George Eustice with his background in farming and the countryside, was entrusted by the PM to use his common sense regarding what is and what is not acceptable to the farming community.
 
The Minister seems to have dropped the ball or perhaps his nerve, having apparently been sucked into the very loud minority’s camp which believe vertebrate animals are our close cousins, and should be treated accordingly.
 
As someone said, “Despite his many qualities which I admire, I fear our PM has little empathy with farmers or the countryside”.
 
“He is an Urbanist at heart, who loves red London buses, cycle lanes and the hustle and bustle of busy streets. He accepts this defect which is why he entrusted George Eustice to empathise with farmers and rural dwellers on his behalf, and to make the right decisions.”
 
Why is the DEFRA Secretary not doing the job he was appointed to do but instead acceding to the wishes of ‘green’ civil servants, Animal Rebellion and others determined to put British livestock farmers out of business?
 
Last weekend environment and animal rights campaigners, and vegans cut off much of McDonald’s UK food chain with protesters blocking distribution centres and demanding the fast-food chain pledge to become meat free.
 
McDonalds sells 100% British and Irish beef, and lots of it. As far as I am aware they also offer vegan alternatives. The government should be focusing on preventing such minority groups dictating what the public can and cannot eat.
 
The organisers said the demonstration targeted McDonalds for its role in deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions. They need educating regarding where this company sources its beef in the UK, and that our livestock have the highest welfare standards in the world. We are also, so far, a free country where the public can choose what they eat without being dictated to by this rabble.
 
Much of British beef is grass fed, healthy and sustainable. On the other hand, the manufacturing of meat substitutes we are now encouraged to eat, is far from healthy and certainly not the natural diet the human digestive system was designed for. If we were meant to be herbivores living on plant-based food by fermenting it, we would require a specialised digestive system with four stomachs like cattle!
 
Good health comes with a varied diet of natural ingredients including meat, bread, fruit, and vegetables – all in moderation.
 
What our bodies do not respond well to is junk food loaded with preservatives, artificial flavour, colour, and additives.
 
At a time when the government is being blamed, I would say unfairly, for the obesity epidemic, it is increasingly important that high quality, British grass-fed beef, and other home grown produce, is affordable and plentiful.
 
Soya and corn are unnatural diets for cattle, producing unhealthy inflammatory toxins in the meat, which when consumed by humans, our bodies, in particular our liver, struggle to eliminate, which then mess up our metabolism thus making us fat.
These facts we all need to learn. Education is liberating and will produce healthier generations – sadly for some of us it is clearly already too late.
 
There is much chatter about hormone treated beef, and lamb imported from Australia and potentially flooding our markets. A similar debate to that regarding hormone treated beef and chlorinated chicken, from the USA which erupted last year.
 
Should we assume that the UK Food Standards Agency will now lower its strict criteria and allow hormone and antibiotic growth promoted beef to be sold the UK? I do not think so.
 
So far assurances are made by both Trade and Agriculture ministers that UK standards will not drop.
 
More than ever, it matters that our food and drink is clearly labelled on the shelves so that people understand what it is and can make informed choices.

We wanted rain, we got rain – plenty of it, and we are delighted. The grass and crops already look so much healthier. The lawns now need frequent mowing – a small price to pay for the prospect of a good harvest, including barns filled with hay and straw to see us comfortably through next winter.
 
The Queen’s speech included a number of issues which have stimulated plenty of debate within farming and countryside communities. In its bid to appear to be ‘caring’ by again raising animal welfare standards, the Government proposes to introduce an Animal Sentience Bill. This would enshrine in law that, ‘animals are aware of their feelings and emotions, and have the same capacity to feel joy and pleasure as well as pain and suffering’.
 
Apparently a committee of ‘experts’, and civil servants in Defra, will ensure the Government’s policies take this change into account.
 
The debate, including what laws should apply, which organisations take precedence, and what the book of rules allowing livestock farmers to farm, and traditional country pursuits to continue, will no doubt become a hot topic. Will this proposal embrace ‘caring for our rural communities’?
 
What is evident from comments already hot off the press, is that the Government clearly has little concept of the conflict this topic will ignite between the extreme element of ‘animal rights’ organisations, and British  livestock farmers who already care for livestock from birth to death, to the highest welfare standards in the world.
 
