Betty Carries on..and on..

 Hello Betty Badger Fans,

Your favourite Badger is writing again about her adventures in London Town.  It's getting colder now winter is coming.  I am getting very fat and wobble along Westminster streets when Mary gets tired of pulling me along in the Betty Bag.  All sensible Badgers fatten themselves for winter and snuggle down in their setts waiting for the cold to pass.  But Mary and I are on a MISSION  and we will keep going to Defra until the Badger Kill-Cull ends, or if one of us dies, whichever is first.

I went to Man Chester again to the ConservaTory Conference in October.  Me and Mary were dreading it because the weather was supposed to very wet and windy, but in the end it was fun and the sun shone.  The security was more serious than in previous years but we did get close to the delegate entrance and chatted to lots of ConservaTories.  I put up my lovely new signs made for me by Mary's friend Vanessa. This is a pretend Tory Fat Cat with the lovely signs Vanessa made for me: 

A surprising number of Tory members were very pleased to see me there and thanked me for continuing my Mission to stop the Kill-Cull.  Some of them even had leaky eyes because they were so sad about killing my friends.  One of them told me that Mr Eustice plans to carry on killing Badgers until he has killed 1 million of us, in spite of his weasel words about phasing out the Kill-Cull.  I will talk to Mr Eustice when I see him next, although he does tend to hide from me because he feels guilty. Here are some of snaps from Man Chester.

This is Man Chester Piccadilly:

Here are the Brexiteers:

Here is me in my Betty Bag:

Here is our train

In Man Chester we were standing next to the anti-Brexiteers and they had a very loud music machine and played lots of happy songs such as Money, Money Money which I danced around to for hours.  And they also played the Russian National Anthem because they accused the Government of being in the pockets of rich Russians.  They also played a song called Mad World which made Mary cry a lot.  A nice journalist comforted her.  Here is the song:   Mad World by Michael Andrew I wonder if it will make you cry too because it is a mad world when Badgers and other Animals are being killed for no good reason.

Mary has written a letter to Grant Shapps .  Did you know that Badgers have MPs? Well Mr Shapps is my MP because my sett is  in his constituency.  He probably doesn't know he's my MP but he certainly knows Mary is his constituent because he gets lots of letters and emails from her.  In her last email she accused Defra of Institutional Corruption. She also said that some Defra staff are either bowing to vested interests (such as the National Farmers Union) or were too stupid to realise that killing 200,000 Badgers has made no difference to the incidence of bovine TB.

Anyway, Mary wasn't very impressed by the reply she got from his assistant Nicholas, so she wrote again telling him that she wasn't going to be fobbed off with a standard reply when she is an expert on Badgers (!).  

Then something lucky happened when we were standing outside Defra in Marsham Street.  Mary saw Mr Shapps walking towards the Defra entrance, surrounded by three members of staff.  One of them, a Huwoman said, "Don't talk to the Badger".  I imagine that she didn't want Grant to be photographed talking to a 6 foot Badger, particularly with all the transport problems he has at the moment.  He is quite keen on flying apparently and some Newspapers are saying that he is trying to prevent housebuilding on airfields. 

Anyway, Grant said " I have to talk to her, she is my Constituent".  Isn't that nice; he realised that Betty Badger was indeed his constituent. So he came to talk to me.  Mary asked him if he would arrange an appointment with Mr Eustice, like he did for Mary to see Mr Gove, who was very kind to us.  He said he would do his best. I am still waiting.... but he did come and see me again after his Levelling Up meeting and reminded Mary to email him with her request.  This is a picture of Grant Shapps.  

Mary wants a Meeting with Mr Eustice, even though he banned us from sitting on the Defra wall and nearly got us arrested last year.  We are getting old and now have to bring a stool with us as Mary is too old to stand for hours. Mary did once do a magic spell for Mr Eustice's bottom to get covered in boils so that he would have trouble sitting down too.  If we do get to see him I will ask how his bottom is.

Mary believes Mr Eustice is being misled by Defra staff and the NFU about the real cause of the spread of bTB.  Mary wants to put him right and tell him to stop killing Badgers now and start vaccinating Cows instead, after all Cows are spreading the disease around the country.  The Welsh Government has stopped killing Badgers and their recent research on outbreaks of bTB shows that they were all caused by moving infected cows around the country.  As if that's news! We have known this for ever!

The best thing about standing outside Defra every week is the wonderful Hupeople I meet.  Everyone likes to tell me their stories, perhaps because i am a Badger and won't judge them. I have met some really nice Hupeople recently.  Every week the Police Officers come to see me. One day a Police Huwoman who looks for terrorists came and stood with me for 20 minutes and we had a nice chat.  She might have thought I had a bomb in my big belly but then she realised I was a harmless Badger. These are the Chaps that came to see me this Thursday:  

This week I met two Electricians called Denis and Daniel.  I am not sure what an electrician is but they were very jolly.  They came over to see me because Denis thought my sign said "140,000 Badgers Killed by Gout".  I had to point out that we haven't died of GOUT from excessive good living but have were killed by GOVT., which is short for Government.  We laughed a lot about that. They didn't know anything about Badgers and had never seen a living one before, just lots of dead ones by the road so they were very pleased to learn all about us.  Mary gave them a leaflet which they promised to read. This is an old picture of Gout.

