Cardboard Marge
Cardboard Marge
THE plight of arable farmers has been covered in the national press – thanks to "Cardboard Marge", a cardboard effigy of DEFRA secretary Margaret Beckett at a Crops Conference near Cambridge.
The real Mrs Beckett declined an invite to address the conference and refused to send anyone from DEFRA to take her place. It was the first time in the conferences 15-year history that no government representative had addressed delegates, seen as a snub to the arable sector.
Cardboard Marge featured in a half-page story in The Mirror, in the Peterborough column of the Daily Telegraph and in The Cambridge Evening News. Crops editor and conference organiser Debbie Beaton said: "Cardboard Marge has done far more to tell the public about the plight of arable farmers than the real one ever has or probably ever will."