Of course the EU knows best!

A man from Oldham is seeking compensation from the EU after they legislated him out of business as a mole catcher.

Peter Brown had been culling moles using strychnine for 18 years and operated a UK government-approved scheme serving 87 farms in the Oldham area. Moles push soil to the surface, releasing lysteria which poisons livestock.

But the all-knowing EU has decided that killing moles with strychnine is cruel and insists that traps and other poisons like aluminium phosphide are used instead. But, just like the British government with the fox hunting ban, it is an ill-informed and ultimately less humane change for the worse.

Moles may be injured by a trap, escape and die days later from their injuries. Even if the mole is caught, it can take some time for them to die. Aluminium phosphide, according to Mr Brown, can take two days to kill a mole and I'd rather believe the word of a mole catcher on mole poison than the word of a politician.

Mr Brown went to see his MEP, Chris Davies, the eurofederalist Lib Dem MEP for the North West euroregion who is such an expert on mole catching that he told the Oldham Advertiser that strychnine isn't safe and that killing a mole with strychnine is too inhumane. In fact, he even wrote an article for issue 72 of Pesticide News saying as much back in 2006 and even claimed that moles could be a gardeners friend!

No method of culling moles is going to be nice but the one thing that strychnine poisoning has going for it as a poison for moles and other rodents is that it is 100% effective with very small doses and does not, no matter what Chris Davies or the EU says, result in a slow death. Death can be a quick as 10-15 minutes from eating the poison - a lot less than the two days for aluminimum phosphate or fatal wounding by a trap.

Mr Brown is being supported by local UKIP members which clearly worries Chris Davies:

I’m also delighted UKIP have exposed themselves as wanting to subject moles to appalling cruelty when they are killed in this disgusting way. Perhaps they’re not aware that animal welfare is a topic that fills MEPs’ postbags with thousands of letters a year?

Mr Davies has clearly forgotten that the Lib Dems were relegated to 4th place in the last EU elections and have just as much knowledge of what their "constituents" are worried about from their own post bags. More, in fact, because people worried about the extent to which this country is being subsumed into a federal superstate know that they can get a genuine answer by writing to a UKIP MEP instead of eurofederalist traitors like Chris Davies.