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NEWCASTLE JOURNAL 28.7.05

To Peterborough: why? Is the question that hangs in the air – why should anyone want to go to such a ghastly place? Just outside Peterborough lies the East of England Showground and the Showground has been the home of Royal Foxhound Show for over 100 years. This is the Blue Riband of Hound Shows and draws people and hounds from all over the country. Hunting is going through an ‘interesting time’ at the moment, so it was decided to mount a ‘Festival of Hunting’ this year. It was grand do. There were not only Foxhounds, but Hounds from all the hunting disciplines, Fell Hounds, Beagles, Harriers, Bloodhounds, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all. Peterborough is a grand occasion and a great gathering of country people – drams are taken; gossip exchanged and passed on suitably gilded. It is always nice to meet old friends and tell them how fat they have got and have them tell me, through gritted teeth, how thin I have got. Then there is lunch of course. At one time I used to use the ‘catering facilities’. But there was a notorious occasion when freshly prepared Salmonella was served and most the Great and the Good spent an interesting afternoon being stomach pumped at Peterborough General. After that debacle, some friends got together and arranged a splendid al fresco lunch in the car park – everybody brings something in the way of liquids or solids and it is great crack. The standard of hounds being shown was very high and it is good to report that the Morpeth won the Stallion Hound (ask your father) class, which is very high class indeed. The winning hound was called ‘Gateshead’, which made me furrow my brow a bit. I mean why saddle a very nice hound with such a name? The nice lady sitting next to me asked me if I knew Gateshead. I gave her my opinion of Gateshead and she said that, in that case, it seemed a funny name to give such a nice hound. I agreed with her. Anyway it was great day.

‘Never speak ill of the dead’ they say and everybody has been tripping over their own feet in their rush to slobber over the mortal husk of Old Heath and make great play over his honesty as a politician. I think that that is a load of rowlocks. He was a terrible old toad and lied through his teeth to get us into the Common Market. In case you have forgotten, he threw away our fishing industry and said something to the effect that the EC would never have more power than an English County Council. A lot of people have forgotten that, but I have not, nor have I forgiven him. Not only that, but he left the Tory Party in a guddle from which it has never properly recovered. He sulked himself to death and I shall not mourn his passing.

Every profession has its own jargon. Have you noticed how the Polis never ‘go’ anywhere; they ‘proceed’. Now GNER has caught the bug. You never ‘arrive at Platform 3’; you ‘arrive into Platform 3’. I find this rather alarming. I had rather hoped that the train would arrive alongside the platform. I don’t want to find it hopping out and continuing up Grainger Street. Me, I think it is all to do with the forthcoming ban on smoking.

Mrs Poole went out to get something from the garage the other night and found a fledgling Barn Owl sitting on top of the car. I was summoned to see, but the owl, who obviously found Mrs Poole as frightening as everybody else does, had flapped away rather unsteadily, I think it is still a trainee, to the top of the store cupboard and there it sat. The next evening, it was still in the garage, making little screeches to its mother who was also screeching in the wood telling it to come home. I opened the door, turned off the light and went inside. Half an hour later, it was gone and I could hear it in the wood trying to explain to its mother where it had been. I like owls. I used to see Barn Owls regularly on the farm, but I had not seen or heard them for some time. I often hear Tawny Owls. So I was rather pleased to have them breeding on the place. I did put up some owl boxes quite some time ago, but the jackdaws took them over. The owl is the symbol of wisdom and they do look wise and intelligent, but I met a man who trains hawks and owls. I asked him if owls were very clever. He said that owls are thick as the proverbial short planks and have an attention span of c. 3 seconds. Now, who does that remind me of?

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NEWCASTLE JOURNAL 21.7.05

Everything in the countryside looks good. The livestock looks good. The harvest looks promising. I have not seen a dead donkey these many years. There used to be an old saying that the two things you never saw in the countryside were a ‘dead donkey and a satisfied farmer’ – no, I never quite understood it either. The reason for not seeing dead donkeys about the place is that you very seldom see live ones these days. There are still a few live farmers about the place, but very few of them are happy with their lot or their future. This country is haemorrhaging farmers at an estimated rate of some 10,000 per annum. So what, many readers will say, good riddance! Who needs them? Our food comes from the supermarket, not from farmers. How times change: when I was growing up, home grown food was vital for feeding the nation and the Farmer was an important and respected person and, what was more important, the farming lobby had political clout. Older farmers will tell you that the best Minister of Agriculture in their lifetime was the man in Attlee’s government, called (I think) Tom Williams. Williams lived in Gloucestershire and every Monday morning he would board the London train at Kemble Junction and join the man who was then President of the NFU. By the time that they reached London the week’s dose of farming politics would have been sorted. Through subsequent years and governments there was a similar rapport between governments and farmers. When a new Min of Ag was appointed, the first deputation to land with a thump on his doorstep was likely to be from the NFU and, as the Minister was quite likely to have a connection with farming, or at least with the countryside, he made them welcome. As the years rolled by, things changed. Townspeople grew further away from their rural roots and from any understanding of the countryside and those who lived there. The parliamentary rot began with Mrs Thatcher (I refuse to call her ‘Lady’) who hated country people (I believe her brother in law was a Barley Baron in Suffolk) and had them sifted out of the lists of conservative candidates. The country and farming lobby began to lose its clout. Cast your eye over the present government and House of Commons and see how many genuine country people you can count – you would hardly be able to make up a 4 for Bridge. I know that there are those amongst them who will tell you that they live in the Country. You can go and live in France but that will never make you a Frenchman.

