The Wardman Wire

Picked up from the Times:

Farmers could be asked to cover more of the cost of dealing with animal diseases. Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, told The Sunday Edition on ITV1 that recent outbreaks showed the need to give the industry more say in dealing with diseases. “Is it unreasonable to ask [them] to bear more of the cost?” he asked.

Errrr. Yes - it is very deeply unreasonable.

Particularly when the current overlapping crises are largely the result of:

1. A Foot and Mouth outbreak caused by incompetence at a Government Lab at Pirbright (don’t even get me started on the Legionnaires Disease).
2. The incompetence at that Lab stopping work on a vaccine to solve the Bluetongue Outbreak.
3. You lot having 10 years to get to grips with TB in cattle, but you are still pfaffing around in 2007 for the sake of PR with the animal rights people.

And I haven’t even mentioned the memory of 2001, and how you managed that (or not):

April 14th

Fears over the organisation of the mass cull are raised after pictures emerge of a white-clad marksman apparently shooting at sheep and lambs in a Monmouthshire field.

and then managed not to hold a proper enquiry on a disaster that cost - what - £7 billion or so:

10 August

Calls for a full-scale public inquiry into the handling of the outbreak are ignored by ministers as three separate inquiries are announced.

Rural tourism in my local County of Derbyshire still hasn’t recovered.

Mr Benn, stop talking out of your … er … you get the idea.

Do you want any farmers left in this country?

P.S. And four words to close: Rural and Market Town Marginals.

Tags: foot and mouth, pirbright, hilary benn mp, bluetongue, idiotarians

[tags]foot and mouth, pirbright, hilary benn mp, bluetongue, idiotarians[/tags]