Why I Hate The Tories

Reluctant to turn this post into a long list of grievances, I'll concentrate on the point at hand, which was highlighted by this story about the perilous state of British wildlife at the hands of the landowning rich.

Now I appreciate that ornithology may not be the grooviest topic on the agenda, but I think that the plight of the hen harrier is a pertinent reminder of how vulnerable the environment is in Tory hands; and most of it in this country is.

The rural landowners are constantly bleating about how they should be just left alone to run the countryside without urban interference, and how their diligent care of the land over the centuries has produced England's peerless landscape. Yet in practice, they prove to be narrow-minded and cash-grabbing, in their constant striving for short-term gain.

Grouse are raised in their thousands to be killed by those rich-enough to attend a shoot. Thus the event serves both purposes of the Tory life-style: a profit is made and it perpetuates an elitist ritual. The hen-harrier is therefore a nuisance, and may nibble into their profits, therefore it has to be eradicated.

When the landowners pledge their love of the countryside, they merely mean their love of living commodities, that which exists to create profit. Their love fails to extend beyond this, and converts very quickly to hatred when faced with the non-commodity that is the rest of nature: ie; the vast majority of the environment, which the Tories believe to be in direct competition with them, setting out to deprive them of their heritage, like some chaotic saboteur.

The Tory landowning class will never rest until every un-commodifiable animal and plant is extinguished, even if it meant that their own future was doomed. Money in the bank now and the social status that that brings, that's what counts, not some scraggy wild vermin and weeds favoured by the communist Townies. And the rest of us can only sit by and watch our world shrink as a result.

Ten years ago, around the time of the Frankenstein-like BSE crisis, the farmers of Dorset seemed to be united against the EC (who were reluctant to contaminate Europe with British Beef) and everywhere one looked there were large hand-made signs disparaging Brussels. The basic message was "hands of the British countryside". In one picture-book village, there was a classic 17th century pub, displaying its loyalty with a "keep Britain British" sign at the gate to the beer-garden.
I say picture-book village, but it wasn't quite, as the verdant beauty of the surrounding countryside was marred by the horror that was that pub's beer-garden, decked out as it was by a sea of gaudy scarlet sunshades advertising Coca-Cola.

Nationalise the land NOW!