Several years ago my bank adopted the habit of regularly promoting senior clerks to junior management positions. Staff have to be trained, of course, but what happened in our region was that each newly promoted person was given farming to learn on. Over the course of five years I had five different bank managers and it was extremely tiresome.
One day I met the local director of the bank and complained to him that I felt we local farmers were training his managers; that it took a great deal of time to familiarise each new candidate with farming in general and the complications of our individual businesses in particular; that I could not tolerate having to start from scratch and explain every historic detail whenever I wished to modify my banking arrangements; furthermore that if the practice continued I would change banks. I added that I was not alone in feeling that way.
The director listened and clearly took the message to heart because he contacted me later to say that all things being equal there would be no change of manager for at least five years. And I am pleased to say the bank stuck by that assurance.
I feel the same way about ministers of agricutlure and I suspect Peter Kendall feels it even more strongly. Since 2005 there have been five of them - Lord Whitty, Lord Bach, Lord Rooker, Jane Kennedy, and now Jim Fitzpatrick. OK, I respect Jane Kennedy's reasons for resigning from the post. I couldn't work for Gordon Brown either. But there is an inescapable feeling that the Prime Minister couldn't care less about farming and is simply filling the post with placemen who have been loyal to him without any consideration for their likely knowledge of or commitment to the job. In reality, of course, he is only really concerned at present with saving his political skin.
My brief contacts with Jane Kennedy, despite her being an urban MP from Liverpool, led me to believe she was learning fast and had become a worthy advocate for farming in the nine months she held the job. Jim Fitzpatrick may, for all I know, be a very nice chap who will be just as consciencious. But he represents Poplar and Canning Town in London, which doesn't sound like a very good start. And given there will be a General Election within twelve months, perhaps sooner, his tenure too is likely to be a short one.
What a pity we can't influence politicians like I and others did the bank.