Tobias Jones paints a bleak picture of life in the countryside (“The British countryside has never had it so bad”, In Focus). Sadly, here in George Osborne’s northern poorhouse, it’s likely to get a lot worse. The government has sold the land beneath our feet to fracking companies such as IGas without either our knowledge or our consent and these companies are now secretly snapping up fields in this area. These purchases allow fracking companies to exploit not only their own land, but everyone else’s within a 2km radius. Fracking is being forced down our throats and those of every other living creature in the forms of air, water and food contamination.
As a farmer of rare-breed beef cattle who has dedicated years to conserving and enhancing the wildlife on my farm, I am in danger of being forced out of business by a foolhardy government coupled with an avaricious company determined to industrialise, pollute and destroy the countryside. The British countryside may never have had it so bad, but it seems that the worst is yet to come.
Huw Rowlands
Chester
Fracking 2,000 metres away will kill the cattle?
Deceitful eco-liars get low IQ morons all hot and bothered about non-existent problems.
Fracking effects the wildlife?
“Northern poorhouse”–from some merchant whose occupation is “breeding rare cattle”? Lets hope he’s got the hips for it. Want to bet he drives around in a posh tank not rides a bicycle?
Sold the land from under him? A victim of compulsory purchase was he? If it isn’t his actual land WTF is he talking about? Agreed–no political/bureaucratic scum should be able to compel you to part with what IS yours. But the kind of eco-freak, socialistic shithole he and his eco-wibble pals want would itself be far more dictatorial than anything Farmer Shite is complaining about.
Not that any of the above lessens my hatred for BluLabour (or ZaNu–same thing) by one iota.
A look at his Twitter account @redpollbeef is informative: the header is “Frack Free Here, There Everywhere” and he is retweeting 38 Degrees and Labour Left.
Funny they don’t seem to have noticed that in Sussex where facking has been done since the 1980’s
“The British countryside may never have had it so bad”
FOR…FUCKS…SAKE
“has sold the land beneath our feet ”
No it hasn’t, you don’t own the mineral rights beneath your land, the Crown does, and always has done.
No, Crown has always owned gold and silver, then they nicked oil gas and coal in, erm, the 1930s? All other minerals belong to the landowner.
Tell him, if he’s such an idealist, to farm aurochs and reinstate some top predators like wolves and bears to keep them smart. He Sounds like a playplay subsidy farmer with a side interest in selfcongratulation. Takes a lot of energy to keep a tame countryside, feed its herds and house its farmers, so why not use local energy resources?
“Crown has always owned gold and silver, then they nicked oil gas and coal in, erm, the 1930s? All other minerals belong to the landowner.”
Pretty much. But there’s also the compulsory rights utilities have to put cables and pipelines in as well, so as a farmer he could quite easily have a major gas pipeline six feet down and there’s nothing he could do about it.
Unless he’s suggesting that property rights should be absolute, to the centre of the earth? Which would be an interesting stance for a Socialist.
The cows eat the grass enriched with methane that has leeched out of the fracked well-
And explode.
So the pollution from the M53 and M56 is nothing. And Ellesmere Port is just over 2km away from his farm and its spewing out poisons. Yet something deep underground can affect his farm?
A farmer who doesn’t realise his farm is basically an open air industrial factory is not a real farmer. Does he not use huge industrial machinery like tractors with huge industrial buildings to house his equipment and stores?
Nutter.
I like the letter that follows:
I should like to explain that consumers are encouraged to seek cheaper food by competing supermarkets that in turn force down the price they pay to their suppliers. In August 2015, dairy farmers asked consumers to boycott purveyors of cheaper food because some big supermarket chains were not paying a sustainable price for the milk they bought….
…but perhaps any “blame” for fields without cows might be laid at our door if we refuse to pay more for milk, beef, pork and lamb, never mind the crops that need to be encouraged through increasing use of artificial fertilisers and pesticides that kill the pollinators.
Jackie Inskip
Pilton
Somerset
I know Pilton. Pilton = five thumbs
SadButMadLad
And don’t forget the suspicious smell that emanates from the direction of certain chemical plants by Runcorn.
He truly is a fuckwit.
I know Pilton too. Lovely cider down there. Also closest to Stratton on the Fosse that would actually sell to an obviously public school boy…….
Lovely beasts, Red Poll. You can admire them on the commons in Cambridge.
Tim
There is lovely cider EVERYWHERE down that part of the world. That doesn’t count as a recommendation.
Cheshire farmer have changed since I were a lad if they are now Guardian readers.
@Jim “Unless he’s suggesting that property rights should be absolute, to the centre of the earth? Which would be an interesting stance for a Socialist.”
Don’t forget the “jus ad caelum” part! Be sure to be on hand to collect tolls whenever a satellite passes over.
It’s grim oop Chester.
R E K Rowlands and Partners of postcode CH2 received over £35,000 in EU agricultural subsidies in 2014, I discover from a little rooting about in http://farmsubsidy.openspending.org/
From the same sourse, R E K Rowlands received 163,541 € between 1999 and 2013. THe currency for 2014 (above) is not specified on the spreadsheet and may be €.
@Andrew K: I wouldn’t believe much from that website – I’ve checked the figures for my own farm subsidy payments on it, and they bear no resemblance of what I actually got. The numbers are completely messed up, missing some payments, mixing up between farm subsidies and payments for environmental schemes, etc etc.
So what exactly is the long term danger to the countryside from fracking?
From where I sit it appears that the ‘greens’ believe fracking is about as dangerous as nuclear. All we need to do is to stage some fracking accidents. We will then be forced to set up exclusion zones cause, think of the children. With all the people gone the wildlife will be just fine.
Obviously we need more fracking to help out the countryside. To speed the desired transformations we need maximum safety standards. That pipe will corrode after only 200 hours? That is not good enough. Find a pipe that only lasts long enough for the initial drilling and just leave a machine on site. In no time the entire countryside will be filled with happy critters. Finally Britain will be safe for the grey squirrel.
Obviously none of the Grauniad readers of this rent-seeking cunt have any idea about fracking. After you’ve drilled, the only thing that remains is the well-head, which would pretty much fit in my spare bathroom. In the shower. If you were 2 km away from it, you would have absolutely no fucking idea it was there. They look like this.
They look like this.
Fuck, I hope not! A bit more sturdy and well protected I’d hope, but your point stands nonetheless.
“…a foolhardy government coupled with an avaricious company determined to industrialise, pollute and destroy the countryside…”
What, is someone planning to put up wind turbines near his house?
Oh.