Archive for the 'Politics' Category
July 24th, 2010 by Caroline Stocks
I’ve just seen Lembit Opik – the asteroid-fearing former weather forecaster fiance, Cheeky Girl squeeze and Lib Dem MP - speak at a debate at the CLA Game Fair in Warwickshire.
“With a CV like that,” you’re no doubt thinking, “it’s perfectly obvious why the CLA keep wheeling him out to talk at these things”.
Funny, that’s what I was thinking too.
To be fair he obviously knows his stuff about farming and in the past I’ve been quite impressed with the way he’s argued for his rural constituents and promoted agriculture.
Sadly I don’t think I’m going to be quite as impressed with his foray into stand-up and his brand of self-pitying comedy.
“Every time I see a friend do well, something inside me dies,” he told the audience. “It happens every time I see Nick Clegg.
“I’m sure he’ll think the same thing when he sees me on Celebrity Come Dine With Me though.”
June 12th, 2010 by Caroline Stocks
I wrote a few articles last year about agricultural research in the UK. I was looking at funding sources, the decline in spend on R&D and the kinds of things research institutes in Britain are looking at.
As I’m sure you’ve already guessed, I’m a bit of a geek, so I got very interested in it. I would’ve probably done a few more articles had it not been for angry researchers ringing me afterwards complaining that I hadn’t written about them and accusing me of research institute bias. (Note to scientists: I love you all as much as each other. Unless you have mad scientist hair comme ca:
In which case I probably do love you a little bit more. Ssshhh, don’t tell the others.)
Anyway, from doing these articles I got chatting to some lovely people at Rothamsted Research in Hertfordshire and got invited to go along there on Friday to go and have a look at what they get up to.
Let me tell you, it’s bloomin’ awesome there. Did you know they have an experiment there that’s been running for more than 150 years? They’ve been trialling wheat since 1843:
They have some amazing rooms to cultivate plants in too, allowing them to adjust the light to create really sunny conditions. I’d never really realised how those light boxes worked to alleviate seasonal affective disorder, but a couple of minutes in this room and I was grinning like an idiot, thinking that spending an hour in a trial field learning about Take-all disease was the best thing ever.
Continue reading “Backing farming’s boffins” »
May 18th, 2010 by Caroline Stocks
Oh dear, things aren’t looking so good for DEFRA secretary Caroline Spelman – and she hasn’t even been in the job a week.
There were rumblings of discontent at the weekend over possible conflicts of interest between Cazza’s new post and her links to food and bio-tech lobbying company Spelman, Cormack and Associates, which she ran with her hubby, Mark, until last year.
While she signed over her share of the business, the firm’s bio-tech and GM food clients are working in the sector she’s now in charge of regulating.
A bit of digging around in Farmers Weekly Towers yesterday afternoon, however, seemed to uncover that the conflicts of interest don’t stop there.
It turns out that Mark is a managing director at Accenture - the IT company responsible for the widely-derided computer system used by the Rural Payments Agency to hand out subsidies to farmers.
Accenture was given the seven-year, £35m contract in 2003, but since then costs have spiralled to £350m. The system’s been given a kicking by MPs, who reckon the only way to sort out the mess is to scrap it and start again.
There’s been a lot of interest over how a new government would deal with the mess of the RPA and its software, and with Accenture’s contract up for renewal next year there’s going to be even more attention paid to whether it gets renewed.
An RPA mole told me a few months ago that he reckoned the agency’s in a “stranglehold” with the IT companies it works with – apparently the software’s so complicated and designed in such a way that only the IT firms know how it works. If that is the case and DEFRA has no choice but to renew the contract then it’s going to be interesting to see how Cazza and the department bats down any accusations of nepotism.
I’m starting to wonder if it might be worth having a flutter here…
May 13th, 2010 by Caroline Stocks
It’s taken long enough, but we’ve finally got ourselves a new DEFRA secretary. Caroline Spelman was announced as the department’s head honcho at about 7pm last night.
