Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Ever seen a farmer on a bike...?

Farmers whinging about delays in Government handouts made the top story on BBC East Midlands Politics Show on the weekend.

Once again, no-one actually explained why millions in public money is still paid to farmers in the first place. It's no longer fashionable for Governments to hand out cash to manufacturers of widgets to protect jobs, but it seems there are different rules for farmers.

One East Midlands farmer made his point by showing the camera the paperwork he had to fill to get his annual bag of cash...he had the cheek to lay out his file across the bonnet of a what appeared to be a flashy top of the range 4x4...

In Lincolnshire, they say there's two rules about farmers:

The first is you'll never hear a farmer telling you he's had a good year.

The second is you never see one on a bike...!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

At least farmers know who not to vote for now.

You should get your own show Phil. I reckon Dave would pay.

fairdealphil said...

michael:

>>"At least farmers know who not to vote for now.">>

Sensible farmers know they can never again trust the party that devastated their industry by bungling BSE, and getting our product banned in Europe through isolation.

Anonymous said...

If farmers have read your original post, I think they can make their own conclusions about what Labour thinks about them.

I obviously don't agree with your fictionalised account of history.

fairdealphil said...

oakeshott, son of lib dem peer has spoken and i'd rather not have a pint of what he's on:

fair deal phil clearly has it wrong and has apparently fictionalised history...yeah, right.

of course, the Tories (remember John Gummer and the burger...!) handled BSE exceptionally well, and it would be rewriting history to accuse them of B lame S omone E lse.

No, of course the UK was not ostricised right across Europe.

No, of course British beef was welcomed across Europe.

BSE didn't really happen.

And of course, farmers loved Tory Agriculture Minister Douglas Hogg...of course the Tories were not a joke among farmers...

In Europe, of course UK was not isolated for a generation...

Oh, look, another flying pig... or is it a cow??

Anonymous said...

The ban was commercially/politically motivated by our European enemies. There was never any link between eating beef and CJD...unless you have been doing some research by yourself and not revealed the findings. Labour have certainly been far more accommodating in sharing our sovreignty, which was the only problem they had in any case. Thus relations have "improved", in much the same way as Franco-German relations "improved" circa June 1940.

For the Party that gave us the MAF shambles and that empty headed bint Margaret Beckett, this is rich.

PS Congratulations on wiki-ing Oakeshott. Only took you a year(!).