Author wrote:
Dear Burkie,
I received about £50,000 in total for slaughtered stock, including a sum for
small amounts of destroyed feed, straw, old wooden sheds, firewood,
fertiliser, damaged or destroyed equipment and to make good damage myself. I do not have
the exact figure to hand nor do I wish to quote it as some parts are ongoing;
the sum would have been considerably larger had I not successfully kept some
outlying stock alive, as, being the youngest and of breeding age, they were
classed as the most valuable. I would also have increased the sum had I worked
on the clean -up either at home, elsewhere, or both.
I do not know how much the Valuer received, or the slaughter-crew or
marksman, nor how to attribute costs for the Ministry vets ot Army assistants.
Most of the people owed money are the individuals or firms who jumped in to
capitalise on the clean-up. Without wishing to cast aspersions, some of these
were not frightfully nice people, and quite how they could have become owed so
much in such a short time unless they were milking the tax-payer for all they
could, beats me- sob stories such as ' I am still owed £12,000,000 for my last
months work' do not receive universal sympathy.
I have a record of payments. None is outstanding, the cheque came from the
Bank of England as I recall, certainly nothing EU or strange in any way.
I do not know what the costs of the clean-up were, we had an economy-minded
supervisor as she was an AI inseminator working for her normal pay (about
£6/hour at a guess)and it pissed her off to see the tax-payers money wasted, so
not a lot of luxuries here. I suspect some of the labour -force dragged the job
out because they liked working here (I took that as a compliment).
The EU is going to pay a sum, I believe about about 40% but it could be
higher, towards UK costs. The remainder is for ther UK to find.
Am I part of DEFRA? Am I heck! No, the work I am doing with DEFRA is
completely voluntary and unpaid; the Organisation (Charity) which I represent pays my
travel costs to London and that is it, the rest comes out of my own
increasingly threadbare pocket . Furthermore, the new head of this 'Communications
Group' sees our role as being completed by Christmas. Hence the pressure now – if
I am going to report to the Organic sector and the national farming Press that
we have a credible and viable vaccination policy in place, I want to be sure
that this is correct because I neither want to report an untruth nor lend
weight to an ill-thought out and therefore potentially dangerous policy. I am
presently compiling the list of required or essential criteria – will mail it when
complete for comment.
Please tell me Burkie, or anyone else who knows – I only got a computer in
the autumn of 2001; how many websites/ smart group on FMD are there, and am I
missing them? I only read warmwell, and the Farmtalking group; please let me
know if other groups are still active, because I would like to read their output
and input myself. Goodness knows, there are few enough of us left still at
this, it needs all of our input to get anywhere.
I suspect what made Pirbright the laughing stock is political interference; I
agree that they were slow off the mark at the abbattoir. I think most of the
blame for the rest actually falls to the Chief Veterinary Officer and the
State Veterinary Service, (themselves struggling under continual cuts in funding,
permanently understaffed , undervalued and underappreciated), rather than
Pirbright – you know, the usual agricultural situation now arising as consumers
take their varied and luxurious food supply pretty much for granted. As Paul
Kitching said, if they (the Government) had retained confidence in their vets,
allowed the Movement restrictions to take effect and disease show where
present, conventional techniques would have achieved the same end with a lot less
bloodshed. The massively ott slaughter arose from the Contiguous and 3k culls,
inspired by Tony's fear that agriculture was going to cost him the Election –
his Holy Grail, the Second Term, the one where it would all come right after
the Financial strictures of the first term – and listened to the advice of
Anderson and his Modelling crew. Porton Down are nothing to do with it.
Regards, Chris.