Originally from: mark purdey
                        
Yes, I totally agree with you Colleen. Farmers are isolated geographically and often too knackered to go and visit friends at the end of the day to have a good exchange, so problems which you feel powerless to resolve can literally build up to explosive level if you do not have any outlet. So airing these issues on Jane's farmtalking chat site can be very therapeutic for all of us , I feel.

Since I do not have any credibility to maintain , I have nothing to loose in telling you that, in order to get it all out of my system, I literally have to go outside into the mud and rain on my own and start screaming out my anger about the current state of affairs to the hills. Its a pathetic state of affairs really, but one has to laugh at it , I suppose.

Yesterday, a friend from wales told me of one of his farmer colleagues who had started smashing his head against the concrete wall of his milking parlour ( mid-milking ) until he fell unconscious. he had apparently just flipped under the pressure, which I can totally understand. Maybe if he had had some outlet for his grievances ( farmtalking ? ) he would never have inflicted this on himself.

I think people have got to realise that the farming community is not a bunch of paranoiac conspiracy theorists, but we really are being subjected to a series of government mandated schemes that are designed to corner us all into a no win cul-de-sac. There really would be an outcry if this pressure was being applied in such a blatant way that the public could see that we were clearly being bullied out of business, but by doing it in an insidious subtle manner – eg; under the guise of safeguarding animal health – the government are going to get away with achieving what Nick Brown had laid out ; livestock depopulation and the restructuring of Agriculture.

Its like if Blair and Bush had blatantly gone into Iraq to get the oil, then they could have never succeeded in palming off the critiques who were claiming it was "all for the oil" as conspiracy theorists. But becuase they feed us the line that they attacked Iraq on humanity grounds to free the Iraqi people of evil Saddam ( which we are all going to agree with ) then they can get away with palming off those who claim "it was for the oil" as the lunatic fringe conspiracy theory brigade.

Best,

mark