It is no surprise that President Biden has little time for the United Kingdom and thinks he can interfere in Westminster and Northern Ireland politics, when it is revealed that his mother loathes the British, HM the Queen in particular.

Apparently when staying in an English hotel, she slept on the floor just in case it was the room The Queen had used when staying in the same hotel some years previously.
 
Whilst on the subject, I believe it is highly offensive and unnecessary for the press and media to relentlessly speculate about ‘when Prince Charles becomes King’. Do they need reminding that there is, thank goodness, no vacancy? With the greatest of respect, I would suggest that they put a proverbial ‘sock in it’.
 
Spring is historically the time when farmers complete online forms which ensure we comply with regulations and supply detailed information regarding land use. We then historically received the Single Farm Payment in December.
 
Whilst casting an eye over the various options replacing the SFP with the Environmental Land Management Scheme, it is clear that unless you farm several thousand acres, including scrub, steep banks and other types of land which are already unsustainable for growing food, there is little opportunity to tick any boxes.
 
Certainly if, as we do, you manage a small family farm of a few hundred acres in a traditional manner; with small fields, plenty of hedges, woodland, water courses, rotating arable crops, extensive livestock, and field margins, there are almost no opportunities to benefit from any of these new schemes.
 
As far as we are concerned that is fine as the fewer forms we must complete the better. Also, we strongly object to having to rely on subsidies, which are conditional on inspections and following ‘guidelines’, to be financially viable.
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This is still a form of ‘land nationalisation by the back door’. Farmers will always know better than pen pushers in Whitehall, how best to farm our land.
 
Don Curry was right when a couple of decades ago he made it very clear that British farmers would only survive if we combined traditional farming with diversified. As noted at the time, his vision was that around every bend in the countryside there would be B & Bs, Tea Rooms, and barns converted into accommodation, offices, and storage.
 
How right he was, but what about tenant farmers and those trying to squeeze a living out of their farming enterprises when they are isolated miles from civilisation, towns, and villages? For them it is neither feasible nor fair.
 
Currently this leaves such farmers, many of whom have farmed the land for generations, at the mercy of industrialists with deep pockets and dodgy motives, to swallow up their land with plans to plant trees to offset the pollution they are producing elsewhere. How ethical and practical is that long term? I suspect all this will be viewed by future generations, as the time dreadful ill-thought-out decisions were made.
 
This includes taking fertile land out of production, shutting down the possibility to source energy from underground in all forms, including shale gas, coal, and oil, and not building small nuclear installations.
 
They will look back and see missed opportunities, while being dependent on imported food, fuel, and power, and still coping with Climate Change, despite the UK’s contribution being just a drop in the ocean.
 
I was taken by Charles MacKay thoughts noted almost two centuries ago: “Men, it has been said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”
Certain Tory MPs, and former PMs, are fine examples, and those living in glass houses really not throw stones.’

The future of some rural churches could well be at risk. Last November Archbishop Welby, ill advisably likened climate change to the rise of Nazism, although he did later apologies for the comparison.
 
However, he relentlessly continues to push for net zero by 2030, a far more aggressive drive than that of the Government, which has a target of 2050.
 
Through his leadership, the Church of England is proposing to ‘cajole’ vicars into replacing traditional church boilers with green alternatives including heat pumps, biomass (not carbon neutral) boilers, or an electric boiler run on renewable electricity. This could push some parishes to the brink, at a time when many are already struggling financially.
 
The average cost of replacing fossil fuel burning boilers with a heat pump is around £10,000 and running costs at least £200 higher per year. Added to which insulating even a small parish church in a futile effort to make heat pumps efficient, would be unaffordable.
 
Where would they start? What would these beautiful ancient buildings look like after being thermally clad, and interiors insulated? Probably resembling something out of Disney World.
 
Mike Foster, CEO of the Energy and Utilities Alliance, applauded the church for trying to tackle climate change, but added: “It is potentially misguided advice. Heat pumps are more expensive to install, more expensive to run, and would be unsuitable in spacious, poorly insulated buildings. My advice to any vicar is to replace what you have got with what you have got”.
 
This reaffirms increasing concern across society about the cost to ordinary people of carbon-reduction targets.
 
It is not just farmers who should worry about the rise in the cost of fertiliser, liquid nitrogen, and seeds, now triple, even quadruple in price.
 
Reading reports of the knock-on effect in the USA and other parts of the world, it is not just in the UK that the potential outcome will be a catastrophic shortage of food.
 
