Jiglu: Farmtalking: Discussion: Fwd: Fw: In today's Telegraph

Originally from: Molly Maxwell

Subject: Fw: In today's Telegraph
Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2001 14:21:59 +0100

| From comment pages of today's Telegraph:-
|
| Notebook
| By Vicki Woods
|
| At last, Labour has managed to spin foot and mouth
|
| THERE'S nothing like the word "millions" in a headline, is there? The news
| that ruddy-faced Jim Goldie, a Dumfries and Galloway stock farmer, is being
| paid (an unconfirmed) £4.2 million in slaughter compensation has finally got
| suburban Britain exercised all over again about the foot and mouth debacle.
| There hasn't been this much newspaper excitement since the pyres of dead
| cows, and I can only gasp in admiration at the way in which the Government
| has finally got its act together. Foot and mouth was a Labour headache from
| the get-go, impossible to spin.
|
| The public liked animals, disliked Maff, felt uneasy about the rather sweaty
| Nick Brown and sympathised with weeping stockmen. Now it's easy-peasy to
| spin. The public's bored with animals, doesn't know what "Defra" translates
| into, never sees Margaret Beckett and is happy to be scandalised about
| greedy farmers who "stand to pocket millions" of taxpayers' money for a load
| of animals they raised only for slaughter anyway (so why the crocodile
| tears?).
|
| Voila – MPs pop up all over the airwaves to express "serious concern" about
| the public purse, while the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts
| Committee sharpen their accounting pencils and Mrs Beckett goes on a
| five-week caravan holiday. Brilliant, eh? Even more brilliant is the news
| that Tony Blair has appointed Lord Haskins, the chairman of Northern Foods,
| as "rural recovery co-ordinator", with a brief to shake out the farming
| industry.
|
| He sounds very modern, Lord Haskins. He thinks farmers have "been
| mollycoddled too long". He wants farms to "get bigger". A fortnight ago, he
| said: "A lot of agricultural reformers, like the Prince of Wales, want
| farmers to stand around being subsidised and making thatched roofs. Well,
| that's for the birds."
|
| POOR Mr Goldie (who lives in the Borders, a long way from thatched-roof
| country) doesn't look to me like a man who wants to stand around being
| subsidised. He'd far, far rather have his animals than a cheque: you can see
| from the before-and-after photographs in the papers. "Before" shows him
| beaming with pride, leading in one of his prize-winning, curly-coated
| Limousin bulls; "After" shows him hag-ridden and wretched in front of one of
| his empty fields. A picture that would melt even an National Audit Office
| accountant's heart, surely? Or a chairman of Northern Foods? Alas, I fear
| not.
|
| THE millions that worry me aren't the millions of pounds being trousered by
| a few score of the country's most successful stock breeders. They're the
| millions of cows, sheep, pigs, goats, deer and "others" (what are these
| others? Camels? Giraffes? I've seen no news pictures of dead giraffes, even
| in the cutesy-animal friendly tabloids) that have been uselessly slaughtered
| by Maff, aka Defra, when they should have been vaccinated instead, like
| Dutch cows. (Holland is now clear of foot and mouth, though they got it
| later.)
|
| The official Defra website is a sight to see, yards and yards of clipped,
| official slaughter statistics listed region by region: the hot-spot areas
| going on endlessly and odd little pockets popping up, like "Mr C Crow of
| Canewdon, Essex (2 goats)". Yesterday the site showed that 3,686,000 animals
| have been slaughtered to date; 22,000 were "awaiting slaughter" and 18,000
| carcases were "awaiting disposal". These are terrifying numbers.
|
| (Ends)
|
| Also in the Telegraph, from "Peterborough":
|
|
| Farmers told to stay at home as ramblers roam
| IF you believe the spin, most farmers spent the weekend celebrating
| multi-million pound foot and mouth windfalls. The truth, I fear, is rather
| less appealing.
| All 90,000 farmers in England have just been sent a video outlining what
| they should do to help end the crisis. Titled "Biosecurity: stopping the
| spread of disease", its diktats are Draconian: "People can carry infection
| on clothes, hands or footwear. Change clothes and wash hands between
| handling different livestock.
|
| "Avoid visiting other farms and leave your dog behind: contact does not have
| to be direct for disease to be carried further afield. Discourage
| unnecessary visits."
|
| Now that the Government has re-opened almost every footpath to ramblers, are
| these restrictions practical?
|
| "Absolutely not," says David Handley, of Farmers for Action. "This video is
| an insult to our intelligence and it smacks of double standards. Other
| people can go wherever they like, but Tony Blair's telling us not to leave
| our own farms. Does he think we don't have lives outside?
|
| "The money they wasted on this video would have been better spent on
| vaccinating the entire national herd at the start."
|
| (Ends)