If I were paranoid, I’d say the politicians were timing their announcements just to wind us journos up. Gordy decided to tell everyone he was stepping down at 5pm (probably just as most of the national newspapers were getting ready to set their pages), while we were on our third version of the lead story for this week’s Farmers Weekly, ready to push the button to send the magazine to the printer, when Cazza got the official nod.
It was an interesting day, if not incredibly frustrating. We had all expected Nick Herbert to get the top DEFRA job, or Tim Farron if the Lib Dems decided that was one of the six ministerial posts they wanted.
Then at about 3pm we starting hearing rumours from contacts at Westminster that Spelman was going to take the helm. Cue a rewritten story so we had something ready in case that was announced. It got to 6pm and we still hadn’t had anything confirmed – there were hundreds of Tweets about it, but when I traced them back they had come from my initial speculative Tweet three hours earlier.
With minutes to go before our deadline, we decided to hedge our bets and run with a story that didn’t confirm Spelman as DEFRA boss. Of course, that was the point the job got announced.
There are aspects of print journalism which I prefer to the online kind, but the panic of print deadlines when you’re waiting for the news to happen is something which quickly goes from fun to scary. Print news quickly dates, but it would’ve been incredibly demoralising if the news had been totally outdated before the copies of FW had even been put in the post.
May 11th, 2010 by Caroline Stocks
Who’da thunk we’d manage to drag the election out this long, eh? Even as someone who loves politics, I’m starting to feel a bit fatigued by the uncertainty of it all.
Other political nuts are obviously getting over-tired and grizzly about the whole thing too – that’s the only excuse I can think of for Adam Boulton’s embarrassing temper tantrum yesterday, anyway.
My irritation about the situation though is being compounded by the endless comments in and by the media about the fact we are facing a second unelected Prime Minister in a row now Gordy’s pledged to stand down.
“We face a situation where none of the people who took part on the televised debates will end up leading us,” one hack bleated.
“The TV debates counted for nothing now there’s a chance none of them could be PM,” another commentator wrote on Twitter.
I hadn’t realised managing to stand up through three televised debates was the test that gauged whether you were suitable to lead the country.
I hadn’t realised that I was voting for who I wanted to be Prime Minister either. Am I the only person who was daft enough to vote for the MP who I thought was going to do the best job for my constituency, rather than voting in an X-Factor style popularity contest for a figurehead?
Anyway, whinging aside, any coalition could have some interesting outcomes for agriculture. I’d love to be a fly on the wall once any animal health talks started up between the pro-badger cull Lib Dems anti-cull Labour…
May 7th, 2010 by Caroline Stocks
Usually when I come into the office having had three hours sleep and feeling like I’ve been thwacked around the head with a sledgehammer, there’s been beer and loud music involved the night before.
Having looked forward to the election for weeks, it was kinda disappointing that the biggest excitement of staying up til 4am was going to see some lights flashing around the London Eye.
It was a strange atmosphere by the Thames – the usual collection of street drinkers had been replaced by 20-something politicos in suits who couldnt get into Andrew Neil’s weird boat party, so were instead drinking Prosecco straight from the bottle and stumbling drunkenly over their loafers outside City Hall.
Anyway, I woke up to the same situation as when I had finally gone to sleep (apart from I had missed the glorious moment when Jacqui Smith lost her seat). I wish I’d just had the good sense to believe the exit polls and go to bed at 10pm.
May 4th, 2010 by Caroline Stocks
So Gordon Brown’s the ‘worst Prime Minister ever’, according to Manish Sood, a prospective Labour MP from Norwich.
If Mr Sood hadn’t realised before, he’s now learning that slating your prospective boss like that isn’t the way to make friends and get ahead. Yes, he might have endeared himself to a few voters in his constituency by saying what they’re thinking, but if - in the unlikely event Gordy wins on Thursday – Sood takes his seat in Norwich North West, he’s going to be derided and ignored by the Labour party and less likely to be able have any influence on issues that matter to his voters.
