DIDN'T BLUNDER PATERSON DO WELL?

We all know how intensely satisfying it is when yet another English Tory blunders into Edinburgh to tell us how completely useless we are and how we couldn't give away our products never mind sell them, without Great Britain doing it all for us....silly children that we are.

Mind, I have to say that it wasn't clear to me what Owen Paterson, the not immediately appealing secretary for Environment and Rural Affairs (wink wink, nod nod, plenty of them in Toryland) was doing in Scotland. I would have thought that most of his brief was covered by our own government in the form of Richard Lockhead, however, come he did and insult us he did in spades.

We shouldn't be too upset though. Mr Paterson is a man who cares not what

he insults. Apparently those of us who have reservations about the benevolent intentions of Monsanto and its likes are "wicked". That, I assume, includes Charlie Windsor, so I assume that Paterson isn't hoping to become Sir Lord Paterson anytime soon.

In any case, I was interested, given the disaster that he thinks Scots would make of running their own (rural) affairs, to read this morning that his campaign of murdering badgers in two English counties has gone horribly wrong. 

In typical Tory style, however, this is not the fault of the government, or the privatised agency responsible, but of, would you credit it, the badgers, who, according to Paterson, moved the goalposts. Clever badgers! I think that if Paterson himself were about to be shot by men from the ministry, he'd probably move the bloody goalposts too...

Apparently the target set for the "cull", although I'd say "kill" was a perfectly reasonable word, was 70% of the (badger) population. They have managed only 30%. Clearly Paterson and his crew of sharpshooters were outwitted by the badgers.  The words "booze up" and "brewery" spring to mind. 

I look forward to the time when the right honourable gentleman! has absolutely nothing to do with our food exports. 

However, on a brighter note, the poor, unemployed, underemployed, sick and elderly can take comfort form the fact that the government's record for  killing off unwanted burdens is pretty poor, and all you have to do out outwit them is move a goalpost or two.