BEA Bradley (October 25) rightly pours scorn on David Cameron’s sly attempt to undermine the Hunting Act by the back door, knowing full well that any overt attempt to do so by the proper democratic means would fail abysmally.

Since the successful RSPCA prosecution of Cameron’s favourite hunt, the Heythrop, our Countryside Alliance government have gone into hysterical overdrive in making frenzied attempts to re-establish their divine right to torment our wildlife, while their allies in the media have initiated an on-going hate campaign against the RSPCA.

Cameron’s arch thug, Owen Paterson, is raising two fingers to those who care about our wildlife, by extending the badger cull in the face of overwhelming opposition from the scientific community, as well as animal welfarists and conservationists. Recently, Sir David Attenborough has added his name to the long list of eminent scientists who are denouncing the cull.

I understand that Mr Paterson is now keen to gas the badgers in their setts, although the dairy farmers have been doing this illegally for some time, rendering any assessment of the size of the badger population impossible. Moreover, since they cannot even be bothered to test the corpses to see whether they have contracted the disease, the entire exercise is patently a scientific fraud.

It’s no use appealing to these blood sports fanatics on the basis of gross cruelty, since they won’t care about the suffering of these miserable creatures – on the contrary, they will revel in it.

MARK PRITCHARD, Linkside Avenue, Oxford