| From comment pages of today's Telegraph:-
|
| Notebook
| By Vicki Woods
|
| At last, Labour has managed to spin foot and mouth
|
| THERE'S nothing like the word "millions" in a headline, is there? The news
| that ruddy-faced Jim Goldie, a Dumfries and Galloway stock farmer, is being
| paid (an unconfirmed) £4.2 million in slaughter compensation has finally got
| suburban Britain exercised all over again about the foot and mouth debacle.
| There hasn't been this much newspaper excitement since the pyres of dead
| cows, and I can only gasp in admiration at the way in which the Government
| has finally got its act together. Foot and mouth was a Labour headache from
| the get-go, impossible to spin.
|
| The public liked animals, disliked Maff, felt uneasy about the rather sweaty
| Nick Brown and sympathised with weeping stockmen. Now it's easy-peasy to
| spin. The public's bored with animals, doesn't know what "Defra" translates
| into, never sees Margaret Beckett and is happy to be scandalised about
| greedy farmers who "stand to pocket millions" of taxpayers' money for a load
| of animals they raised only for slaughter anyway (so why the crocodile
| tears?).
|
| Voila – MPs pop up all over the airwaves to express "serious concern" about
| the public purse, while the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts
| Committee sharpen their accounting pencils and Mrs Beckett goes on a
| five-week caravan holiday. Brilliant, eh? Even more brilliant is the news
| that Tony Blair has appointed Lord Haskins, the chairman of Northern Foods,
| as "rural recovery co-ordinator", with a brief to shake out the farming
| industry.
|
| He sounds very modern, Lord Haskins. He thinks farmers have "been
| mollycoddled too long". He wants farms to "get bigger". A fortnight ago, he
| said: "A lot of agricultural reformers, like the Prince of Wales, want
| farmers to stand around being subsidised and making thatched roofs. Well,
| that's for the birds."
|
| POOR Mr Goldie (who lives in the Borders, a long way from thatched-roof
| country) doesn't look to me like a man who wants to stand around being
| subsidised. He'd far, far rather have his animals than a cheque: you can see
| from the before-and-after photographs in the papers. "Before" shows him
| beaming with pride, leading in one of his prize-winning, curly-coated
| Limousin bulls; "After" shows him hag-ridden and wretched in front of one of
| his empty fields. A picture that would melt even an National Audit Office
| accountant's heart, surely? Or a chairman of Northern Foods? Alas, I fear
| not.
|
| THE millions that worry me aren't the millions of pounds being trousered by
| a few score of the country's most successful stock breeders. They're the
| millions of cows, sheep, pigs, goats, deer and "others" (what are these
| others? Camels? Giraffes? I've seen no news pictures of dead giraffes, even
| in the cutesy-animal friendly tabloids) that have been uselessly slaughtered
| by Maff, aka Defra, when they should have been vaccinated instead, like
| Dutch cows. (Holland is now clear of foot and mouth, though they got it
| later.)
|
| The official Defra website is a sight to see, yards and yards of clipped,
| official slaughter statistics listed region by region: the hot-spot areas
| going on endlessly and odd little pockets popping up, like "Mr C Crow of
| Canewdon, Essex (2 goats)". Yesterday the site showed that 3,686,000 animals
| have been slaughtered to date; 22,000 were "awaiting slaughter" and 18,000
| carcases were "awaiting disposal". These are terrifying numbers.
|
| (Ends)
|
| Also in the Telegraph, from "Peterborough":
|
|
| Farmers told to stay at home as ramblers roam
| IF you believe the spin, most farmers spent the weekend celebrating
| multi-million pound foot and mouth windfalls. The truth, I fear, is rather
| less appealing.
| All 90,000 farmers in England have just been sent a video outlining what
| they should do to help end the crisis. Titled "Biosecurity: stopping the
| spread of disease", its diktats are Draconian: "People can carry infection
| on clothes, hands or footwear. Change clothes and wash hands between
| handling different livestock.
|
| "Avoid visiting other farms and leave your dog behind: contact does not have
| to be direct for disease to be carried further afield. Discourage
| unnecessary visits."
|
| Now that the Government has re-opened almost every footpath to ramblers, are
| these restrictions practical?
|
| "Absolutely not," says David Handley, of Farmers for Action. "This video is
| an insult to our intelligence and it smacks of double standards. Other
| people can go wherever they like, but Tony Blair's telling us not to leave
| our own farms. Does he think we don't have lives outside?
|
| "The money they wasted on this video would have been better spent on
| vaccinating the entire national herd at the start."
|
| (Ends)