Taking Out The Trash

On not rearing pigs

Got sent this by Ricky Knight the prospective Green MEP. Rather amusing.

> Rt Hon David Miliband MP
> Secretary of State,
> Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA),
> Nobel House
> 17 Smith Square
> London SW1P 3JR
>
> 16 May 2007
>
> Dear Secretary of State,
>
> My friend, who is in farming at the moment, recently received a
> cheque for £3,000 from the Rural Payments Agency for not rearing
> pigs. I would now like to join the "not rearing pigs" business.
>
> In your opinion, what is the best kind of farm not to rear pigs on,
> and which is the best breed of pigs not to rear? I want to be sure I
> approach this endeavour in keeping with all government policies, as
> promoted by the EU under the Common Agricultural Policy.
>
> I would prefer not to rear bacon pigs, but if this is not the type
> you want not rearing, I will just as gladly not rear porkers. Are
> there any advantages in not rearing rare breeds such as Saddlebacks
> or Gloucester Old Spots, or are there too many people already not
> rearing these?
>
> As I see it, the hardest part of this programme will be keeping an
> accurate record of how many pigs I haven't reared. Are there any
> Government or Local Authority courses on this?
>
> My friend is very satisfied with this business. He has been rearing
> pigs for forty years or so, and the best he ever made on them was
> £1,422 in 1968. That is - until this year, when he received a cheque
> for not rearing any.
>
> If I get £3,000 for not rearing 50 pigs, will I get £6,000 for not
> rearing 100?
>
> I plan to operate on a small scale at first, holding myself down to
> about 4,000 pigs not raised, which will mean about £240,000 for the
> first year. As I become more expert in not rearing pigs, I plan to
> be more ambitious, perhaps increasing to, say, 40,000 pigs not
> reared in my second year, for which I should expect about £2.4
> million from your department. Incidentally, I wonder if I would be
> eligible to receive tradable carbon credits for all these pigs not
> producing harmful and polluting methane gases?
>
> Another point: These pigs that I plan not to rear will not eat 2,000
> tonnes of cereals. I understand that you also pay farmers for not
> growing crops. Will I qualify for payments for not growing cereals
> to not feed the pigs I don't rear?
>
> I am also considering the "not milking cows" business, so please
> send any information you have on that too. Please could you also
> include the current Defra advice on set aside fields? Can this be
> done on an e-commerce basis with virtual fields (of which I seem to
> have several thousand hectares)?
>
> In view of the above you will realise that I will be totally
> unemployed, and will therefore qualify for unemployment benefits.
>
> I shall of course be voting for your party at the next general
> election.
>
> Yours faithfully,

Getting round the book ban

Craig Murry, ex-ambassador and now full time thorn in the side of the government, had wanted to publish a book about the mercenary Tim Spicer. (As in he arranges soldiers to fight for other people; I've no idea what his attitude to money is).

But then the lawyers Schillings got involved and you can imagine the rest: legal threats, big court costs etc.

Upshot is that Craig's freedom of speech has been curtailed. Sure, he might have made mistakes in his book but we're not going to know and they've not been tested.

If you do want the ability to make your own mind up there's more here.

I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore

While I was cogitating on how I would post about the wildcat strikes A Very Public Sociologist went and did it first and better. So I'll just link to AVPS.
With protests in Greece (linked to the recession but many other things as well), the Baltics, Iceland (the first government to lose power because of it) and France things are moving into interesting territory.
Obama has been clear in his denunciation of greedy bankers and the Conservatives have been quick to feel the public mood and put out a similar message. Brown, meanwhile, seems loathe to take a populist line.
I'm not sure how the Conservative's opportunist approach will hold if such protests continue or escalate. The message will be: get angry, but allow the same failed system to fix it.
In Iceland they've now got their first openly gay PM. So progressive changes can come out of the protests, even if they are unlooked for.

Same number of chips, less wrapping

The news that the Bristol Evening Post and the Western Daily Press are to shed around 45 jobs is just the latest in a raft of local journalism redundancies.

Just looking at Wiltshire, ITV West are in the process of cutting editorial staff in half, while the Salisbury Journal, Wiltshire Times and Gazett & Herald have all lost staff. The Bath Chronicle used to be a daily with four editions including two specifically for Wiltshire. It is now published just once a week. It's website lists a pathetic three reporters.

There can be no clearer sign that people will get less service, not a leaner service, because of these cuts than the news that the Western Daily could become no more than a Metro for rural areas.

However, when the Chronicle went weekly we were told that the Western Daily would be able to take up some of the slack. That promise lasted all of 18 months.

