Time for clarity on badger culling

Why our Government is hell bent on destroying one of the most beautiful animals this country has totally baffles me.

While in Australia this summer for six weeks I mentioned this to my cousin who lives in Queensland and she told me that Australia has TB amongst their cattle yet they do not have badgers.

From D Fillingham’s letter (September 20) it is clear there is an organisation willing to test badgers yet our Government do not appear interested. What happens when they have destroyed all these beautiful creatures and we still have TB, which we will have with vermin such as rats and mice and crows, jackdaws and other creatures you can find scavenging around farms? Also, dare I say it, poor animal husbandry. Not every farm is maintained to a set standard.

It is time they did more than go out and destroy the badgers. They are one of the cleanest animals from the wild. The department which has decided to destroy badgers under a Government licence is no better than those who go badger baiting.

Is the Government making sure if individual badgers have TB or are they just going and bang regardless whether they have TB or not?

I think it’s time they were clearer on how they go about choosing which badgers live or die.

I also agree with D Fillingham that this is all done to keep the NFU happy. I am country born and bred and would never destroy an animal on other people’s hearsay.

J.E. Cartner, Linton on Ouse, York

When in a hole, stop digging, councillor

OH what a mess Cllr Andrew Waller is getting himself into and he might be wishing to take York residents into the same mess.

First he has a go at the Civic Trust regarding their claim that the city centre streets are looking messy and litter-strewn (The Press, September 15) and now Cllr Waller states (The Press, September 19) that he had been presented with a report in January that “showed the previous Labour cabinet had agreed in 2014 to cut £750,000 from place-based services including cleaning between 2015 and 2018, but said there was no detail on how this could be done”.

I ask the question, why would any political party come out with a policy document proposing budget cuts without containing specific details of how those cuts could be realised?

Maybe that’s the way the current York coalition council run business but when I was an elected councillor in York it was not the way the Labour administration ran the city’s affairs.

If The Press reports are correct that “big cuts are likely to city street cleaning” (September 19), it would appear that not only does he want to stay in the Tory/Lib-Dem coalition but he also wants to be part of the Labour Group so he can pinch (as he suggests) Labour policies at the same time.

May I suggest that he takes heed of the old saying “when stuck in a hole, stop digging deeper”.

Howard Perry, St James Place, Dringhouses, York

The foolish version of an old adage

On the subject of Brexit in Wednesday’s letters, A R Appleby said he couldn’t recall a well-known adage in its entirety. Perhaps what he was trying to remember went a bit like “Fools rush out where angels fear to tread”?

Alan Robinson.

Lindley Street, Holgate, York