Interesting letter, this is a copy I have seen, names of farmers have not been included.
Rt Hon David Miliband MPSecretary of State,
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA),
Nobel House,
17 Smith SquareLondon
SW1P 3JR
16 May 2007
Dear Secretary of State,My friend, who is in farming at the moment, recently received a cheque for £3,000 from the Rural Payments Agency for not rearing pigs. I would now like to join the "not rearing pigs" business.
In your opinion, what is the best kind of farm not to rear pigs on, and which is the best breed of pigs not to rear? I want to be sure I approach this endeavour in keeping with all government policies, as dictated by the EU under the Common Agricultural Policy.
I would prefer not to rear bacon pigs, but if this is not the type you want not rearing, I will just as gladly not rear porkers. Are there any advantages in not rearing rare breeds such as Saddlebacks or Gloucester Old Spots, or are there too many people already not rearing these?
As I see it, the hardest part of this programme will be keeping an accurate record of how many pigs I haven't reared. Are there any Government or Local Authority courses on this?My friend is very satisfied with this business. He has been rearing pigs for forty years or so, and the best he ever made on them was £1,422 in 1968. That is - until this year, when he received a cheque for not rearing any.If I get £3,000 for not rearing 50 pigs, will I get £6,000 for not rearing 100?
I plan to operate on a small scale at first, holding myself down to about 4,000 pigs not raised, which will mean about £240,000 for the first year. As I become more expert in not rearing pigs,
I plan to be more ambitious, perhaps increasing to, say, 40,000 pigs not reared in my second year, for which I should expect about £2.4 million from your department. Incidentally, I wonder if I would be eligible to receive tradable carbon credits for all these pigs not producing harmful and polluting methane gases?Another point: These pigs that I plan not to rear will not eat 2,000 tonnes of cereals.
I understand that you also pay farmers for not growing crops. Will I qualify for payments for not growing cereals to not feed the pigs I don't rear?I am also considering the "not milking cows" business, so please send any information you have on that too. Please could you also include the current Defra advice on set aside fields? Can this be done on an e-commerce basis with virtual fields (of which I seem to have several thousand hectares)?In view of the above you will realise that I will be totally unemployed, and will therefore qualify for unemployment benefits.I shall of course be voting for your party at the next general election.
Yours faithfully,
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3 comments:
I've seen this before. It's absolute gold and says everything you need to know about this Government. It's really funny in an oddly depressing way!
Thanks for the link too. Top blog!
I couldn't possibly tell porkies could I?
A farmer was overseeing his animals on a remote field, when suddenly a
brand-new BMW speeds up the farm track towards him.
The driver, a young man in an Armani suit, Gucci shoes, RayBan sunglasses
and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the farmer: "If I tell you
exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, Will you give me a
calf?"
The farmer looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his
peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers: "Aye, why not?"
The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it
to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the
Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his
location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area
in an ultra-high-resolution photo.
The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it
to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany. Within seconds, he
receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and
the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC
connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few
minutes, receives a response.
Finally, he prints out a full-colour, 150-page report on his hi-tech,
miniaturized HP LaserJet printer, turns to the farmer and says: "You have
exactly 1,586 cows and calves."
"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," replies the
farmer.
He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as
the young man stuffs it into the boot of his car.
Then the farmer says to the young man: "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what
your business is, will you give me back my calf?"
The young man thinks about it for a second and then replies: "Okay, why
not?"
"You work for DEFRA", says the farmer.
"Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "But how did you guess that?"
"No guessing required," answered the farmer. "You showed up here even though
nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a
question I never asked.
"You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a
thing about cows - this is a herd of sheep now give me back my dog
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