Since I moved to the country, I’m on the side of the squirrel-killers

What is the correct expression to wear, I wonder, when you’ve just caught a squirrel in your squirrel trap? Guilt? Pain? Sorrow? Fear at the possibility of a 3 a.m. knock at the door from the boot boys of the RSPCA?

The expression you definitely shouldn’t wear, apparently, is one suggestive that you might have taken any pleasure in poor, sweet, bushy-tailed Mr Nutkin’s death. This was the mistake made by Defra secretary of state Owen ‘Butcher’ Paterson, who was revealed over the weekend to have upset visiting Tory colleagues by showing pictures of himself cheerfully posing with the decapitated victims of his Kania 2000 squirrel traps.

‘I’m not sure what was more shocking — the dead squirrels or the smile on Owen’s face,’ a ‘Conservative who has seen the picture’ was quoted as saying.

A Conservative? Really? Things are even worse than I thought. Tories are traditionally supposed to be the party of the shires, of bloody roast beef, of nature red in tooth and claw.