Ridiculous, isn't it.

There's a disease of cattle, so let's kill off all the badgers because they help to spread it. Vaccinate the cattle? What? Good grief, whatever can you be thinking? We can't possibly vaccinate the cattle! What do you mean, "badgers are protected"? Protected from... ah, protected from the populace! No no, that's a different matter altogether. It's OK if we 'cull' them, because that's not the same as 'killing', is it. It's a 'cull'. It's for their own good. Eh? Will it stop the cattle disease? I don't know. It might... Look, the farmers are up in arms because of this cattle disease, and if they're up in arms it means we'll lose votes. Yes, votes. No, we can't afford to lose votes. See, you're coming round to my view now, aren't you. We have to get rid of the badgers. It's for their own good, you know...

Etc.

But at least, as you say, they've 'postponed' the kill, sorry, cull.

I know this is serious and all but all I can picture is Monty Pythnesque like MPs crawling through farms and people's gardens, trying to count the badgers. '1, 2, 3, no wait, I counted that one. Oh no! They went under the shed'!

I'm easily amused.

I just don't get it. If vaccination is good enough for Wales, and for many other countries too, what on earth is stopping the rest of the UK from adopting the same policy?

I agree that more effective action needs to be taken against the spread of bovine TB, but as badger culling is at best of limited effectiveness, and is at worst counter-productive, it would make more sense to vaccinate cows, and to keep badgers (as far as practicable) out of cow byres and food stores. If vaccination interferes with the TB skin test for cows (as stated in the BBC Q+A), then it's about time they used another test which isn't affected, even if it's less convenient.