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Blog: Back To Badgers

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Yesterday The Policies In My Manifesto and I headed to The Houses Of Parliament for a Badger Cull protest. What's that you say? You thought that was all sorted out ages ago, and that the massive public outcry coupled with the absolutely huge volume of scientific evidence demonstrating that killing badgers for several thousand pounds a pop in incredibly cruel ways was completely ineffective against TB meant that it had all been stopped? Well yes, yes it had, but the evil shits who are now in full control of the government have decided to bring it back. Why, it's almost as if they actively enjoy killing things or something!

I've been to several of these demoes and they've tended to be the usual slightly haphazard mix of good people doing rambling speeches that other people with diminished hearing (through, say, decades of ROCK) struggle to hear which starts late and massively overruns. THIS one, however, was a cut above, largely because (it seems) it was run by Mr Brian May From Out Of Queen. He ran the whole demo like it was a GIG, COMPERING with extreme effectiveness, getting people up to the microphone for SHORT and PUNCHY speeches and, incredibly, finishing BANG ON TIME! This has never happened before, it was amazing! The Speakers At My Rally suggested that maybe the fact that it was Mr Brian May From Out Of Queen running the show is what MADE people stick to their scripts and speak up. "Crikey!" they must have thought, "I'd best not mess with HIM!"

It was also interesting how HIGH POWERED the Badger protests have become - there were representatives from groups like PETA and Lush as well as the Hunt Sabs and Badger Trust people who've always been there. During the speeches somebody talked about it being one of the biggest animal protection alliances that have ever come about in this country, and it was certainly VERY impressive. It's almost everyone's annoyed about an utterly ludicrous, basically evil, scheme being run entirely contrary to all sense, decency and economics or something.

The funny thing for me, seeing Brian May speak, is that I've never really liked Queen, partly because they were all such massive Tories. However now Brian May seems to have had a complete political turnaround. He talked - rather excellently - about how the Badger Cull is one facet of this shitty evil government, who don't care about anybody or anything else except for their rich friends and are quite happy to destroy the lives of people and/or animals at every turn. "This isn't a niche interest" he said, "it's very much part of the bigger picture."

All the speakers also made the point that us being there DID make a difference - I do always wonder about this, and have tended to favour the view that demoes are more of a MORALE BOOSTER for people who care about the issues - but it seems that in This Social Media Age people TALKING about issues like this is an effective way to counter the apathy and/or lies of the establishment media. Maybe they're right, I certainly hope so , but it definitely acted as a morale booster in political times when GOODNESS KNOWS we need it. As several of them said, we won this fight before and we can win it again. Let's bloody hope so!

posted 9/9/2015 by MJ Hibbett

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