FROM THE BLOODY BUTCHER OF BRITAIN’S WILDLIFE
This Coalition Government’s callous behaviour towards animals – and towards anything which gets in the way of the demands of the rich and powerful – grows ever more grotesque.
This latest disgusting piece of shameless kowtowing to the bloodsports lobby is hardly believable.
David Cameron’s DEFRA has now decided it wants to ‘control’ wild birds – buzzards – because they are taking a few pheasants to eat. These pheasants are the very creatures factory-farmed and released, almost unable to fly, destined to be murdered by the privileged, with their guns, for fun. Murdered, and very often thrown in the trash.
DEFRA is looking at the removal and incarceration of buzzards and/or the destruction of their nests. (See this link.)
Some 40-50 million pheasants are bred and released yearly for shooting in the UK. 45 per cent of them will starve to death or be killed on the roads. How many are taken by birds of prey? A few hundred? A few thousand? Even at this level, it’s trivial, beside the huge profits that shooting makes. How despicable to start killing the buzzards. And there is a whiff of corruption. The Government would effectively be using the tax-payers’ money to subsidise an elitist industry which is all about killing animals for pleasure. There is actually no research to show that buzzards have a significant impact on the obscene shooting industry anyway – quite the opposite, as will doubtless soon be revealed. But a few of David Cameron’s friends and family reportedly lobbied for the ‘control’ of these entirely innocent – and now protected – birds. It must be against the wishes of the vast majority of the British public, but the Government is well on the way to acceding to their demands. Buzzards, along with other raptors, have only just started to recover from persecution and the horrific effects of DDT that saw many raptors on the brink of extinction a few years ago. What other industry is there that requires the massacre of wildlife to function, and even gets away with asking for a subsidy? It is ironic that the pheasants will be killed by dimwits touting guns to make themselves feel big, and make the owners of the land even richer, and the intelligent buzzard is merely feeding himself; yet it is the birds, not the bloodthirsty hunters, or the obscenely greedy owners of the highly lucrative shooting businesses, who are judged guilty, and sentenced to death.
This blindingly out-of-touch Government is now clearly putting the industry of hunting and killing for the enjoyment of toffs before the conservation of our wildlife heritage. And while telling public sector workers we can’t afford to pay them a decent wage, they are spending our money to make their rich mates even richer.
A change in this situation is long overdue. Surely in 2012 there has to be an end to the senseless killing?
Where does the blood-bath end, Mr Cameron? When we have no wild animals left in the countryside?
And what will the history books say? And what will you tell your grandchildren?
David Cameron and his pals seem to be hell-bent on being remembered as the Bloody Butchers of Britain’s wildlife.
Bri – Save-Me
© brianmay.com