If you think the Conservatives can be trusted with the economy, look at the cost of the badger cull
I like Tom Pride’s comment on this: “Some people so thick they think the Tories are good at the economy just because the Daily Mail tells them they are.”
I should point out also that Wales currently has a Labour administration, which is praised by the Wildlife Trusts for its “financial efficiency”.
So, Labour=financial efficiency; Conservative=waste of money. Has everybody got that?
Between 2012 and 2014, the tax payer spent £16.8 million on the culling of 2,476 badgers. This is nearly four times more expensive than Defra anticipated and is a cost per dead badger of £6,800. Of this figure, more than £4.9 million was spent on policing costs – equivalent to the annual salary costs of more than 120 police officers over a two-year period.
5,000 badgers have been vaccinated in Wales in four years – and all for the price of two weeks of badger culling in England. It costs £293 per badger vaccinated in the Wildlife Trusts’ vaccination programmes. That’s a difference of £6,482 per badger culled and badger vaccinated.
Financial efficiency is not the only benefit of vaccinating badgers over culling them. There is evidence to suggest that vaccination of adult badgers reduces the likelihood of infection in cubs. Also, unlike the disruption of culling and its associated increased risk of TB infection of cattle, there is no significant perturbation following badger vaccination programmes.
Source: Cost of the badger cull | The Wildlife Trusts
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The tories don’t give a monkey’s about the economy, because they know that no matter how incompetent and doctrinaire they are, the poor old British tax payer will foot the bill. The tories are the ‘money’ party; they can afford to be since it’s never their money they squander.
Badgers have nothing to do without bovine tuberculosis. It’s humans who carry it. Interesting article I read that all these culls are happening at sites listed for fraking.
Even if the Conservative knew how to run the economy efficiently and effectively their dogmatism would get in the way. Killing defenceless animals is a matter of faith for the upper-classes, remember how they wanted to repeal the Fox Hunting ban. So if there’s a choice between killing badgers and vaccinating them, they pre-disposed to choose killing them. And any evidence about the cost of culling poor defenceless humans will be silenced. The same is happening with the disabled, help them back into work or pay a private corporation 1000’s for attempting to do that, but failing almost completely, and they’ll choose the private option. All those disabled scroungers are living up on the £110 per week they get for being classed, by them, too ill to work. I could go on about 1.5 million unemployed, zero hour contracts and mass under-employment, decaying infrastructure, Brexit (and worse hard Brexit). Of course the best lesson would be to point their initial goals set when they came to power in 2010 and compare them to what has occurred. Finally, I’m sure Labour can do better, but to be frank, that would not be hard.
I suspect the reason people believe the Tories run the economy best is down to the newsprint media’s knowledge that it’s the most important factor when the electorate choose who to vote for. So their supposed competence has nothing to do with reality, but all to do with the importance the media devote to convincing the electorate the Conservatives are economically competent. I would add those idiots in the Labour Party who decided not to challenge the narrative, that the world wide financial collapse was not the fault of the financial services sector, but, rather, Labour’s profligacy prior to the crash was. That was a monumental disaster. And that disaster is being visited most on Britain’s rising number of poor households and the disabled.
Ian Mc Coll complains and expels members for being angry, members would have to be in compassionate morons not to be moved to anger, and poodles not to be so with some Labour party MP’s.
Yes, we’ve all got to move-on so the next election will be ours, but I’m proud of the party membership for standing-up to say this is wrong, you’ve got to change, it also gives hope to those for whom the Labour Party has been, for most its history, a natural ally. Well done Jeremy Corbyn and Dianne Abbot, for renewing that most natural alliance. If the Labour Party wasn’t founded to empower those under the joke of over zealous capitalism (and you could easily argue just capitalism in general) then its history up until the 1980s must be, some sort of mirage or mass aberration.
How in the world did the Conservative government spend £16.8 million on killing 2,476 badgers? The project should never have been allowed to spiral so out of control and they need to answer to Parliament for such a spectacular failed project. The only thing it didn’t fail was in showing that the Tories must not be allowed to control the finances of a country they have already ensured is in debt and in an unrecoverable low waged economic downturn, demonstrating that it is nothing to do with global slumps.
You can sum up the Conservatives fiscal abilities in one word, Osbourne, in fact we should work to get the word into the dictionary meaning totally useless at maths and economics.