The WDP isn't all to my taste. It's the house journal of the Countryside Alliance but at least it covers rural issues rather than write patronising articles about barn conversions.

And when I was starting as a reporter we all looked to the WDP as the place to work before making it in Fleet Street.

Life hasn't stopped in Wiltshire, councils haven't given up making decisions, courts aren't shut for business and businesses keep going. So who is going to tell us about it?

It's worth bearing in mind that Northcliffe (the Daily Mail's regional arm which owns the Bristol and Bath papers) made an operating profit last year of £68m. Admittedly that was down on the £90m+ the year before, but the idea that local newspapers are a financial blackhole isfalse.

It's that owners have unrealistic and greedy expectations about profit. I thought that attitude was going to be shelved in light of the new economic climate we were all living in?

Mani pulite

Labour peer Toby Harris writes on being approached by the Sunday Times in their peers-for-sale sting but turning them down.
Very interesting to hear this side.
Hat tip: Hopi Sen via Bob Piper

Talking shop

Pretty much every month the parish council is asked to respond to one kind of consultation exercise or another.

A questionnaire, a letter, an online form, attach something to the leg of a racing pigeon.

Invariably we are given a very short deadline for our response and are given no feedback on what happens at the end of it.

Last week we got an email from the police asking us to respond to a questionnaire on the performance in our neighbourhood policing team.

The email arrived on a Friday (when the parish office is shut) and they needed the response by the following Tuesday (the parish office is also shut on a Monday).

What particularly irked was that the answer to freedom of information request I had received only a few weeks before showed that crime in the NPT had gone up dramatically in the last year (232 incidents to 411) and the types of crime had got more serious.

So here was a botched consultation exercise taking place at a time when perhaps more attention was needed on basic law enforcement.

What finally led the council to submit a very sharp response was the last question.

"Are the Neighbourhood Policing Teams in your area engaging locally to gather intelligence on counter-terrorism and to reassure the public?"

Our parish, like many in rural Wiltshire, has a large number of soldiers stationed in it so we're actually pretty reassured that plenty of people keeping an eye our already and should a terrorist incident occur they'll be plenty of people of around to take of the problem.

It's reasssurance that with the day to day petty crime is being detected and punished that we need.

This is my latest post on the Total Politics blog.

The unspeakable promoting the indefensible

Eddie Shah is best known for setting up Today – the first 3D national newspaper (so-called because the new colour printing didn’t quite work so the pictures looked 3D ones).

He'd earlier come to prominence because of virulent anti-union activities.

Now he’s a building developer in north Wiltshire.

And he’s still got plenty of things to say; such as why British builders are so lazy.

Which probably doesn’t sound so clever in a recession, and wasn't particularly clever then.

But at least he’s got a chance to really prove his communication skills because looking at the North Wiltshire Conservatives web site we find one Eddie Shah is their communications officer.

Having taken on the unions we can assume Eddie fears nothing – not even promoting a Tory MP who even Tories think is a dash bit indecent having left his wife while she was recovering from cancer for another woman.

Gray, as my MP, has ben quick to respond to my correspondence and has signed EDMs I have pointed out to him on press freedom.

But

his notional 7,000 majority looks insecure against this backdrop - especially if supporters decide to put their efforts into neighbouring seats. The question is whether the Lib Dems

have the muscle to muster a decent effort in North Wiltshire and the more winnable seat of Chippenham.

And also who else might fight that seat.

Aggro

Some times you just find yourself drawn, like a moth to the flame, to stupid posts or ridulous comment threads.
I've got to say that Tom Harris's comments on prosperity or green politics seems very superficial. Come on Tom - at least make out like you can think independently. You could start here.
And a great post from Dave Osler has degenerated into the world's most boring argument with all sorts of regressive prigs chipping in.
Enough already.
Perhaps I'll feel better when Arsenal win the replay.

Update: Donpaskini has, as ever, rebutted Tom with more elegance than I could muster.

BBC cant

The decision by the BBC not to screen the emergency appeal for Gaza is pretty poor. As others have pointed out - they've done it in the past and not queried that the aid might not reach those in need.
Censorship works best when people censor themselves without prompting from others and this is a pretty good example.
But if you do want to contribute then you can do so here.

An editor writhes

Great post on the Bristol Evening Post Watch blog about the hypocrisy and downright nastiness of the editorial comment.

I was about to say that I wish the BEPW bog would update more often . . . but then who am I to talk.

Apparently the paper and its sister title are expected to announced redundancies today. My commiserations - it's your management that should be walking Spanish.

Update: confirmed that the the Post and Western Daily looking at 45 redundancies. Let's hope the NUJ chapel which fought for so long to get recognition can successfully reduce the sackings to a minimum.