Dog Throttling Tory Bastards

Let's see if I've got this right: Lord Hestletine didn't throttle a dog to death with his bare hands, but has had more than three hundred grey squirrels shot,  Is that right?  I have to say that waking up to headlines about a former cabinet minister allegedly killing dogs with his bare hands was a prime example of how it is becoming ever more difficult to satirise modern politics.  That really was something you just couldn't make up.  Indeed, his war against grey squirrels is likewise beyond satire.  It is also another example of the appalling prejudice that grey squirrels have to endure in this country - all because they are successful,  Everybody likes to go all doe eyed over red squirrels, but their grey cousins are vilified as being usurpers, invaders to these shore who have driven out the beloved indigenous red squirrel.  But the fact is that their supremacy over the red squirrel is a matter of natural selection in action.  The fact is that they are more adaptable than the red squirrel, smarter, better at exploiting their environment and generally more vigourous.  It isn't their fault that the red squirrel is, frankly, utterly inefficient, incompetent and thick.  Yet the grey squirrel is condemned for its success, its main crime being that it is am immigrant.

'They came here on ships', protested one person, shocked at my defence of the grey squirrel.  Now, where have I heard that before?  As I pointed out, so had my and probably their ancestors, on Viking longships and their Saxon equivalents.  Even when I was a child I was appalled by the violence and hatred directed toward the grey squirrel.  I remember being shocked at seeing the exterminators employed by the local council massacring the squirrel population, shooting the por buggers out of the trees.  That said, I don't think it was quite on the same scale that Heseltine has had them mown down.  It's a funny thing, but as I've grown older, I've become far more sensitive to the violence often directed at other living beings.  Don't get me wrong - I haven't suddenly turned into a vegan - I have no problem with consuming the flesh of animals killed for the purpose.  It's part of nature to kill to survive, be that by eating the meat of other animals, or wearing their skin for protection.  No, it's the casual and unecessary violence often employed against animals.  It might be something to do with the fact that as one's years advance, you become ever more aware of your own mortality, but these days I find myself reluctant even to kill insects.  Just recently, I've spent inordinate amounts of time catching and dumping out of the window, the multitudes of ladybirds which have taken to invading my bathroom as I can't bear to kill then en masse, (plus, they'd die anyway if left in the bathroom).  I even have a major crisis of confidence whenever I'm forced to wash a huge spider down the plug hole when they crawl into my bath.  (I'm afraid I just can't coexist with them).  So you can imagine just how traumatised Heseltine's attempts at grey squirrel genocide has left me feeling.  The Nazi bastard.