Follow the money

 

We've pondered long and hard while scribbling this blog, about how genuine 'science' as practised decades ago, can be at best ignored and worse, denigrated and made the subject of derision. As is anyone who dares to question the current mantra of kill cattle, cattle cattle - and vaccinate badgers.

We've seen consultation after consultation, all skewed towards preordained conclusions, even to the extent of our current Secretary of State announcing the result , ahead of reading the replies. And we've read the Hansard reports of the RBCT debacle, where it's chief wizard  declared with some pride, that his trial had to reach a preconceived and totally political, conclusion.  

Follow the data? Our co editor, taking a lead from the Financial Times,  together with his own research, has a tale which makes the 2015 'cash for questions' scandal look like 'Listen with mother'. 

Cash up front will get you ringside seat with anyone from the Prime Minister down, and including HRH Prince Charles, whose nephew, Ben Elliot  (by his marriage to Camilla) runs this seedy set up.

Anyone who stumps up £250,000 can have a seat within the inner sanctum, known as the 'Advisory Board' and is guaranteed access to Boris Johnson,  chancellor Sunak and others. Failed MP, now in the Lords and parachuted into Defra, Zac Goldsmith is also mentioned in dispatches.

 So after 538 Parliamentary Questions, 17 years of gathering research on policies which worked to eradicate zoonotic Tuberculosis and more importantly, those which did not, we have a government bought and paid for. A government which wants to leave a reservoir of this zoonotic disease in wildlife, kill more cattle and vaccinate any badger which happens to enter a peanut laced cage, despite the published evidence of a very dead cat,  carrying the same  unique genotype of zTB found in badger vaccines. 

And we in the UK dare to criticise the corruption of other country's governments? Really?  

A 'banana republic' is described as one where a government functions poorly for its citizens while disproportionately benefitting a corrupt and elite group group or individual. 

As we said, follow the money.