Kill 'em. God says we should.

More badger culling

After the spectacular failure of the last badger cull, there's to be another one. The minister for defending cruelty said stuff defending the cruelty.

She said the killings were humane.

I wonder whether, if someone shot her mother or child dead, she would be satisfied with the humanity of the act on the grounds that they were despatched quickly and didn't suffer unnecessarily.

She said that there's a huge bovine TB problem in the UK.

She didn't dwell on the links, or otherwise, between bovine and badger TB.

She said that similar culls had worked, for example, in Australia and New Zealand. She said that the UK has the worst rate of bovine TB in Europe.

She didn't say why, when we have the worst rate of TB, we're looking as far afield as Australia and New Zealand for evidence to support the killing, rather than looking at what, say, France or Spain are doing.

The insanity of the matter is that we're killing one species not to benefit another, which would be absurd enough, but to prolong the pretty awful life of dairy cattle by a few months.

Dairy cows are slaughtered after five years, a cow's normal lifespan is in the low to middle twenties. They don't live in the best condition or under the best circumstances. The cull is commercially and cruelty driven, make no mistake.

It is also underpinned by a political class in bed with organised religion.

The bible says this:

Then God said, "Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground."

Most of the other 'good' books say similar things.

Way to give a species already prone to thinking we're something special material to work with, and a get out of jail free card for all the cruelty and nastiness we can wish for, god-botherers.

That translates as:

Ignore all those biologists and other scientists (and The Bloodhound Gang). You're not just mammals. You're really special, honest. You're just like the big fellah, you are.

And:

Don't just kill and eat whatever you like, make their lives miserable, lock them in high-density barns in the dark if you feel like it. Actually, I insist you lot over there, and you others over there, don't even stun them at the abattoir, slit their throats while they're alive. If anyone asks, just say I told you that's the way it has to be done.

The last cull was unmonitored, unspeakable, unsuccessful and not underpinned by any science.

This one isn't going to be any different.