I'M too arrogant (probably) to share my blog with others very often but this letter appeared in our regional paper, the once great EDP. And it so accurately encapsulated many of my views I felt compelled to share it. If the EDP letter page was easy to link to, or even available on line, I would have gone for a simple link. Instead I have OCR'd it and here it is - all power to Mr Kiuby's letter writing arm! LATE addition is a reply from the NFU published in the EDP and thus copied by me in the spirit of fairness. You decide then? It son the end of this.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2013 Eastern Daily Press
From,: ALAN KIRBY, Haven Court, Hayle.
We hear much condemnation of "scroungers" these days, which is usually aimed at unemployment benefit claimants. I won't defend those who choose this as a "lifestyle" - but they are a very small proportion of the workless, and the amount of public money they manage to rip-off is tiny compared with the tax avoidance schemes of rich individuals and corporations.
But one group, mostly already wealthy, who shovel up vast amounts of public subsidy are generally ignored and need to be exposed - our large landowners and farmers.
Represented by powerful lobby groups like the NFU and the Country Land and Business Association, both with highly privileged access to this government, they not only vigorously defend the status quo on subsidies and
the like, but also continuously demand more exemptions and "money for nothing".
The NFU has in recent months:
1) Successfully lobbied for the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board, robbing labourers of most of what little protection on wages
and conditions they had.
2) Fought off an attempt by the EU to impose a cap on the subsidy any one farmer can receive. Direct payments alone are currently
nearly £200 per hectare.
3) Resisted an attempt by the EU to devote a mere 2pc of payments to new entrant young farmers.
4) Gained an exemption on road safety rules for tractors and trailers.
Ensuring that the new Common Agricultural Policy is even less green than the old, they have:
1) Obtained automatic entitlement to payments for protecting the environment, whether they're doing it or not.
2) Reduced the proposed "ecological focus" areas from I0pc to 5pc, and so weakened the rules governing them that they can effectively be intensively farmed.
3) Reduced the funding for environmental schemes.
4) Ensured that they do not need to comply with the Birds, Water or Pesticides Directive to continue receiving public hand-outs.
5) Arranged for farmers on highly marginal land, such as mountains, to get payments for grazing these areas, despite it often being ecologically damaging.
Indeed, blood-sports are also subsidised. Grouse-moor estates are entitled to payments for "preserving" their bio-diversity poor heather moorlands - even though they would do this anyway. Yet still they whinge and try to grasp ever larger quantities of taxpayers' money and ever greater exemptions, while the poor and needy have their benefits cut and have to resort to food bnks and the real wages of most workers fall ever further.
Whenever the praclices, of livestock farmers cause some disaster - such as BSE or Foot-and Month, they seek to blame someone else and demand vast compensation, in those cases running to billions, from public funds. The current scapegoat for their own failings is, of course, the poor, blood-stained badger.
I fervently hope the next government will seriously target the real scroungers who so damage our public finances but this will never be done by the Conservatives, because the serious scroungers are their own donors, and most influential members.
NEVER SAID IT BETTER MYSELF!
NEW! - REPLY FROM NFU: Environmental performance has improved
ALEX DINSDALE, Norfolk County Adviser, National Farmers Union,
Re "Time to tackle this drain on resources" (Letter, October 10), space doesn't permit a full analysis of all of the inaccuracies described in this letter, but one or two corrections do deserve to be made. Mr Kirby says the NFU has "reduced the funding for environmental schemes", failing to recognise that we don't have such powers. In fact, both the environment and farmers have benefited from environmental schemes, with 78pc of Norfolk farmland managed under such a scheme.
The environmental performance of farming has improved dramatically in recent decades, and while not without their flaws, the popularity of environmental stewardship schemes is testament to this.
The assertion that the NFU has "ensured that [farmers] do not need to comply with the Birds, Water or Pesticides Directive (sic) to continue receiving public hand-outs" is simply wrong. Farmers are bound by these laws as everyone else is, and they are rigorously enforced.
National Farmers' Union (NFU) members do not want to have to rely on Common Agricultural Policy payments; as with any business the objective is to operate competitively without this support and these views have been expressed many times by NFU President Peter Kendall.
The reality is, however, that farmers operate in a global market; ending subsidies for English farmers would severely handicap our sector by increasing farmgate prices and thus exposing us to competition from much cheaper imports from countries where state agricultural support continues to be provided, including the rest of the EU and the US. This would have disastrous consequences for farm businesses, the rural economy, landscapes and countryside as well as our food security.
The real crux of Mr Kirby's letter, however, is his opposition to the policy of culling badgers in order to reduce the devastation caused by bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in cattle herds. Norfolk's growing badger population seems to be uninfected by bTB and so the focus here is on avoiding cattle-to-cattle spread of the disease.
Where bTB is prevalent in wildlife populations its spread to cattle causes misery to farmers and the loss of their livelihoods through the destruction of their herds. Vaccination will be an important tool to help control bTB in the future but a realistic and effective programme is not yet a viable option. In the meantime, killing thousands of infected cattle while ignoring the disease reservoir in wildlife will not control the disease, its costs or the misery it causes”.
