Mr. Badger and his Lobbyist Friends

I'm looking at the August issue of Harper's.

There is a weirdly fascinating tidbit in the "readings" section about His Royal Highness Prince Charles.

In May of this year, various memos that HRH wrote to various government officials, including the Prime Minister, in the period 2004-09 became public under the UK's Freedom of Information Act.

The weird bit is the notion of a "badger lobby." HRH says that not only is there a badger lobby, but it has political strength to a degree that distresses him.

He says that the "most pressing and urgent problem" facing British agriculture today is "the rising number of TB cases in cattle," and that this cannot be addressed without "a proper cull of badgers," who apparently spread TB to the bovine set.

But the badger lobby stands in the way of this proper cull, and in a letter to the PM, Charles said that their interest in saving badgers at the expense of slaughtering "thousands of expensive cattle" who have contracted TB, is "intellectually dishonest."

All I can think of now is The Wind in the Willows.

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