Kelly Auntie’s not anti-Brexit

which was a follow-up to a National Farmers’ Union report presented to the House of Lords which said that while in the first three months of 2016, 100% of labour providers were able to recruit the right number of seasonal workers, by the end of June, after the referendum, this had already fallen to 87%.

By the end of September it had dropped to just 40%.

This could blow out of the water many rural and farm businesses which made the issue imperative for Countryfile to look into.

Meanwhile, around the same time, a BBC-bashing letter was made public signed by 72 mainly Tory MPs.

Their number included Berwick MP Anne-Marie Trevelyan which I was a bit surprised at. Having met her, I thought her above such herd following antics.

The letter condemned the BBC for its “unfair” and “pessimistic” coverage of Brexit and demanded BBC managers “take steps to correct these flaws in the BBC’s coverage of our EU exit”.

In the last couple of weeks we’ve had reports of soaring child poverty levels, an NHS crisis which could see our health system collapse, homelessness at record numbers and at the same time news that FTSE 100 execs are paid 383 times more than those on the ‘living wage’.

If the signatories of the letter truly want to deal with unfairness and correct flaws, these are issues they should be addressing and not perpetuating some phoney war with an organisation whose top execs are largely drawn from the Tory party and its supporters. Julia Bradbury and Matt Baker, presenters of the ‘controversial’ Countryfile programme