Badgers are Perplexed at the Russian Bear

News announced this week of the recent Badger Cull costings, showed that each Badger killed was despatched at a cost to the British tax payer of £5,200 per head. Tax payers’ money totally wasted on disenfranchising the countryside of one of its noblest inhabitants. You would think with the government continually rambling on about new austerity measures, the money would have been far better placed obtaining food for our ever increasing number of food banks scattered in and around our country. With winter just around the corner, the demand for this facility has sky rocketed enormously in the last three to four years. 

The G20 meeting in Australia, with President Putin’s fleet of four ships, which include a cruiser, a destroyer, a tug boat and a refueller, poised in international waters North of the Coast of Australia brings it home to one on just how fragile these global meetings have become.  The travesty of Ebola out in Africa will surely be a talking point and so it should be.  Five thousand lives have been lost to this wretched disease so far with no real sign of containment.  A disease which has been inflicted on the African people for no real apparent reason but certainly made worse through the years of conflict, especially Sierra Leone where government monies could have just as easily been put into hospitals and health centre structures in years gone by rather than armaments that have just succeeded in ripping some of these countries apart.  How much easier it would have been right back in March if these facilities had been in place to treat and contain the march of this ongoing disease.  We are in the twenty first century and lessons are still continually not being learnt. Yet another African crisis with a Bob Geldof and Midge Ure Christmas tune.

5000 lives lost is 5000 too many lives lost. This is a huge figure to have lost in such a short space of time, especially when it is quite apparent that swift aid and education could have averted a large portion of this. However, far less media coverage and condemnation has been given to the 4000 lives lost in the conflict of Eastern Ukraine. The Ukraine’s only crime for this misery is wanting independence. The Russian Bear has remained slumbering since the fall of the Berlin wall but his awakening to strengthen the hand of the Ukraine Separatists has been really alarming and does nothing to reinforce a peaceful and stable Europe.  In fact, quite totally the opposite. 

In the 100 year anniversary of the 1914-1918 war you would think that the Russian Bear’s paw along with the rest of the hands of Europe has been burnt enough. 

An interesting interview this week with Jon Snow of Channel 4 News with Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhinaa, two girls from the Pussy Riot pop group who were arrested and imprisoned simply because their views were not entirely in step with the Russian government, reinforces the view that free speech and any real criticism of the Russian government is still a long way off from being the norm.

As if the aforementioned crises have not caused enough devastation and loss of life, this morning we have learnt of yet another barbaric beheading of an aid worker my militants in Syria/Iraq. Peter Kassig, an American, was out in the region aiding refugees when he was brutally murdered. How nice it would be on this centenary year for the Heads of State around the G20 table to draw up plans for the Russian Bear to turn East alongside the American Eagle, the French Cockerel and the British Lions to join together and rid the Middle East of this un stabling disease, Isis, and put an end to this butchering of the innocents and let the Middle East once again enjoy the peace, tranquillity and quality of life that every region has the right to deserve.

Please watch my short film of my Badgers playing and frolicking over a fallen tree on an August Evening. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjMrJ3I_XhM&feature=youtube_gdata

Daddy Cool at his playful best.