Joseph Schmidhuber, deputy director of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation’s trade and market divisions, said: “Lower fertiliser use will inevitably affect worldwide food production and quality, impacting on food availability, rural incomes and the livelihoods of the poor.”
 
In Washington D.C., the shelves are already looking sparse, and residents are instructed to “just buy what you need and leave some for others”.
 
You cannot grow corn (maize) without a heavy dose of fertiliser, and many US farmers are cutting back substantially on the acres they grow (historically over 60million), when they cannot afford the crippling fertiliser prices.
Many are turning to Soya, a crop which requires less nitrogen, but there is a shortage of soybean seed. 
 
So, with less corn being harvested, animal producers who depend on it being affordable to feed their stock, and shoppers, will see the cost of their end product rise considerably.
 
Corn is also one of the foundation pillars of our food supply. As noted in the article; ‘if you look at the ingredients of numerous products, you will discover that corn is in just about everything in one form or another’.
 
It is not just corn and other cereal crops which need nitrogen, so too does coffee grown in South America, and elsewhere. We shall soon be paying much more for our caffe latte.
 
So, with higher food production costs, governments prioritising the environment, and aiming for net zero by rewilding and planting trees on fertile food producing land, it is hardly surprising there are predictions of worldwide food shortages.
 
This combined with fuel poverty due the obsession with so called renewable energy, much of which is imported from halfway around the world and unreliable, surely it is time for a reality check on where exactly this is heading. Are governments putting horses before carts, and at what cost to the population?

It is increasingly clear that we live in an age where some issues are taboo; one where particular topics cannot be openly discussed.
 
We are reminded that throughout history, whenever societies are faced with a lack of openness or censorship, grave mistakes have been inevitable. After all, you can only learn from mistakes if you are allowed to talk about them openly.
 
It is in this context that it is important that the pros and cons of all forms of energy generation are openly addressed. Only by weighing up the pros and cons can politicians and the wider public get a better idea of what is reasonable and what is unreasonable.
 
Where wind energy makes sense, it should be used, and solar likewise. Also, where traditional oil and gas reserves are abundant, and can be extracted affordably and environmentally safely. As we experienced last year and since, there are times when there is neither wind nor sun. All options including Nuclear and hydrogen, should be part of the UK’s balanced and reliable energy portfolio. If any of these options prove unreasonable or destructive, they should clearly be avoided.

The problem is, as the experts say; we don’t always fully understand the positive and negative implications.
 
This subject is huge, it impacts upon every business and household. As the cost of energy rises out of all proportion, and increasingly countries are being held to ransom, it is vital that as with food production, we should aim for self-sufficiency.
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Last year the world burnt the largest amount ever of coal to produce electricity. Under the current trends, total global consumption, which includes the production of steel and cement, will hit a record high this year, according to the international Energy Agency.
 
We have the capability of providing most of the coking coal required for the British steel industry. This would reduce the need to import over 6.5 million tons from Russia and Venezuela. Surely Cumbria is a more environmental solution,  saving billions on carbon footprints.
 
On Christmas Day, the James Webb space telescope was launched from French Guiana. Last week it reached its target, a mere one million miles from earth. Its purpose is to observe part of space and time never seen before. It will gaze into the very first stars and galaxies formed 13.5 billion years ago. It is largest and most powerful space science telescope Nasa has ever constructed.
 
Designed to last five and a half years, NASA now estimates it has enough fuel to last ten.
 
Throughout the launch, its journey, and now as scientists manoeuvre the many gold-coated primary mirrors to reflect as one, this space telescope has been communicating with earth. My question is, ‘How can scientists communicate with such precision over a distance of a million miles, while I cannot get a decent mobile signal despite having a multi-Agency mast situated on the farm’?
 
It is ironic that Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 committee, his side kick Nusrat Ghani, along with chief Boris basher Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and two others, chose Holland and Holland’s shooting ground in Hertfordshire, to sharpen their ‘backstabbing’ knives, to plot Boris’s demise.
 
Fortunately, it was ‘game’ over when their plotting was exposed before they tried to deceitfully to persuade Tory MPs to vote to change the long-standing rules of the 1922 committee, in their attempt to allow a second vote against their leader, in less than twelve months.
 
I hope Tory MPs will carefully consider the impartiality of Sir Graham (chairman) and Sussex MP Nusrat Ghani (vice -chairman), who last week tried to play the race card to undermine the Prime Minister. Are these conspirators now suitable to remain as office holders, or should they be replaced with immediate effect?