Time to review the Sussexes’ titles

ALAN Howlett has certainly thrown a major spanner into British history and its future by questioning the UK’s inheritance of a monarchy.

No doubt he also has sympathy with the illegal acts of desecrating monuments to past servants of UK by tearing them down?

The Royal Family, as head of the UK, is held in high esteem by a vast number of countries (some including Commonwealth nations, so-called) and the history of Great Britain is respected by several others – who survive under a presidency with precious little tradition, history or standards.

The simple fact that the heirelect’s younger son has uprooted, possibly with encouragement from his wife, and has disassociated them from public office or responsibility, is their decision.

Harry provided enthusiastic and valued military support in Afghanistan during his relatively short Army career. If he wishes to “pull stumps” and head in an alternative direction, that’s his decision. He could never have expected to retain the airs and graces allocated to him, including the Royal Marine appointment.

But perhaps A Howlett can explain why Meghan is still pushing her “Duchess of Sussex” title within the USA? I don’t suppose many Americans would have a clue where Sussex is!

Possibly the title of ‘Duke and Duchess’ might need reviewing?

Bob Gelder

Devon

IN my book it counts as a failure if any dispute ends up in court because inevitably the only winners in such a situation are going to be the lawyers who will line their pockets handsomely on a daily basis.

But back to the courts is where the matter of the quality of our rivers is now heading. Fish Legal, Angling Trust and WWF are dragging Defra back into the halls of justice, accusing it of dragging its feet in tackling agricultural pollution in rivers, streams and lakes.

Their claim is that waters across the country are affected by fertilisers, manure, pesticides and sediment to such an extent that a rise in nutrient levels is killing off aquatic species, including fish.

The River Wye, not far from where I live, is cited as an example of what is happening, with its salmon stocks declining by more than 80% since the 1970s and the blame laid partly on effluent from industrial-sized poultry units.

The issue has bubbled up before, of course. The case was originally brought to court in 2015 because Defra had simply not been enforcing the “water protection zones”. But the case was settled on the basis of a promise that the Environment Agency would produce water protection plans for 37 specified sites

Six years later, only four plans have been produced and meanwhile the damage caused by pollution continues to grow.

Farmers are being demonised yet again in all this but while I would be the last person to condone any kind of polluting activity let me just attempt to put their case. Farmers have been forced to industrialise poultry production because doing so is the only way they can stay in business and retain contracts with supermarkets who still believe a chicken can be bred, fed, raised and profitably sold for £3. The alternative to them continuing to do so is to export more of our poultry production abroad where welfare standards are far below even the basic requirements of British systems.

Naturally when new poultry units are set up measures are put in place to minimise the potential for them polluting rivers and water courses. But when you get a large concentration of such units in a relatively small area the collective environmental impact becomes proportionately greater, and the controls on individual units clearly become inadequate. But has that effect ever been taken account of?

Then there’s the matter of failings by the Environment Agency – and so indirectly Defra. Defra has been expert at creating rules and earned a reputation during our membership of the EU for gold-plating European regulations then putting the blame on Brussels when people complained. There was the case of a section of an EU water directive which went into the back door of Defra as two pages of A4 and came out the front as a 30-page instruction.

But there’s no point in issuing regulations and rules if you aren’t going to enforce them and the way the Environment Agency has suffered successive budget cuts over the last decade has left it hopelessly short of funding to be able to discharge all the necessary inspections.

So it is entirely right that Defra and the Environment Agency should be put up before the court. Alongside them should stand any individual farmer who has carelessly or deliberately polluted a water course. Next to them should stand planning officials who have failed to take account of the cumulative effects of a concentration of potentially polluting farming operations in a small area. And next to them any politician who has sat back and failed to take any kind of action to stop supermarkets screwing British farmers to the point where adopting potentially environmentally damaging industrial farming methods offer the only chance of staying in business.

Going to need a pretty big dock.