Alex James, Blur basist-turned-columnist today kindly shares with us in his 'Rural Notebook' column in the Independent the news that he has spent his entire EU single farm payment on fences, "utterly transforming" his farm.
"The farm looks immaculate: post and rail, barbed wire, stock netting, the works. Everywhere I look, all the unsightly rusty wire and rotten stakes removed, hedges trimmed. Big old haircut. Feel like a new man. Invincible. The best bit of fence is the bright orange electric one around the rose garden. I've had to replant that completely and the fence is an extra precaution. Everything that went in there last year died or was eaten. I've had the man round with his ferrets, re-dug the drainage and re-fenced the entire farm. I will not be beaten. Rose garden! Battle of the Somme, more like."
Sounds delightful.
But we thought he had a cheese farm... So why the taxpayer subsidies for a pretty rose garden?
Paying celebrities/journalists to renovate their rose gardens strikes us as a fairly good illustration of how ridiculous the CAP has now become.
When one reads of all the subsidies like Alex James receives , the 'enforcement agencies' and the armies of staff parasiting off our backs , it's hard not to feel that the graft and corruption has permeated every single cell of the nation as well as wider Europe.
ReplyDeleteWhen I used to travel on business from London City Airport , I often met eurocrats and MEPs and I noticed that they were all power-crazy and trousering it !
There will be a revolution soon and these parasites will get their comeuppance....and then the councils will be next...