Smoke and mirrors.

As a hunter I have a moral obligation to pass on my love of hunting to the next generation. Both of my daughters were taught to shoot at an early age and one of them has continued to do so whenever she has the opportunity. It is our heritage and must be preserved at all costs.

I was reading an article in the Gloucester Citizen yesterday. The article was titled FU Chairman: Why the Gloucestershire badger cull must continue. It was an interview with Gloucestershire NFU chairman Charles Mann putting the case for the beleaguered farmers suffering not only from an endless cycle of bovine tuberculosis but an ongoing campaign of intimidation. We all know that the antis love the intimidation part, sneaking about in the night imagining themselves as ninja warriors as they cause criminal damage. As I was reading the article I noticed a link on the right hand side of the page entitled

Police: No shots fired at badger cull protesters, it was fireworks

Intrigued I followed the white rabbit and read the article.

The antis who are referred to as “protesters” in the article called 999 saying that the marksmen on the cull had, according to the posts on social media websites, shot at the antis sixteen times. The police duly turned up and investigated only to discover “There was no firearms operation taking place in that area at that time.” Ignore the grammar the police are facing cuts and obviously standards are slipping. Who set the fireworks off is pure speculation as there were no independent witnesses, though the police concluded it was the people involved in the cull that set them off. Regardless the police left the area satisfied that no one had tried to shoot any antis.

Now we shall examine the antis part of the article.

“Gloucestershire Against Badger Shooting (GABS) is asking police officers to better protect its wounded badger patrols as they look for the injured animals
.
Keeping to public footpaths, a spokesman for the group said they have faced "increasing intimidation and a lack of balanced response from the police".

GABS spokesperson Nick Berry said: “The incident on Monday night was horrendous for our patrollers.
"It was either a deliberate attempt to harass law-abiding individuals or a botched attempt at culling badgers which put people’s lives at risk.

"We have been very disappointed that the police have refused to take the matter further and so we are making a formal complaint as well as taking advice as to whether or not the cull operators are in breach of their culling licence agreement."

As we can see they are now seeking police protection even though they are in no danger. Police protection costs money and as I pointed out earlier they can no longer afford to employ educated spokespeople, let alone provide bodyguards to the antis.

Mr Berry uses the term wounded badger patrol because he can’t call them by their real name, saboteurs. That would look bad in the media. He claims that the saboteurs are keeping to footpaths even though they are posting pictures on the internet of dead badgers. Are we to believe that these badgers were shot on the footpaths and left for the saboteurs to conveniently find? Only a fool would believe that hogwash.

Mr Berry then goes on to whinge, as they do when they do not get their own way.

Mr Berry and his wife Jeanne patrol the area in high visibility jackets with whistles to "alert the marksmen to their presence" not to disrupt the perfectly legal government badger cull of course. That would be illegal activity.