Government ‘Experts’ In Search Of Pussy

Landed Underclass is enthusiastic about the possible benefits of ‘British Big Cats,’ following the reports from the MSM that they may exist after all:

“As a cat owner person owned by cats I entirely approve of all felines, though I would prefer those actually trying to sleep on my bed to be, if possible, no larger than the present ones. The thought that the yappy and incontinent kick-dogs of Daily Mail-reading local councillors might provide nourishment (albeit inadequate and insanitary) for panthers (or, more topically, snow-leopards) quite warms the cockles, to be honest.”

Me too. Particularly if they develop a taste for parking wardens and social workers…

Sadly, a look at the ‘evidence’ referred to in the MSM proves it to be anything but:

Two big cats have been spotted by rangers working for a Government agency in the most compelling evidence yet that the creatures are living in the British countryside.

There have been hundreds of reports of big cats across the UK but most are a fleeting glimpse caught by a member of the public.

Yup, lots of people have claimed to see ‘big cats’ (and been ridiculed), but now people who work for the Government claim the same thing. Well, they must be right…

But now it has emerged that two big cats were spotted by experts from the Forestry Commission using state-of-the art thermal imaging equipment. The sightings were disclosed following a Freedom of Information request.

Oooh, ‘high technology’ + ‘government experts’ = ‘the truth is out there’, surely…?

Not really:

He said: "I was driving at the time, which is quite something in itself through the forest at night. The images showed up white on the thermal imaging equipment which registers body heat.

"You basically get a white image upon a black background. It was clear enough so that the tail was very, very obvious. It was more than a deer.

"I couldn't tell you how big they were or what they were. They were just large, full cats."

He’s got no idea of size. Or species. Or anything, other than they were, apparently, ‘cat shaped’.

Government ‘experts’. They often aren’t. The only mystery here is why the MSM continues to treat them as such....

Oh, Hai!

'British big cats'. The subject pops up a lot on the Internet, in 'Fortean Times' and is a regular feature of the silly season in the MSM. But up until now, it's always been pooh-poohed by officials.

That's changed:

...the head of a Government agency responsible for investigating such incidents has declared that he believes these mysterious creatures do indeed exist.

Oh, well, that's it then. If the government is making it official, then it's settled.

British big cats are a myth after all...

The investigations have yet to find conclusive proof of the presence of the mysterious creatures but, asked about their existence, Charlie Wilson, who coordinates reports for the Government agency, said: "The evidence is there that there are the odd, escaped, released dumped animals occurring in the wild every now and then."

Well, indeed. There's plenty of evidence for terrapins, raccoon dogs, coypu, etc. No lions, leopards, tigers, or - as 'identified in one hilarious report, by policemen no less - cheetahs.

One theory is that several large species, such as panthers, leopards and lynx, were deliberately released into the wild by their owners in the 1970s after the introduction of the Dangerous Wild Animals Act, which placed restrictions on the keeping of certain species.

Now, it might be the 'Telegraph' subs paraphrasing (and we know how good they are at anything requiring a bit of zoological know-how), but any report that is under the impression that panthers and leopards are different species isn't worth the tea and biscuits the civil servants consumed while compiling it.

And any confused puma pitched out of a Rolls Royce in the middle of Bodmin Moor by its rock star owner in the 1970s would be long, long dead by now...

Just how credible are these sightings, anyway? And how credible are the witnesses quoted in the report? For the sake of the government, one hopes they are a lot more credible that this chap.

Oh:

One big cat, spotted by a roadside between the villages of Mark and Burtle, in Somerset, was said to be as tall as a car.

/facepalm

While many of the investigations have been "inconclusive", others have been resolved. A supposed big cat seen in Norfolk, for instance, turned out to be a badger.

/doublefacepalm

Here's a badger.

Here's a black leopard:


You'd think, wouldn't you, that a government official wouldn't be quite so dumb as to claim that he believed anything based on this.

But then, I suppose, once your employment prospects depend on supporting government reports, you tend to be the credulous sort...

Does ‘Care In The Community' Lead To This...

A man has died after being attacked by a tiger after jumping into its enclosure at a zoo in Yorkshire, police have said. Emergency services were contacted shortly after 1.30pm on Saturday when the man entered the enclosure at Yorkshire Wildlife Park, near Doncaster, and was set upon by the tiger. He was pronounced dead at the scene, South Yorkshire police said, adding his family had been informed.

It remains to be establised whether this was a person known to the authorities as someone who was mentally ill, but anyone at the zoo that day must be thanking their lucky stars that this time, an innocent child wasn't harmed.  

