HELLBENT ON EXTERMINATION

Hard to believe that I found this in the Guardian, of all places.

… a pair of modern-day pied pipers hellbent on extermination

In Rochester, Northumberland, the last village before Scotland, Rupert Mitford, the 6th Baron Redesdale, and Paul Parker, … are examining a map. We are in Redesdale's kitchen, in a cottage that borders the Otterburn army base. Chinook helicopters fly low up the valley, the last stop before Helmand and Basra. Redesdale and Parker, however, are organising battle lines of their own.

Redesdale, in a lived-in tweed jacket, eventually locates his home on the well-used Ordnance Survey. 'This house was ground zero,' he says. 'In the first six months we had cleared everything to here,' he gestures towards a wooded area to the south. 'May to June we got down to this line here. July we did Newcastle.'

Parker, shaven headed, chips in, in his broad Geordie, tracing his finger along the Tyne. 'We were doing the damage in this area. They can swim, but they'd rather use the bridges. We hammered them here and here and here. Now we are really hunting them down in ones and twos.'

Redesdale continues, with boyish excitement. 'We developed what we called our killing strategy. … we took 2,000 out. If you clear [an area] … you suck all the surrounding population to it. Then you hit them again. Suck 'em in, hit them.'

… 'We took 3,500 out of there. In the winter there's no cover and you can pick them off … They all get together in the cold. You can get eight or nine with a couple of shots. All huddled together. We just annihilated them.'

… In the two years of their existence, Redesdale and Parker have been remarkably successful. … While other[s] … go in for education or re-habitation, they favour genocide. With a recruited army of 900 volunteers … they have slaughtered 19,500 … and claim to have cleared England's northernmost county … The grannies, Redesdale suggests, tend to be the most bloodthirsty … 'It's like: "Can you beat it to death with a hammer and let me watch?" We had one old dear who went inside and came back out with a sort of elephant gun: "Do you want to shoot it with this?"'

Parker and Redesdale are now making plans for Yorkshire, if they can find funding. Parker really dreams, however, of getting down to London, … Hit them in their own backyard.' This, Redesdale adds, despite the fact that his partner gets a nosebleed if he leaves Northumberland, and on the one occasion he tried London had a panic attack on the tube. Even so, the baron does not rule out the capital. …

… celebrity-seeking hoodie behaviour was the least of it. Battalions … were fanning out across Europe. Lord Chorley, … spoke darkly of how, contrary to what the New Labour government had recently claimed, [they] were right now massing on the continent. 'There are three colonies, if that is the right word, in Italy. At least one of them is in the process of crossing the Alps. If they get to Germany there will be a complete invasion taking place.'

… Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Rupert Redesdale is far from a bloodthirsty fellow - he had never killed anything in anger since he had been on Operation Raleigh in Africa in his gap year and it had been his turn to throttle a chicken - but something … stirred old emotions in his blood. He was a Mitford after all.

… to pursue what seemed to be the only hope of salvation for the beleaguered native …

…There was much discussion about whether it was possible to use the 'k' word - 'cull was OK, kill apparently was not,' Redesdale recalls. There was fear of reprisals. At the first … meeting … they spent an hour discussing what they would do when the first death threat came in.

… Just when he was starting to despair, however, Redesdale met Paul Parker. [who] was of the opinion that 'you can be through the area and have cleared it … by the time you have bought the biscuits for a coffee morning'.

… At any moment his phone could ring and we could be off to Hexham or Corbridge. From six in the morning people start calling and they don't stop until late at night. 'At 11 o'clock they've just come in from work, … , they want me to shoot it. I can have 10 to do before I wake up in the morning.'

Wonderful stuff. Why not go and read it all.

http://tinyurl.com/5lrmoz

Morg

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