Minister insists no U-turn on Gloucestershire badger cull

“Mr Laurence Robertson MP seems confused. He says "People need to remember it is a trial and, if it does not work, then we will have to try something else."

As far as I was aware these trials are not to do with seeing if culling badgers can bring down bTB rates - ie testing the methodology (that science has been done in the RBCT, which these trials are supposed to be modelled on).

The cull trials are supposed to test whether badger shooting can be humane.

The problem is Defra have not been clear about the remit and detailed methodology of the trials -and they won't publish this information.

We are all in the dark, but Mr Robertson obviously hasn't read the first thing about the issue.”

“Defra said the Bovine tb eradication Advisory group overseeing the cull would me made up of independant individuals??---Surprise Surprise they've lied again! Is there no depth to which these amoral cretins will stoop?? No need to answer that question!”

“cull starts boycott british farm produce simple, I WANT CHEAP EU MILK if you are going to destroy indigenous wildlife”

“This Is Such An Unnecessary Shame? :0(”

“NO U-turns? Wouldn't that be a first for this governement?

Apart from about-faces on the "pasty tax" and "caravan tax", we have :

31 May 2012: charitable donations. In the 2012 budget, George Osborne, the chancellor, announced he would cap tax relief on charitable donations at £50,000 or 25% of income.
30 May 2012: buzzards. The environment department had planned to destroy buzzards' nests to protect pheasant shoots.
28 May 2012: pasty tax. Also in the budget
28 May 2012: caravan tax. The budget also levied VAT on static caravans.
28 May 2012: secret courts. A government green paper on keeping evidence from the security services secret was watered down following opposition from the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg.
15 May 2012: Scottish independence referendum. Scottish Tories were furious after David Cameron said he was not "too fussy" about the date of the referendum.
9 May 2012: Joint Strike Fighter.
5 May 2012: unannounced Ofsted inspections.
21 March 2012: video games tax relief.
1 December 2011: Disability Living Allowance. The government announced plans in the 2010 spending review to cut the "mobility" part of DLA, worth £51 a week, for those in residential care, but after criticism that this was "callous", dropped the plans the following year.
23 November 2011: chief coroner.
23 November 2011: Youth Justice Board. The board was supposed to be scrapped in the government's "bonfire of the quangos"
17 November 2011: NHS waiting times. Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, had criticised waiting time targets as unnecessary and bureaucratic
14 July 2011: coastguard centres. The government had planned to reduce the number of coastguard centres from 18 to eight
22 June 2011: BBC World Service. William Hague, the foreign secretary, partially reversed huge cuts to World Service funding by announcing an extra £2.2m a year for the BBC's Arabic Service.
21 June 2011: sentencing discounts. Cameron abandoned plans to offer a 50% sentence discount to offenders who submitted early guilty pleas after tabloid criticisms of "soft justice".
13 May 2011: circus animals.
17 February 2011: housing benefit cut.
17 February 2011: selling off the forests. "We got this one wrong," said the environment secretary, Caroline Spelman,
12 February 2011: Financial Inclusion Fund.
9 February 2011: military covenant. In June 2010 Cameron said a promise of duty of care in return for the military's sacrifices would be enshrined in law. But the armed forces bill eventually published required the Ministry of Defence only to produce an annual report on the covenant.
26 December 2010: Bookstart.
20 December 2010: school sports.
25 November 2010: domestic violence.
16 November 2010: photographer and camerawoman on the public payroll. Andrew Parsons was Cameron's personal photographer before he became prime minister, and Nicky Woodhouse made "Webcameron" videos for the Tory website, but there was an outcry when they were placed on the public payroll when the Tories took office. Cameron defended this as a cost-saving measure, but a few days later decided the Conservative party would pay their salaries.
12 November 2010: rape anonymity.
9 September 2010: NHS Direct. In August 2010 the Department of Health said the NHS Direct service would be scrapped. A month later Lansley said the department just meant the phone number.
8 August 2010: free school milk.
5 July 2010: dissolution of parliament. In what was greeted with delight by the media as the first big U-turn of the coalition, the government's plans to block the dissolution of parliament without the agreement of at least 55% of MPs were altered to allow a simple majority of MPs to trigger such a dissolution.

A lot of other ministers apart from Owen Paterson have "insisted there will be no U-turn."”

“My comment was removed so let me try and put this another way:

Is it right that a person can be on the DEFRA committee that makes policy on culling badgers and then set up a company to cull them, from which presumabaly a profit can be made whilst remaining member of said committee - the Bovine TB eradication Advisory group?

http://tinyurl.com/cf5bkrr”