What all this comes down to is that the skids are well and truly under farming and traditional rural life. This nation is now an urban nation and is becoming more so by the year. This pleases NuLab because it knows it has few rural voters, but as the rural vote is only c.2% why should they care? Just step on the buggers and squashem. That is exactly what they are doing. The White Settlers are being sent to neutralise, pasteurise and homogenise the natives. I was talking to my friendly neighbourhood land agent the other day. He said that he had a lot of farms to sell and they were all going as ‘lifestyle farms’ for people from the towns to buy into the ‘good life’ and jolly good luck to them.

For those who wish to continue working the land the future looks bleak. There is little future in Dairy Farming when milk can be delivered from Poland at less than the production cost in this country. A family that I know spent many years and great care building up a first class beef herd, which has just been dispersed. All their years of skilled stockmanship was netting them an annual net profit of £700. ‘Down horn, up corn’ was the old saying. Wheat is projected at £60 per ton. Fuel costs are rocketing and with them the cost of drying and transport. What this means in practise is that arable crops will not pay for planting. What all this adds up to is that farms will no longer pay for farming and if farmers see the incoming change in the CAP as a chance to throw away their wellies and buy a pair of carpet slippers, who can blame them? And who cares anyway? Not the Government, that is certain sure. Nor will it care about chucking a skilled rural work force on the muck heap. Although come to think of it, there should be plenty of work laying the one bloody great car park that this green and pleasant land will soon become.

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NEWCASTLE JOURNAL 14.7.05

I suppose that everything that can be said about the London bombings has been said, but I am going to stick in my twopen’th. There can only be a great sadness for those who were killed and for those who in the flash of a detonator suffered life threatening and life changing injuries. But we must not forget the families whose ordinary lives have suddenly been plunged into misery and uncertainty – the only certainty being that those lives will never be the same again. The worst part must be for those families who still do not know what has happened to their loved ones. We must hope that they will find a ‘happy issue out of all their afflictions’, but with every day that passes that happy issue becomes more unlikely. Not knowing must be one of the greatest torments of all. I cannot but think of my mother who spent 3 years not knowing what was happening to my father in a Japanese camp – nothing good was the answer to that, but at least he came home – God rest his soul. All we can do is to pray for God’s help for all those who are waiting for news of their loved ones and for God’s continuing help in putting together many shattered lives.

As to understanding the motivations of those who carried out such seemingly senseless killings of innocent people, they are outside our understanding. Only God can judge such people. The best that we can do is to expedite their meeting with God.

Another senseless thing was the G 8 conference. What did that achieve apart from the release of yet more methane to help the ‘Global Warming’ along? What could be the sense of concentrating so many resources to protecting Gleneagles, when so much time and money could have been saved by plonking all those witterers on an aircraft carrier out in the Atlantic? That would have saved a lot of money (shall we ever know what that totally useless meeting cost the British Taxpayer?) and a lot of expertise that might otherwise have been used for the defence of the Realm.

As to sorting out Global Warming (if indeed it exists) and / or helping poverty in Africa. I am all for relieving poverty, but there is a contradiction here. You do not need the proverbial rocket science to know that as people’s conditions improve, they want to improve their lifestyle (who wouldn’t). This means more cars, more tellies, more fridges and washing machines and, of course, more carbon emissions. In other words, an exceedingly vicious circle.

Livestock has done well this summer. Stock always does better in a dry time, because the animals are ingesting hard food instead of a lot of water. It has been dry time after a very dry winter. Already parts of the South are experiencing an official drought. The underground aquifers that so many of the southern counties rely on for water have been pumped out and yet these are the very areas where ‘Two Jags John’ is proposing to build many thousands of new houses. Where will their water supply come from? This is a problem that will affect everybody in the future and yet we live on an island surrounded by water. I suspect that everybody has heard of desalination plants. We are told that every glass of tap-water that you drink in major cities has already been passed through seven human systems – surely it cannot be beyond the capabilities of our scientists to take water from the sea and make it potable? I do not think that I would fancy it in my whisky, though.

