Brexit risks to farming

One of the blessings of living in this country is that we have one of the best farming communities.

I have watched on various programmes on TV how our farmers valiantly try to produce food, acknowledging the need to be ecologically progressive as well as maintaining high standards of meat and vegetable production.

But not just maintaining but also pushing up the standards through well grounded research.

It is our fortune to be recipients of this ever improving industry.

This is against a background of global retailers like Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury and so on forcing down their costs so that farmers have to subsidise promotions by these supermarkets.

However, this is not the end of their trials. Unfortunately, for centuries the UK has had to import a lot of its food, but now, because of the need to offset the damage that will be done by Brexit, this government will have to make trade agreements as a junior, begging partner, with countries that will swamp our markets with food of an inferior standard: beef full of antibiotics and other chemicals, chicken washed with chlorine, vegetables grown in fertilisers banned by the EU and the UK.

Now, there is the leaked government report that forecasts that the UK economy will be badly damaged Post-Brexit which the Brexiteers are trying to dismiss but tried to keep it secret and want to pursue it until they have fixed it to their liking.

Yet, we have people like Edward Wheatley, the resident Kipper, who, living in a Ukip fantasy land Walt Disney would have be proud to draw, says that the UK economy is growing and that unemployment is at a low level and that everything is Brexit hunky-dory.

What he doesn't say is that the growth in the UK economy is the slowest possible and this against a background of global economic buoyancy.

Countries that once were deemed economically backward have better growth that the UK and it is not Brexit time just yet! Just one industry, car manufacturing, in the UK is 3pc down.

As for unemployment figures, they are of people who are registered unemployed.

However, employment figures do not account for the increase in homelessness, up triplicate in East Anglia, increasing poverty and de-valuing of wages and pensions, private companies exploiting public services and leaving large debts for the public purse to pick up while shareholders and executives avoid paying taxes.

If the economy is doing so well, how come the NHS and social welfare services , the police, fire and ambulance services, the prison, probationary and border services are in crisis?

Meanwhile Tory politicians can increase their expenses well beyond the rate of inflation? Come on. Ted, prick your Ukip bubble, stop blaming everything on immigrants, and face the neo-liberal reality forced on UK citizens.

MIKE LARCEY

Tinkers Way

Downham Market