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Recently I was walking my dog near my home when I came across a sad sight: a large, pretty, but very dead badger in the gutter on Holtspur Top Lane. 

I was wondering what to do when a car drew up and the driver said we musn’t leave it in the roadway or it would soon be mangled by traffic, so it was lifted onto the kerb.

I then telephoned the Council and asked if they’d remove it; after some discussion

I was told it would be gone in “three to four hours”. The next day it was still there.

I rang the Council again and was told that though they sympathised and the dead animal was no more than a few inches from the kerb, they couldn’t touch the badger as it was “on private land”. 

I was incredulous! Couldn’t they just reach out those few inches with a shovel and pick up the badger? “No, that would trespassing. We have to negotiate with the landowner first.”  

And who IS the landowner? “We have no idea.”
That was nearly three weeks ago and the badger is still there, fully visible and decomposing.

The old phrase “bureaucracy gone mad” comes to mind.

C Linacre, Beaconsfield