed by DEFRA. He has pointed out that proceeding with this is in complete dissonance with the declared Coalition policy of acting on scientific evidence. Mr Sanders is evently very well-informed. He also puts his finger on the hidden agenda behind the draconian measures aleady in place for cows suspected of having contracted Bovine TB. He says “The Government’s approach is clearly a cost-cutting exercise. It could fight to alter the trade barriers that prevent vaccinated cattle being exported, and it could invest in a vaccination programme for badgers.”
Save-Me will do everything in its power to support Mr Sanders. We also suggest that he would be pleased to receive support from any of his constituents on this stance … so if you live in South Devon, please write to him – and encourage your friends and neighbours to do the same. We can be sure that the trigger-happy Farmers Union will be at this minute whipping up constituents to plague Mr Sanders, and try to make him change his mind.
Let us encourage him not to let that happen.
Cheers all
Bri