If it's revealed that this was a mental case, questions will no doubt be asked as to the wisdom of letting the severely mentally deficient attend zoos. Of course, we’ve had the usual idiots on Twitter opining all weekend;

‘Why didn’t staff shoot/tranquillise the tiger sooner?’ From people who seem to have no idea that zoos must have firearms in case of escapes as a condition of their licence, but they have to be stored in safes, unloaded, and that safe may be the other side of the zoo, or the person licensed to use the firearm could be on the other side of the zoo. And no tranquilliser known to man is instantly effective to stop the cat killing him.

‘How awful it is that people are hoping that the tiger is ok and not the person!’ This from people who want to drive engagement or virtue signal, completely oblivious to the fact we have very few tigers and a seemingly overwhelming number of mentally deficient people. 

But nothing sums up the sheer lack of education in society as much as this:

Hey, ‘journalists’, Google is your friend!

That’s GB news interviewing a man from the ‘British Big Cat Society’ not realising that he’s not a qualified zoologist but a lunatic who thinks big cats are roaming the UK…

A police spokesperson said the tiger attacked the man and inflicted “serious injury”.The force urged people not to share “distressing” video footage of the attack, circulating on social media.

Too late, far, far too late. 

It's OK, The British Big Cats Will Get Them All...

Police are investigating I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!...

Well, it's about time! For crimes against entertainment?

...over concerns non-native wildlife could have escaped into the Welsh countryside during bushtucker trials, the Guardian can reveal.

Oh... 

Authorities are investigating ITV after complaints by the TV presenter and naturalist Iolo Williams, who was appalled after watching the show last week and seeing thousands of cockroaches being poured over contestants.

Williams said: “Cockroaches are the ultimate survivors, and if they survive in north Wales and escape into the wild there, what effect are they going to have? I don’t know, nobody knows … I just find it incredible that they’re allowed to do this, and I’m not being a killjoy here. Why not use fish guts, or offal?”

I have to say, if the Welsh countryside can be 'threatened by cockroaches', it's doomed... 

Natural Resources Wales, which gives out licences for the release of species, did not receive an application from ITV to release non-native species. If these species have been released without a licence it would be a breach of the Wildlife and Countryside Act.

A spokesperson for north Wales police said: “The matter is being investigated by officers from our rural crime team.”

I would love to see this in one of those fly-on-the-wall police documentaries in the future... 

Trouble at t’Diversity Mill…

Are things falling apart for the establishment’s man at the Equality Commission?

It was not supposed to work like this. The Government's equality watchdog – which is charged with rooting out discrimination on the grounds of sex, race, religion, sexuality, age or disability – was yesterday in the dock charged with discrimination by a member of its own staff.

Is anyone really surprised by this? That a quango doesn’t abide by the rules it expects the rest of us to follow?

The woman before an employment tribunal yesterday was Brid Johal, from Tipperary. (These things are important when it comes to equality). She was an aide to the aide of Mr Phillips. Even aides have aides in the wonderful world of quangos…

Why not? They aren’t spending their own money, after all…

While she was on maternity leave the person who was covering for her – whom we might, unkindly perhaps, describe as the aide of the aide of the aide – was promoted over Ms Johal's head. It happened just as a commission bigwig was holding forth publicly about how unfortunate it was that women get penalised if they take a year off. Ms Johal told the tribunal that she had not been informed that there was a vacancy available despite her bosses' promises that she would be "kept in the loop" while she was away.

Whoops! Sounds like she has them bang to rights. Hope she takes them to the cleaners and..

Oh, wait! We’ll be paying that as well, too, won’t we?

"There is something oddly old-fashioned going on in terms of plum jobs at the higher level," one insider said recently.

You mean, despite what it preaches, it’s as much an ‘old boy’s club’ as any other large institution? I’m shocked. Shocked…

In the next few weeks the National Audit Office is expected to deliver a hard-hitting verdict on the commission's finances, and may even qualify its accounts. Its concerns are said to centre on staff who were given generous redundancy payments when the CRE was wound up, then re-hired by the EHRC. Mr Phillips may soon face questions in Parliament.

Questions will be asked in Parliament? The place where, if you get the heave-ho as Speaker due to incredible incompetence, you’re in line for a peerage to make up for it?

That’ll be fun to watch.

More personally embarrassing for Mr Phillips is the rumbling row over his private business activities. Last year he was forced to quit as director of the Equate Organisation, a management company that he founded – and in which he owns a 70 per cent stake – when it was disclosed that it gave advice to Channel 4 following the Jade Goody race row in the 2007 series of Celebrity Big Brother. He was accused of a conflict of interest between his business and his public-sector role. It was also revealed that his contract with the commission – where he is paid £110,000 for a three-and-a-half day week – allowed him to use the commission's offices for a number of exclusively private business activities.