MY RESPONSE TO THE LAST PARA: Illogical to suggest a growing badger population and NO TB in cattle IF he (the NFU) believes that badgers cause TB in cattle. Maybe we just haven't had any TB infected cattle in contact with unaffected badgers yet? Assuming that is in fact the actual vector of transmission. RW
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2013 Eastern Daily Press
From,: ALAN KIRBY, Haven Court, Hayle.
We hear much condemnation of "scroungers" these days, which is usually aimed at unemployment benefit claimants. I won't defend those who choose this as a "lifestyle" - but they are a very small proportion of the workless, and the amount of public money they manage to rip-off is tiny compared with the tax avoidance schemes of rich individuals and corporations.
But one group, mostly already wealthy, who shovel up vast amounts of public subsidy are generally ignored and need to be exposed - our large landowners and farmers.
Represented by powerful lobby groups like the NFU and the Country Land and Business Association, both with highly privileged access to this government, they not only vigorously defend the status quo on subsidies and
the like, but also continuously demand more exemptions and "money for nothing".
The NFU has in recent months:
1) Successfully lobbied for the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board, robbing labourers of most of what little protection on wages
and conditions they had.
2) Fought off an attempt by the EU to impose a cap on the subsidy any one farmer can receive. Direct payments alone are currently
nearly £200 per hectare.
3) Resisted an attempt by the EU to devote a mere 2pc of payments to new entrant young farmers.
4) Gained an exemption on road safety rules for tractors and trailers.
Ensuring that the new Common Agricultural Policy is even less green than the old, they have:
1) Obtained automatic entitlement to payments for protecting the environment, whether they're doing it or not.
2) Reduced the proposed "ecological focus" areas from I0pc to 5pc, and so weakened the rules governing them that they can effectively be intensively farmed.
3) Reduced the funding for environmental schemes.
4) Ensured that they do not need to comply with the Birds, Water or Pesticides Directive to continue receiving public hand-outs.
5) Arranged for farmers on highly marginal land, such as mountains, to get payments for grazing these areas, despite it often being ecologically damaging.
Indeed, blood-sports are also subsidised. Grouse-moor estates are entitled to payments for "preserving" their bio-diversity poor heather moorlands - even though they would do this anyway. Yet still they whinge and try to grasp ever larger quantities of taxpayers' money and ever greater exemptions, while the poor and needy have their benefits cut and have to resort to food bnks and the real wages of most workers fall ever further.
Whenever the praclices, of livestock farmers cause some disaster - such as BSE or Foot-and Month, they seek to blame someone else and demand vast compensation, in those cases running to billions, from public funds. The current scapegoat for their own failings is, of course, the poor, blood-stained badger.
I fervently hope the next government will seriously target the real scroungers who so damage our public finances but this will never be done by the Conservatives, because the serious scroungers are their own donors, and most influential members.
NEVER SAID IT BETTER MYSELF!
NEW! - REPLY FROM NFU: Environmental performance has improved
ALEX DINSDALE, Norfolk County Adviser, National Farmers Union,
Re "Time to tackle this drain on resources" (Letter, October 10), space doesn't permit a full analysis of all of the inaccuracies described in this letter, but one or two corrections do deserve to be made. Mr Kirby says the NFU has "reduced the funding for environmental schemes", failing to recognise that we don't have such powers. In fact, both the environment and farmers have benefited from environmental schemes, with 78pc of Norfolk farmland managed under such a scheme.
The environmental performance of farming has improved dramatically in recent decades, and while not without their flaws, the popularity of environmental stewardship schemes is testament to this.
The assertion that the NFU has "ensured that [farmers] do not need to comply with the Birds, Water or Pesticides Directive (sic) to continue receiving public hand-outs" is simply wrong. Farmers are bound by these laws as everyone else is, and they are rigorously enforced.
National Farmers' Union (NFU) members do not want to have to rely on Common Agricultural Policy payments; as with any business the objective is to operate competitively without this support and these views have been expressed many times by NFU President Peter Kendall.
The reality is, however, that farmers operate in a global market; ending subsidies for English farmers would severely handicap our sector by increasing farmgate prices and thus exposing us to competition from much cheaper imports from countries where state agricultural support continues to be provided, including the rest of the EU and the US. This would have disastrous consequences for farm businesses, the rural economy, landscapes and countryside as well as our food security.
The real crux of Mr Kirby's letter, however, is his opposition to the policy of culling badgers in order to reduce the devastation caused by bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in cattle herds. Norfolk's growing badger population seems to be uninfected by bTB and so the focus here is on avoiding cattle-to-cattle spread of the disease.
Where bTB is prevalent in wildlife populations its spread to cattle causes misery to farmers and the loss of their livelihoods through the destruction of their herds. Vaccination will be an important tool to help control bTB in the future but a realistic and effective programme is not yet a viable option. In the meantime, killing thousands of infected cattle while ignoring the disease reservoir in wildlife will not control the disease, its costs or the misery it causes”.
MY RESPONSE TO THE LAST PARA: Illogical to suggest a growing badger population and NO TB in cattle IF he (the NFU) believes that badgers cause TB in cattle. Maybe we just haven't had any TB infected cattle in contact with unaffected badgers yet? Assuming that is in fact the actual vector of transmission. RW
