We've multiple Elmers

I'lth kilth those screwy badgerth













We've got a 600-odd committe of Elmer Fudds, sitting around, sometimes standing up, and generally talking about...well...you know...stuff. Making sure us plebs are kept in line and on the straight and narrow.

I did a bit of Internet research.

Probably quite a risky bit of Internet research, given the Home Secretary's deep love of snooping. There's a David Mitchell piece in the Guardian or Observer last week, if you want the clever angle. He had this to say:

“Politicians are always having to resign – for shagging the wrong person, for lying about their expenses, for texting a photo of their cock (there’s never a not-spot when you need one). Fair enough. But it is a worrying indication of the national mood that Theresa May’s position remains completely secure in the aftermath of her frightening remarks. The priorities she reveals in her letter are truly shocking and, much more than the worst excesses of dishonesty, infidelity and ineptitude that we’ve seen from our leaders in recent years, make her utterly unfit for government.”

I just had a strong bad feeling about her and her almost panic-stricken insistence on getting the cutain-twitchers and prying old witches charter on the statute books, but that's strong stuff there: utterly unfit for government.

Anyway, ignoring Theresa May's CCTV looking over my shoulder [the things you have to do to keep a blog going, eh?] I Googled... “how much to hire a hitman?”

Did you know there's a website called HavocCentral (or something like that), a collection of advice for shoppers on the black market. The hitman pages couldn't use 'You Shop – We Drop' as a slogan because Tesco had already taken it.

Anyway, surprisingly little Internet research, and there it was: the average cost of a hit (Australia) was between £2,475 and £4,950, sterling.

The badger cull cost over £3,000 per badger (official sources) and £5,200 per badger (unofficial sources that included the costs of policing the operation.

There it is, in the numbers. An Australian minor criminal operating at the low end of the underworld spectrum can organise a killing, for business, revenge, or message-sending purposes, for considerably less than our Whitehall geniuses can organise shooting a badger.

I didn't do the next, inevitable searches, how many cattle could you inoculate for the £5,200 for one badger, because our ruling classes love killing things, that why they go fox hunting; nor how much would it cost to knock off all members of parliament with the consequential tax savings. Theresa might be watching.