If they think the ‘2004 Hunting Act’ was divisive, I am led to believe, this will be ten times worse.
 
The launch of The Queen’s Green Canopy this week is a most appropriate tribute. Her Majesty the Queen and the Prince of Wales, Patron of QGC, planted the first Jubilee tree in the grounds of Windsor Castle during March.
 
This UK-wide tree planting initiative, created to mark Her Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee in 2022, invites people, as Boris Johnson said, “To create a national legacy in honour of The Queen’s leadership over 70 years”.
 
Everyone from individuals to Scout and Girl guiding groups, farmers, landowners, environmental groups, villages, cities, schools, and businesses will be encouraged to get involved and plant trees – all sorts, and hedges from October 2021, through to the end of the Jubilee year in 2022.
 
As well as planting new trees, the QGC will also highlight 70 amazing irreplaceable Ancient Woodlands and identify 70 ancient Trees.
 
All planting projects will be uploaded onto an interactive map on the new QGC website. www.queensgreencanaopy.org
 
The co-ordination of projects within each county has been delegated to Lord Lieutenants, Her Majesty’s representatives. An important task which will ensure that every single tree and hedge planted, whether on private or public land, a copse, an orchard or individual ‘Fruit and Nuts’ trees, or trees which in time will become magnificent oaks, will be logged onto the QGC map.
 
Those not wishing to actually plant a tree but would like to contribute to this fitting tribute to Her Majesty, can make a donation, and their support will be acknowledged.
 
The project is supported by Natural England, the Woodland Trust, the Royal Horticultural Society, Trees for Cities, the Forest Canopy Foundation, Coutts, Rentokil Initial plc, John Lewis, and the Royal Mail, to mention a few.
 
Sue Biggs, Director General of the Royal Horticultural Society, said, “It is wonderful to be involved in the Queen’s Green Canopy. We could not be more delighted the initiative is launching during RHS Virtual Chelsea week. When we normally hold the world famous RHS Chelsea Flower Show, Her Majesty has visited often”.
 
Coutts Chief Executive Officer, Peter Flavel, said “We’re proud to be a Founding Partner of QGC. Planting the ‘right tree, right place, right reason’ principle, is of paramount importance.”

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It is hugely disappointing to see once highly respected organisations increasingly viewed with mistrust by the public, due to an apparent relentless drive towards being PC and highly political.

Reports from a broad spectrum of commentators, imply they are ‘run by a bunch of ‘wok’ sudo-intellectuals, who clearly fail to understand the reason they were originally founded’.

The National Trust is sadly one such example. It’s disregard for reputations of late benefactors, and the history of their properties, abuses the ‘trust’ of the families who entrusted their heritage to the organisation, is alarming.

The Trust has wilfully exposed intimate details about their benefactors, as well as mismanaging land and properties gifted, on the understanding they would be cherished for the nation. This is becoming a national disgrace.

By ignoring centuries of traditional land management by experienced and knowledgeable farmers and landowners, and imposing their less than practical ‘modern day’ regulations on todays’ land managers, is increasingly causing very real harmful consequences.

A point in case is the Trust’s current management theories of the moors in places like the Peak District. These moors have for centuries been kept safe from wildfires by careful management through controlled burning, to manage upland landscapes and, crucially, to reduce the fuel load on the moors, making wildfires less likely and more manageable when they do occur.

The recent dry springs have created tinderbox conditions in the uplands. Only recently a spark, probably from a barbeque or even a firework, set light to Marsden Moor at the northern end of the Peak District.

The scale of the devastating fire that followed, which covered two square miles, was not only the responsibility of the dry weather, and possibly irresponsible behaviour, but also the decision of the National Trust to stop managed burning on the moor.

The Trust is defensive about its policy of not allowing controlled burning. It claims it “uses machinery to cut vegetation breaks which reduce the spread of fire’, and “plant sphagnum moss to help hold water in the area that have been cut, which helps to further reduce fire risk”.

Unfortunately as Tim Bonner, Chief Executive of the Countryside Alliance, said, “Cutting, whilst it can be a useful management tool, does not reduce the fuel load on the moors and whilst the Trust may believe alternative management reduces fire risk, the second serious wildfire on Marsden Moor in two years suggests otherwise”.