*cough* Smith Institute *cough*

But it seems that Trev has fallen foul of the racemongers within his own organisation by not being PC enough:

…in April three board members resigned after a public assertion by Mr Phillips that the police were no longer institutionally racist. Mr Phillips argued that the police had "shown a much better understanding of how to deliver a public service that doesn't discriminate just because of the colour of your skin" since the botched investigation into the murder of Stephen Lawrence. But this did not go down well with the old guard.

They had already been incensed by his U-turn on multiculturalism – the notion that a diverse society should celebrate the different cultures of its ethnic groups. Multiculturalism, Phillips argued, might actually be counter-productive.

Well, that attitude will never do…

But don’t weep for Trev. Like all cool cats, he’ll find a way of landing on his feet:

There is now talk that his time at the commission may be nearly up. Some are suggesting deal may be done to allow him to save face, by which he will be offered another three years – on the understanding that he will turn it down. He might be offered a job as head of another quango, the British Council, which has a vacancy at the top following the departure of Neil Kinnock who had to quit when his wife, Glenys, was made a minister.

Ahhh. Cozy…

Crisp Salesman Gets Above Himself…

Gary Lineker in tantrum over journalists doing their job:

My weekly column will no longer be appearing in the Mail on Sunday. Not after last weekend's story in the same newspaper, which led to the resignation of Lord Triesman, the chairman of the Football Association and England's bid to host the 2018 World Cup.

It’s Gary’s ball and he’s taking it home with him, so there!

It was clearly a case of entrapment.

Oh, good lord…

Whatever you think about Lord Triesman and whatever you feel about what he said, his comments were obviously meant for one person's ears and one person's ears only.

Well, yes. So were Nixon’s. So what..?

And however ridiculous these comments might appear, they are very damaging. I think it's a real shame the newspaper made the judgement that they did for short-term gain in sales of newspapers because it's hard to see that there was any other positive from it.

There doesn’t need to be any other positive from it. That’s what newspapers do, Gary. It’s their job, like yours is football commentating flogging Walkers crisps.

As an ambassador of the 2018 bid I would desperately love the World Cup to come to this country, but this story has damaged our chances and I'd be hypocritical to continue to earn money from writing a column in that paper.

Well, don’t let the door hit you on the bum as you leave, then…

I think this story goes against the national interest because the country is behind the 2018 bid, in which a lot of people invested a hell of a lot of time. The bid is particularly strong and has just been handed in last week.

Translation: ‘As a football commentator, I’m keen to have more job opportunities and it’s unfair that the rock has been lifted up to show the things crawling around underneath, so I’m going to whine about the person who lifted that rock…’

There seems to be some sort of thirst in the press for negative stories about our squad and our management going into a major competition.

There’s a thist in the press for negative stories, full stop. They don’t have any particular downer on footballers, they’ll happily run stories about idiot actors, drunken rugby players, tarty popsingers…

I don’t suppose it ever occurred to you that the squad and management could avoid most of these stories by, oooh, say, not acting like barely human morons with the morals of alley cats?

Thought not…

I think it might be a time that we can perhaps reflect on this as a nation and perhaps think of the responsibility our newspapers have. They all seem to champion the national side and show patriotism but when push comes to shove and they have the opportunity of selling an extra few newspapers, at times I think they will make errors of judgement in stories that are basically just private issues.

The only responsibility that newspapers have is to report the news, for crying out loud!

They have no, repeat, no responsibility to shut up to spare the blushes of some idiot who couldn’t keep it in his pants, some dumb tart who couldn’t keep her legs together, or some idiotic old duffer who couldn’t keep his mouth shut…

Maybe it's a time when people think 'is this right that private conversations can be turned into big stories?'

And maybe not…

Perhaps people will now think a little bit deeper about the ramifications of stories that can come from newspapers. I think it frustrates the people of this country that some of these stories can come out at a time of national importance, which is especially the case with the 2018 bid for economic reasons.

I don’t think ‘me and all my footie and media mates and luvvie chums’ = ‘the people of this country’, Gary…

It's a difficult time for the country and I think it would be a huge boost to host the World Cup. I think we would do a brilliant job and it would have a massive impact.

I think it’d be another pile of money down the drain, on top of the money we are already shelling out for the Stratford Shindig. And don't get me started on the abomination that is the mascots for that shindig...

There's a wide sense of outrage over this story…

Really..?

I took a straw poll in the office. No-one cared, several hadn’t even heard of it.

…that's a general feeling among the British public.

It appears it isn’t. Sorry, Gary!