Irregular rant

This is not a forum for the exchange of views. It is merely an opportunity for me to give vent to my feelings. If you have any comments, contributions or amusing things to say, please contact us. At my whim, I may mention them on the site. The power has corrupted me.

Tom Gilbert


15.5.07.

 

The Mannistrie of Fear

 

Those of you who know me, know also how I feel about the Mannistrie o Fairms an Kintra Forderin, for unbelievably this is one of the many multilingual names under which DARD labours.

 

On Friday of last week, I spent two and a half hours showing the farm to two inspectors from the Countryside Management Scheme, ensuring that I had fulfilled my obligations under the scheme and that I was not defrauding the taxpayer, by for example claiming for 50 metres of new hedge that I hadn't actually planted. As a matter of fact, both inspectors were extremely pleasant and very complimentary about the farm. In one of my letters last year I explained how I had inadvertently contravened part of the scheme and been fined £400 for accidentally ploughing up 0.2 Ha of rushy ground and putting it into wild bird cover. I have been protesting the amount of this fine since but am informed that the Department has no option under the rules of the scheme. I was not altogether surprised to get a second inspection - having kicked up a fuss about the severity of my treatment, I feel my card has been marked. Two and a half hours of my life wasted.

On Monday of this week I had to assist while my pigs were tested for the Department. More time. Yesterday I also had to go into Ballyclare to leave in my IACS/SFP form - and that's a torment in itself. Today I was called by the abattoir asking for information about the vet we use - they need the information for The Department.

I also got a call from the vet where our chickens are slaughtered - I had failed to provide details of the birds life history and it was more than his job's worth to let them through for slaughter unless I could fax through the relevant information.

 

There is a relentless drip drip drip of demand from the Department, - phone calls, testing, letters, form filling and it is inescapable, especially in a multi-function farm such as this. And of course, these civil servants have the power of life or death over a farm. I have actually had a civil servant pointing to a pig poo in my yard asking what I was going to do about it, as it was a potential threat to the waterways of the countryside. And they hold the whip-hand. No matter how big or small the farm, and no matter how innocent the mistake, in any dealings with The Department it is at the back of your mind that if they want, they can clobber you. For example, if you failed to pick up from the reams of DARD paperwork that cattle over a certain age must be sent to abattoir A rather than abattoir B, the Department can legally slaughter the animals and 'skip' them, that is, put them in a skip, without any compensation.

 

I have said it before and I say it again - they serve no useful purpose. There are ever more civil servants tormenting ever fewer farmers, pursuing policies that leave the country incapable of producing sufficient food to feed the nation and with much of that food produced in circumstances that were the general public to know of them they probably wouldn't want to eat it anyway. We are paid to be park-keepers, trying to take the countryside to where it was pre-1950. This is clearly madness. Who chose this date? Why not take the countryside back to how it looked before the Plantation? Or before Christ for that matter? Nobody ever seems to question the folly that we are involved in. But then we are dealing with Talmhaiochta agus Forbartha Tuaithe, aren't we. Should we expect reason from an organisation that publishes documents in three languages, two of which nobody actually speaks except to annoy someone. (At the risk of being controversial).

 

It makes me cross.

 

 

22 January 2007

 

The Folly of TB Testing

 

Those of you who are regulars at the shop will know the enthusiasm with which I embrace all things to do with our revered Department of Agriculture. At executive level, that is at local or coalface level, the Department is peopled by the most decent and helpful people that one could hope to meet. Apparently under pressure themselves, they are invariably anxious to help farmers wade through the never ending paperwork with which their superiors at Stormont level never tire of bombarding the hapless farmer.

 

Tomorrow and Friday of this week, I will be undergoing the compulsory TB testing that all beef farms undergo - listeners to the Archers will be familiar with the TB breakdowns that they seem to have regularly at Brookfield. The testing on a small herd such as mine takes up a full day at least once a year, and so far as I am aware, it is a complete waste of tax payer's money.

The reason I say this is because no matter how long or how often they test, it never has any impact at all on the actual rate of TB occurrence. The Department has been carrying out these tests for the last forty years and yet we are regularly advised that TB is on the increase and must therefore think seriously of shooting all badgers, or build double fences two metres apart around the perimeters of our farms. (This to prevent nose to nose contact between beasts on neighbouring farms.)

 

Like everything else connected with DARD, you, most of whom I assume are tax payers, may rest assured that the testing does not come cheap. The vet comes out on day one and injects two small doses of serum into the neck of every cow on the farm. Three days later he comes back and using a gauge tests to see if there has been any abnormal reaction. This is all done by private vets under contract to the Department and with all due respect to the vets, it doesn't require much skill. Most of the vets quite enjoy doing it and find it quite relaxing. They are getting paid for it by the government at a guess between £50 and £75 per hour. You and I, the tax payers are funding this grotesque waste of money. It must amount to millions and millions over the years - never mind the massive inconvenience to farmers.

 

I am reminded of the story of some humans being taken by sharks off the coast of South Africa in the 1950s. The South African Air Force bombed the sea - not because it did any good, but it made people feel better.

 

Only in the Department of Agriculture could a system of testing designed to eradicate a specific disease, which has failed for over forty years in its only purpose, be pursued with the same grim enthusiasm with which it started.

 

It makes me cross.

 

(Since writing the above I have spoken to my daughter Jennifer. As many of you know she is a third year veterinary student and in due course may derive a substantial income from TB testing. I retract all of the above.)


17 November 2005


While I am on the subject of Salt:

Am I the only one who gets fed up with the constant criminalization of salt? Possibly there is a doctor out there who can put me right on this, but is it not true that the overwhelming majority of people can eat salt until it comes out of their ears without any ill effects whatever - with most people excess salt simply passes through their bodies harmlessly? Yet because a minority of people have a genuine intolerance, all of us are threatened with dire consequences if we eat more than the government recommended ration a day. I quote from Jeffrey Steingarten's 'The Man Who Ate Everything':

Some people are extremely sensitive to salt; their blood pressure goes way up when they eat it and way down when they don't. Of the 20% of Americans who develop hypertension, about one-third of them are salt sensitive - about 8% of the population. They should avoid it, as should people with congestive heart failure, liver disease or kidney disease. If you have high blood pressure, you probably know it already; ask your doctor to help you find out whether you are salt sensitive.

But the other 92% of us can handle just about all the salt we feel like eating. Why public-health officials would want the entire population to act as if we were allergic to salt is beyond me, especially since nobody has ever been able to demonstrate that moderate salt restriction makes much of a difference to anyone. It's like making everyone wear eyeglasses just because a few of us need them.

By the way, I'm very fond of mono-sodium-glutamate as well, and suspect that it also has been needlessly vilified.

While I am on the subject of the nanny state - what right has the government to restrict the amount of paracetamol and or aspirin I buy. It drives me insane that it is illegal for the pharmacist to sell more than sixteen tablets at a time - that's two days supply if you are taking the recommended dosage. If you have a genuine dose of the 'flu, with a temperature of 103, your muscles aching and your bones feeling like they've been recycled from a Roman tomb, you don't need a two day supply of aspirin, you need a week's.

As a matter of fact I buy paracetamol every week for my ancient old Mum and it would be a lot easier to buy a month's supply at a time. Currently this would seem to require written permission from Tony Blair.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prince Charles visiting Ballylagan Organic Farm