Open letter to Tony Blair

I am a 45-year-old farm secretary, with 25 years experience, living and working on the borders of England and Wales. My job is not shorthand and typing, it is all accounts work.

Thus, with over 40 clients in both lowland and hill areas, I have a very good idea of just how the farming fraternity is managing – or should I say not managing.

Many of my dairy clients have sold all their cows in the last 18 months; the cows are not worth any money, and thus along with thousands of others they are slaughtered.

So now, with very few cows left in the country, we are faced with a shortage of milk and probably before long there will also be a shortage of beef cattle due to the slaughtering of all male calves, for which there is no market.

I am an animal lover and it grieves me so to see the absolute carnage of all these animals, just to abide by rules inflicted upon us by our own government, with Europe still feeding meat and bone meal and with no respect for the over-30-month cattle being kept out of the food chain – in fact we even import it, just to help our European buddies.

Have any of our farmers set fire to a lorry-load of sheep?
My question is really, when your government has knocked the last nail in the coffin of British farmers, who do you think will become the new “Guardians of the Countryside”?

Who will keep down all the bracken and heather and brambles and out-of-control hedgerows?

Will the town people, who insist on rambling everywhere as their God-given right, carry strimmers, flymos and secateurs with them?

By eradicating the farming populace there will be a breakdown of rural communities along with all the environmental problems which will ensue – the rampant over-breeding of vermin (badgers are not nearly extinct, they are everywhere in the rural areas, sometimes to be found dead on the side of the road, and, have you ever seen what a fox will do to a chicken coup just for fun? Makes Hitler look like a pussycat).

Spend some time in the countryside and see what rural life is like as you and your higher echelons seem to be totally out of touch (we do not
all have contorted faces, as seems to be the opinion of one of your cabinet members).

The old saying is true; If the Farmers arent doing well then nobody does.

Agriculture touches on many other industries and as a result, many are also facing bankruptcy.

Please just stop this persecution of British Agriculture, a small proportion of the electorate, but a large part of the country.

Hilary Goodacre

john@dawe69.fsnet.co.uk