Being able to use controlled burning, which removes fuel load without impact on peat, where it is appropriate and effective, would give managers at Marsden and other moors the flexibility to address the fire threat proactively alongside cutting, rewetting and other management approaches. It is hard, as Tim Bonner said, to resist the conclusion that the Trust’s complete ban on burning is political – rather than a practical position – which ties the hands of those who look after the moor.

At last it seems that some common sense is being restored to the high streets. There are glad tidings with news that market traders who were convicted for refusing to bow to EU weights and measures, are in line to be ‘pardoned’.
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Ministers are working on plans to acquit five market traders, known as ‘metric-martyrs’, who were arrested twenty years ago. The campaign for them to be pardoned will formally be launched on July 4, the 21st, anniversary of the day that two Trading Standards officers, accompanied by two police officers, seized three sets of imperial scales from a Greengrocers stall.
 
If the law is changed, it is likely that shops and traders will be allowed to sell their goods by either imperial or metric measures, or both. Boris Johnson made a pledge on the 2019 General Election campaign that he would lift the EU’s ban on shops selling in imperial measurements. Good for him!

As I write another Bank Holiday is looming. Fair enough for those who have battled on regardless over this past year, but many would not object if Bank Holidays were banished for the rest of 2021.
 
Just as the country is getting back to work, life grinds to a halt. A time when productivity is dangerously low, public transport is suffering from lack of demand and businesses are struggling whilst trying to hang onto and support their staff.
 
Rather than inflict these ‘holidays’ which disrupt most businesses, perhaps the message should be to increase productivity  and allow employers to escalate the number of hours staff can legally and willingly work.
 
Rain at last. Not much but at this stage anything is welcome. A few nights of gentle rain followed by warmer days would be ideal. Even the bluebells are taking their time to blossom; no doubt their reluctance is due to the persistent cold.
 
Last week’s topic on XR clearly hit a nerve with many readers who are equally irritated by the duplicity of this so called band of ‘eco warriors’. They did not hold back on their response to my column, and amongst many comments were: “These extremists are dumb as well as dangerous”.
 
“I have come to the conclusion that in today’s weird world a Conservationist and an Environmentalist are two very different things. I prefer to associate myself with the former”.
 
“Environmentalism is now a political movement trying to force radical change, mostly out of spite. A Conservationist is someone who tries, through practise, to consider habits for future generations of wildlife and people”.
 
There were many more but I am reluctant to trouble the WSG’s lawyers!
 
The goings on in Downing Street are bewildering, but when one looks back at the history of this Westminster cul-de-sac there are some intriguing facts. 
 
Sir George Downing, a notorious spy for Oliver Cromwell and later Charles II, purchased the lease on the land south of St James’s Park in 1654, where he planned to build a row of terraced town houses, “for persons of good quality to inhabit in…”
 
The investment did not prove to be straightforward as the Hampden family, who had a lease on the land, refused to relinquish it. Downing fought their claim but failed and had to wait 30 years for before he could build once the Hampden lease expired.
 
Between 1682 and 1684, Downing employed Sir Christopher Wren to design the houses. It is recorded that, ‘although large, they were put up quickly and cheaply on soft soil with shallow foundations.’
 
Winston Churchill wrote that Number 10 was “shaky and lightly built by the profiteering contractor whose name it bears”!
 
The property was offered to Sir Robert Walpole by King George II in 1732. Walpole accepted on the condition that the gift was to the office of First Lord of the Treasury rather than him personally. He then commissioned William Kent to join the three houses, which today is known as Number 10 Downing Street.
 
Few early Prime Ministers lived there as it was costly to maintain, neglected and run-down. On a number of occasions it was close to being demolished.
 
Surely when one considers what a pittance British Prime Ministers are paid, the public should be asking why they are expected to pay to redecorate their living quarters in what Margaret Thatcher called ‘one of the most precious jewels in the national heritage’.
 
There is a certain irony that Boris invited the modern day version of Rasputin into Number 10. A man he defended against the indefensible, who, due to a bruised ego is now lobbing spiteful accusations at his benefactor.
 
I wonder who will turn out to be the modern day Felix Yussupov? I think the PM could perhaps do with him now!