Oi! Get Off My Land!

It’s been six days since A Hundred Days Off came out, and I’ve literally not listened to another CD since. Definitely better than Beaucoup Fish (which I really liked). I’ve also been listening to the foxes that inhabit the back gardens here. It seems they have been going to evening classes in electronics, and have now managed construct their own PA system. It’s the only possible explanation for the volume of their demented, banshee-like cries every night. Still, it’s worth putting up with when I get to see them every once in a while — stunning creatures. How anyone could possibly hunting them for ‘fun’ is beyond me. You can find out more about foxes in London at Wild London, including a breakdown of The fox year.

Apparently killing foxes isn’t enough for the National Farmers’ Union and the Country Landowners Association — now they want to start killing badgers:“…the excessive popularity of badgers needs to be reversed and the problematic image of the fox maintained.”

Which brings me to the big ‘Liberty and Livelihood’ march taking place in London today. The Countryside Alliance* (Corporate Watch have some very interesting background info on the Countryside Alliance) say it isn’t just about the right to continue fox hunting; they’re complaining about the shortage of affordable housing, jobs, poor public transport, disappearing post offices, shops, schools and surgeries, and the steady decline in farming incomes. Of course some of these are quite understandable grievances — but they aren’t exclusive to the countryside. Public transport in cities isn’t exactly in a great state, and the major supermarkets are forcing many small shops to shut in urban areas too. What’s the worst area in the UK for unemployment? Hackney in London. And the second and third highest are also boroughs in London.

Despite the fact that agriculture only makes up 0.7 per cent of the British GDP, the Government pays out three and a half a billion pounds in farming subsidies every year. That’s about three-quarters of the Department of Trade and Industry’s entire budget to support the rest of British industry. And it’s estimated that just two percent of the rural population work in agriculture. Coping with foot-and-mouth cost £3 billion, and the UK’s tourism industry, which accounts for 11 per cent of the economy, suffered terribly as a result of the no-go areas. Yet the tourism industry received no compensation.

I do feel sorry for the tenant farmers (about 25 per cent of farmers), many of whom have to survive on terribly low incomes. However, the majority of people marching in London today are land owners (the average farm is now worth £700,000), who get a unique tax break rollover deal, worth over £1 billion a year, that ensures they never pay capital gains tax on the land they sell to developers.

According to the National Farmers Union economist, the most important remedy for the current farming recession would be Britain joining the Euro: “Agriculture has lost £5bn as a result of not joining”. So why aren’t these countryside people campaigning to join the Euro? “Farmers are also citizens, and they are, well, Conservative. It’s a political and social issue as well”.

It speaks volumes that today the Michelin-starred restaurants along the route are all fully booked, the gentlemen’s clubs of Pall Mall and St James’s are expecting a busy day, waiving rules on dress and female visitors, and even Eton College, Harrow and Radley have permitted boarders an extra night off to attend the march. And tonight there are going to be a number of large pro-hunt balls. Balls indeed.

I agree with Charlotte Denny, writing in the Guardian: agriculture is an outdated industry for Britain to be specialising in. From the figures above, it seems to me that farming is by no means essential to the British economy; however, farming is vital to many poor, developing countries. As a result of the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy, these subsidies lead to overproduction of food crops in rich countries that are then ‘dumped’ on world markets and flood into poor countries. Poor farming communities suffer as a result because they can’t get a fair price for their crops. According to ActionAid, rich countries spend 330 billion dollars subsidising their farmers, that’s 6 times the amount of aid given to poor countries; 13 billion would secure basic health and nutrition for the entire world.

I really do have a hard time feeling sorry for most of the people marching in London today.

* There’s a certain irony about the Countryside Alliance campaigning for ‘liberty’, as they were runners-up in this year’s Privacy International ‘Big Brother Awards’:

for registering themselves with the Information Commissioner as holding data on (among many other categories) sexual, political, religious, health, intelligence and lifestyle information on a vast range of individuals. The CA registration on the Information Commissioners site is 27 pages in length, and contains almost every conceivable category of personal data.

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