Most weeks I see a Huperson who is a Christian and tells us to Turn to Jesus and blesses the Security Staff and the Police Officers.  Sometimes he has a music machine on wheels which blast out Holy Music.  Sometimes I sing along.  He always says to me "No one is innocent, turn to Jesus" because I have my "I AM INNOCENT" sign around my neck.  I tell him that animals are Innocent and it is the humans who are sinners.  But he doesn't listen.  He wears signs around his neck just like me! Here is his picture.  

One day he brought two visitors with him who were missionaries from another country, probably India.  The young Huwoman said to me, "Have you embraced Jesus?" which left me speechless because I haven't met him to the best of my knowledge. Then she burst out laughing saying, "What am I doing trying to convert a Badger to Christianity " and we both had the giggles and couldn't' stop laughing. I wonder if I talk to this Jesus person he might help to stop the Badger Kill-Cull because everyone says what a great and kind person he is. Here is a picture of Jesus.  You might recognise him because his heart is on the outside of his body, which is quite unusual:

:This week I was touched by the stories of three Huwomen.  The first is called Victoria. Her colleague told me that she is terrified of Badgers like me and is too frightened to come out of the front entrance of Defra in case she sees me.  She was traumatised when a man who wanted to marry her dressed up as a Badger and proposed to her.  She refused and has been afraid of big Badgers ever since. Her friend took a picture of me and said he would show it to her and tell her what a nice Badger I am and that I she doesn't need to be scared of me because I don't want to mate with her....

Then along came Jaqueline who gave me a big hug in spite of fears about Covid Virus. She introduced herself as a Mad Cat Woman. She has 14 cats.  We liked her a lot as she had a huge heart for animals and doesn't even eat them.  Here is a cartoon of a Mad Cat Woman from something called The Simpsons:

The third Huwoman who came along was called Josephine and made us very sad.  She told us that a man she loved and had saved her life had been imprisoned by the British Government on false charges when he is a good kind man.  Mary said that although the Government was a bit corrupt she didn't believe that they would imprison someone for no good reason but we promised to read his story when we got home.  The Google Oracle and Wikipedia told us all about the Human called Aravindan Balakrishnan who ran an organisation called the Workers Institute of Marxism-Leninism-MaoZedong Thought. He convinced his followers that everything was controlled by him including the sun, moon, wind, fires; that he could overthrow governments control natural disasters and  make people live and die.  I wondered if he could stop the Badger Kill-Cull.... Anyway, he was convicted of child cruelty, false imprisonment, rape, six counts of indecent assault and other things in what became known as the Lambeth Slavery Case.  He was jailed for 23 year. It was so sad that Josephine had lost her hero and was still fighting for him five years later. .

Last week we met a Human who was an environmentalist and had just come back from a place called Sudan.  He looked very upset by what he had experienced.  He said that all animals including things called Elephants and Antelopes and Giraffes have been killed for food because Hupeople are so hungry because of a War. Hupeople fight Wars all the time and the ordinary folk suffer, starve and die.  It is all very strange when Hupeople think they are so clever.  Did you know that Hupeople are even talking about going to live on other planets in the sky?  I don't think the Universe will allow that.  I must agree with Bill Hicks who said that Humanity is "a Virus with Shoes".  Don't tell Mary I said that...  These are Giraffes.  I have to admit that they are really peculiar looking and would have a real problem in my wood because they would keep banging their heads.

The last person I want to tell you about I met two days ago.  He was walking past Defra with holes in his shoes, a grey beard, dirty clothes and a can of something called Beer in his hand.  He had bright blue kind eyes. He told me that his name is Badger and we shook hands as kindred Badgers.  He said that Badger is a kind and happy man, until he drinks and then he is not Badger any more, but is someone not very nice at all.  He begged me and Mary not to drink Beer or other alcohol because it would destroy us, as it was destroying him.  He spent a lot of time in hospital recently and thinks he may die soon because he is a slave to alcohol. We wanted to take him home and look after him but he wouldn't fit in the Betty Bag with me. 

In the Badger world we are all waiting to hear how many Badgers Defra has killed this autumn.  They usually release the figures in the week before Christmas because everyone is caught up in some sort of tinsel-fuelled frenzy and too focussed on buying things to notice this really tragic news. 

In a few days time it will be the shortest day and the longest night.  Although it will be cold for some months yet, it gives us Badgers hope of Spring and hope of a new year when the British Government may finally listen to the sensible scientists and stop blaming Badgers, because we are innocent and lovely.

Night Night,

Betty 🐾🐾🐾🐾