In the meantime, the party and its supporters’ solution to the incident has been to discredit the outburst by insinuating he’s a “maverick” (in the words of Jack Straw), while derisory comments about Mr Sood quickly started whizzing around the internet.
The press were quick to circulate the party’s dismissives too. Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC’s chief political correspondent posted on Twitter that Labour sources had tried to deselect Mr Sood in the past but had failed on a technicality.
“Labour now says on the record that Sood is a ‘dreadful candidate’ and is ‘divorced’ from the campaign,” she added later.
But what confirmed it for everyone that Mr Sood’s clearly a crackpot who should be ignored?
Only that he supports farmers. He’s a bloomin’ fruitcake, obviously.
Paul Waugh, the Evening Standard’s deputy political editor tweeted the following on hearing the news:
“Manish Sood tells SkyNews that we should ‘give more power to the farmers’. I’m not making this up.”
I asked him whether that confirmed to him that Sood was a bit bonkers and his comments should be taken with a pinch of salt, to which he replied:
Now I’m not saying whether Mr Sood’s right about Gordy, but he’s standing in a rural constituency - talking about something that’s of interest to potential voters in an interview for his local paper hardly seems off the point to me.
Paul Waugh may write for a London audience, but I hope that attitude isn’t endemic across the whole of the national press. I’d hate to think farming’s still a fringe topic for the mainstream media and anyone who considers it a serious subject for discussion is merely an eccentric…
April 21st, 2010 by Caroline Stocks
Since I started working in agricultural media, I’ve never been particularly impressed with the Soil Association’s often simplistic arguments that organic farming is superior to conventional food production.
I had wondered whether the organisation had grown up a bit when, at its annual conference in February, policy director Peter Melchett finally admitted that both systems had benefits and that they could both learn from each other.
It seems the Association’s sophisticated, mature line of debate was short-lived though, as the title of its latest report, which dispels UN claims the world needs to double food production by 2050, shows:
“Telling porkies: The big fat lie about doubling food production.”
It may just be me, but that line conjures the mental image of Lord Melchie waggling his hands aside his his head, doing a little jig around his organic allotment as he gleefully calls the NFU, DEFRA and the UN big fat liars.
What makes me more irritated by the line though, is that despite the silly name-calling, I actually agree with the sentiments of the report.
There’s no scientific evidence that says we need to double production – in fact the EFRA committee admitted last year that it’s ‘more of a guideline’ rather than a definite figure we need to aim for.
I’m not saying increasing food production and securing domestic supplies isn’t something we need to do, but with 40% of food being wasted from when it leaves the farm and reaches consumers’ homes, tackling waste seems a more sensible first step.
If I remember rightly (I’m sure someone will correct me if not), South America’s growing agricultural output alone is bolstering global food supplies by 4% a year – meaning in 10 years time we’ll have hit the 40% growth mark.
All of this will be done with less inputs (sorry Melchie, that’s what GMs do for you) and with min-til systems – much greener than peddling the UK’s soils like mad and pumping them full of expensive, oil-based fertilisers.
Running the risk of making myself unpopular here, to me food security seems to be an issue of distribution, rather than one of production.
I’m starting to wonder whether I’m bonkers for writing this in public. Please try not to be too rude and sweary if you want to leave a comment at the bottom to shout at me – my mum reads this…
April 15th, 2010 by Caroline Stocks
For those of you waiting with baited breath for the Lib Dem green manifesto word cloud (sorry Rob, you have my permission to have a nap rather than read this), here it is:
Bit different to the others, innit? Agriculture-friendly words ‘fair’, ‘support’, ‘help’ and ‘future’ all dominate, while ‘farmers’ is the second most-featured word. If I was living in a rural constituency (and if you could rely on parties to deliver on their manifestos), I think the Boy Cleggy would be getting my vote.
It’s going to be interesting to see how much (if any) time food and environmental issues are given in tonight’s debate between Nick, Dave and Gordy, and to see if the themes pulled from these clouds are reflected in what they all say.