Showing prospective buyers round your home is a somewhat chastening business. You have to look at your familiar surroundings with different eyes. The nest that you have made over the last quarter of a century is like that old tweed suit – you call it comfortable, but to a new observer it looks shabby. You call the piles of books to be read - ‘convenient’. A different outlook might call it – ‘untidy’. A house that you have lived in for nigh on a quarter of a century is bound to reflect your beliefs and prejudices. You become uncomfortably aware that these may not meld with the corresponding prejudices of the visitor. Every animal adjusts its lieing up place to suit its own comfort and convenience. Visitors will talk blithely about ‘knocking through’, ‘pulling down’ and even ‘gutting’. Your knuckles may whiten – this is YOUR home they are talking about. Then reality asserts itself – this will not be YOUR home, much longer. It will become OUR home to whoever buys it and the customer is always right.

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NEWCASTLE JOURNAL 7.7.05

At last we have a chance for the Hunting Act to mesh its cogs and grind a wicked offender to flibbets. Little Alun Michael will be chuffed. I am fortunate in having exclusive access to the facts in this dreadful story. The dastardly villain in the plot cannot be named for legal reasons, so we will call him George. Readers of a nervous disposition are strongly advised not to read the next bit for Health and Safety reasons. George lives in domestic serenity and a neat house and garden hard by the Rede Water. One morning he was out in the yard with his terrier (note the Terrier – just shows you what sort of man we are dealing with). This terrier hit off a line and began marking under the horse trailer (Horse Trailer!! See what I mean?). Out pops a mole and scuttles onto the lawn (it gets worse). George leued his terrier on and… yes, gentle reader, it killed the mole. At this point, George, who cannot be all bad, was stricken with remorse. He realised that he had broken and entered the provisions of the Hunting Act, 2004. Not only had he allowed his dog to kill a wild animal, but he had done so ‘with intent’ – ‘intent’ is a vital part of proving a breach of this law.

George is in many ways a solid and upright citizen and a retired copper to boot. He rang the Polis and confessed. Some time later the Polis rang him back and expressed disbelief. George said that he had committed an offence and was putting his hands up for it. The Polis said that this was an unusual thing for an offender to do. It seemed to wish to leave the matter there.

George said ‘No’ the matter needed to be investigated and that he still held the evidence that proved his guilt – to whit, the cadaver of a mole foully done to death.

Some time later a polis appeared and asked to see the scene of the crime and the body.

George was cautioned.

George then produced the deceased mole, which he offered to the polis. The polis, no doubt aware of the recent ACPO instructions, did not appear eager to handle the evidence. Indeed George tells me that he detected an element of levity in the polis’s approach. The polis said that George might get a letter, but then again, he might not. There at the time of writing (Sunday) the matter rests. The sword is poised.

I am sure that the public will demand that the law shall be enforced with the utmost rigour. If nothing else, this wretched business goes to give the lie to all those people who said that the Hunting Act would be unenforceable. At least, George awaits the snap of the bracelets with a clear conscience.

“Oh Lord won’t you buy me a Mercedes-Benz”. This was a song perpetrated by a female, American, C&W singer. It ought to have been the theme song of this Live 8 thing. As I understand it the purpose of this strange happening was ostensibly to ‘raise awareness of poverty in Africa’, of which I cannot believe that anybody was unaware. The secondary purpose was to provide an injection into the retirement funds of wizening pop singers. Poverty in Africa is the result of the corruption and greed of the African ruling classes. These are demotically known as the ‘Wa-Benzie’ (the Benz People). A ‘Merc’ is the ultimate status symbol in Africa. More aid for Africa means more ‘Mercs’ for the bosses. This means that a lot more poor Africans will be run over by the Wa-Benzie (a sadly common event) thereby putting them out of their misery. So – right on, Brother Bob! He might even get a Merc to take him to the House of Lords.

I have always been rather sniffy about those walking poles that hikers use, much preferring a friendly old ‘horn heid’ stick. However, new things are not always bad and now that my knees have started to show signs of a high mileage, I have adopted not one, but two walking poles and I have to say that they have helped a lot, giving me a human version of 4 wheel drive. The poles are indeed functional, but they will never become the old friends that my sticks have become. Nor will they carry the happy memories that my old horn-heid sticks do. In fact, now I come to think of it, why would not two old sticks do instead of these damned, new fangled, soulless things. Why, Man, it would be like having a lass in each arm again – now there’s a memory to conjure with.

 

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