Brock-ing the Bank

Caught a repeat of "Who Do You Think You Are?" last night: Sue Johnston from The Royle Family.  Her great grandfather's first family had lived in the overcrowded Lanes of Victorian Carlisle.  His wife and three children were all killed by TB.  The library photos of the area were pretty grim.  I used to think that family pics of my great grandmother on some tyddyn on the Loughor estuary looked like a set from the first series of Blackadder, but these little bits of urban history remain strangely shocking.

Kids were still having TB cysts removed after the war in Wales.  Some of our poorer immigrants still bring it into the country with them.  And, like the poor, TB seems to be always with us.  Today we hear that leave to appeal has been given to the Badger Trust, allowing another pop at the Welsh Assembly decision to carry out a limited cull in Pembrokeshire this summer.

At the moment, we taxpayers spend rather a lot (about £100m this last decade) compensating farmers whose TB-infected cattle have to be destroyed because we have a public health threat which is not being contained adequately.  If the cull goes ahead and proves that controlling badger numbers reduces the rate of infection, we wouldn't have to pay so much in compensation.

Instead, compensation payments remain high and now we'll have to pay to defend this appeal as well.  Times may not be as 'ard as for Sue Johnston's great grandfather, but public spending is about to be slashed.  Now is not the time to be forking out on badgers' rights, sorry.  What's more, the last time wild animals dominated our headlines, the small matter of the non-appearance of WMD was all but overlooked as Parliament ate up hours of debating time on fox hunting rather than on hunting for reasons to be in Iraq.