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Editorial notes Thoughts at Election Time |
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How are we going to vote this time? Those of us, that is, whose concerns stray occasionally across the boundaries of full- stomach syndrome, hypochondria and the National Health Service. The Labour Party will probably win if only because of the almost unimaginable incompetence of the other parties. In 'Sweet William' the Conservatives have found a true son on its historically strong Yahoo wing. Anyone who has observed his performances on the Opposition front bench over the past four years must wonder if any water at all remains between politics and vaudeville. Certainly, environment and animal welfare play no part in the party's or the leader's policy, though it must be conceded that Ann Widdecombe stands out prominently as lone a figure of real sincerity on the hunting issue, John Gummer speaks with vastly more conviction on environment than any Labour minister, and occasionally even the unremitting John Redwood talks sense on animal welfare in relation to the foot-in-mouth fiasco. But these are not the party's trend setters. Mr Hague's idyll of a Britain fit for John Peel and the 'Up Yours Froggy' League cannot be gainsaid. To vote Conservative is tantamount to voting for the FHBSRP (Football Hooligan and Blood Sports Regeneration Party). No, no. The Lib-Dems? Oh dear! How we have all tried, and dreamt, only to find that Mr Beith and his Old Testament shibboleths are more entrenched than ever, while the egregious Mr Opik has suddenly emerged from an unsuspected Welsh hideout to reinvigorate the 'human right to do what it damned well like' brigade with a pathetically transparent device called the 'Middle Way'. Mr Opik's voting record shows clearly where his middle way would lead. A whole swathe of senior Lib-Dems seems to veer in the same reactionary direction. One or two MPs like Jackie Ballard, Simon Hughes and the Leader have voting records on environmental and humanitarian issues that would make the Party the automatic alternative voting choice if they were representative. Unfortunately they are not. Would that the Lib-Dems provided a realistic alternative to the tried and failed main parties. But they cannot be trusted to support their own declared policies. Kennedy is an imposing leader with the endearing habit of voting for party policies that have been hammered out at Conferences and Special Meetings over the decades. Unfortunately, he has inherited a ragbag membership that thinks such policies are there to be observed in the breach; if you don't like them or think they may cost you a few votes you pretend |
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they are invisible. The following statement was sent to this site in response to a request for details of policy on hunting: It is party policy to impose a ban on fox hunting. However, this New Labour? On countryside and the new building proposals, hunting, sea and river pollution, vivisection and the use of the higher primates in scientific research, in transport and freedom of information, poor John Presott seems increasingly to hold the fort with impressive oratory and little conviction that he is going to subdue Messrs Blair, Brown and Straw. The party has failed to deliver on all its most important pledges. While Jack Straw remains in Government - especially at the Home Office - acting the Machiavellian role of the minder of good causes, willing to take them wrapped in cotton wool to the PM on behalf of frustrated MPs and promptly losing them in his capacious pouch, there is no hope for any progressive cause. Voting Labour would require a promise that Jack Straw would play no further part in the next Government. There is little prospect of that. Abstention, that most regrettable of all devices, seems to be the only course open . |
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The Madness of MAFF |
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Britain's green and pleasant land has been turned into a sinister black pyre. Millions of animals have been shot and burned (or buried) in a frenzy of contradictory aims, shoddy professional advice and Ministerial claptrap. Dogs cannot be walked except on a lead because a petty dictator in Whitehall has persuaded local government throughout the country that the F&M virus might be transmitted by canines. Petty officials threaten to confiscate pets on sight or to shoot them if need be. We have entered the realms of the police state. In the aftermath of the dreadful and idiotic Foot-in-Mouth episode, MAFF is clearly the weakest link and must go. It is all goes back to the tradition that Government knows best - that society is divided by divine ordinance into those who have the knowledge and background to govern and those who are destined to be governed. It is in that tradition that the department of state now known as the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has acted without hindrance or restraint for the entire 20th century and into the 21st. Like the Home Office - that other repository of right-wing fossils - it is an institution that is above the law, that brooks no argument, that cannot be brought to heel for its mistakes however grave, that defies Parliament. We all thought the lesson had been learnt with BSE. 'It will never be allowed to happen again', we were told. We were also told that none of the Ministers who kept vital information from each other and the public would be tried or disciplined, neither would senior civil servants who tucked inconvenient reports in their pending files or vets who failed to protest (at risk of their jobs, admittedly) when their urgent advice was ignored or disdained. All this after the affront of myxomatosis, in which MAFF has deliberately distorted the natural food chain with dire consequences for all wildlife; after a vicious and pointless cull of the badger population in the name of 'Science' - a term used indiscriminately to hide its real motives - most recently in a determined attempt to confound MPs who made the badger a protected species. Then came Mad Cow Disease (properly Mad Scientist Disease). Now Foot-in-Mouth. And now we are told that to preserve the idiotic fiction of Britain's 'disease-free status' we must destroy much of the nation's agricultural heritage and cause untold suffering to the people and livestock of the countryside. The simple fact is that Britain has the disease, has had it before and in the jet age will assuredly have it again. More importantly, farm animals are as liable to nature's cycle of events as any other; they acquire the disease so as to develop antibodies, to gain immunity. Just like the rest of us. Just like human animals. In emergency, inoculation provides the answer. Come off it Maff. The vets and farmers have admitted it time and again. It's |
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simply a matter of money. There is no question of any kind of threat to human health. Animals here as in South Africa and other sensible countries would be just as productive and just as nutritious to the carnivore population, once they had acquired immunity, subject of course to the occasional infection that sheep and cattle are always prone to; pneumonia, as I am sure MAFF knows only too well, is not uncommon. It is time that this unbalanced, insensitive, insensible, arrogant and blighted ministry got off its high horse, and just for once told the unvarnished truth to the people who pay its not inconsiderable wages bill. That excellent writer Nick Cohen in the Observer newspaper puts it in a nutshell. 'All thanks to Maff, the political wing of the National Farmers' Union'. And he quotes Ian Willmore of Friends of the Earth in the search for an answer to the question 'What should be done with Maff?' - 'Maff should be shot in the head, dumped in a trench, fried to a cinder, sprinkled with quicklime and buried with a stake through its heart...' What good sense for a change, in a world that appears to have gone stark staring bonkers. MAFF, the Crazy Gang of the political scene, must abdicate as soon as the present mess is resolved, before it can return to spreading disease in wildlife, inventing dangerous new animal feeds, promoting genetically modified crops, and before it can resume its its obsessive and ridiculous badger cull - it has withdrawal symptoms if it is not culling something!- so that a modern, decent and genuinely concerned department might be set up in its place. ' A posting to Maff', says Nick Cohen, 'is the bureaucratic equivalent of a Politburo order to take up duties at a Mongolian power station'. And for good measure: 'the department which gave us BSE is the last organisation you want on your side in a crisis'. Cull MAFF! And its client the NFU is the cry. Let us keep it up. And a note to political animals - keep a lookout for a special invitation to the 2001 Convocation of all the Parties at the Hall. Toad 1.1V.01 |
