Western Morning News (Saturday)
Letters
Witch hunt of elderly former soldiers unfair
A former British soldier has written to the Prime Minister contrasting the pardon of the IRA terrorists with the witch hunt of now elderly former soldiers being pursued by teams of lawyers for such issues as whether a warning was shouted before opening fire.
The writer, who was wounded while on patrol, witnessed the aftermath of IRA executions, tarring and feathering and knee capping, as well as the maiming and deaths of many of his friends.
The IRA bombed the hospital in which he was treated for his wounds.
It is a disgrace that the IRA who committed such atrocities were pardoned while these former soldiers are being pursued for any mistakes they may have made.
The issue is currently under investigation and Theresa May has told MPs that the current situation is patently unfair.
It is to be hoped that she acts promptly when the results are published. I honestly thought I had heard everything in the leadup to Brexit, but I clearly had not up to the point that I saw the headline in last Saturday’s WMN: “Council ‘working to prevent’ Brexit food and drugs shortage”.
The leader of Cornwall Council has no doubt reassured a great many “worried of Camborne” with his urgings to the good folk “not to panic” but I’m equally sure everybody else will feel quite the reverse.
What on earth was in Councillor Adam Paynter’s head when he postulated his theory of oncoming food and fuel shortages?
Should we be grateful that he is pointing out a potential local difficulty or cynical that he is actually a committed Remainer, desperate to generate fear to further his cause?
Apparently the council have been making plans to protect us all from the risk of shortages.
Food for instance. How, exactly? issuing a requisition notice to Ginsters? Bulk buying of scones jam and cream? Hopefully in the right order?
Does Cllr Paynter know that most of the various fuels we use actually arrive from America, Africa and especially Norway, none of them EU countries? We produce 50% of our own gas needs, with most of the rest again coming from Norway. I haven’t seen anything in any Brexit agreement or disagreement thus far that threatens those supplies.
Any utterings otherwise are pure scurrilous supposition.
Why on earth would the UK government wish to restrict the supply of food, fuel and medicines to critical levels? Why would EU producers refuse to sell us their products? French farmers would be tearing up the cobbles in Paris if we stopped buying stinky cheese for a start. Why on earth is the Met Office telling us what the weather will be like in 2070 when they couldn’t even get the forecast right for the weekend November 23-26.
Secondly why is the leader of Cornwall Council predicting that a failed Brexit deal will lead to supermarket shelves being empty within a fortnight? Does he think they are as badly run as most councils are?
Fortunately most people hold them in lower esteem than MPs and, to be honest, that is about right. These are testing times for Susan and Neil Carter. Susan’s bid to climb the greasy pole at Bridge Farm received a setback when
Tom Archer pulled the plug on kefir-making in the dairy.
You can understand why she is annoyed. When Tom first announced they would be making the fermented milk product, she and work colleague Clarrie Grundy told him it was a daft idea.
The taste of the early experimental batches did nothing to change their minds.
Even so, the everambitious Susan set out to become an expert in both the manufacture and marketing of the gutfriendly brew. If this was a product that excited the health-conscious Generation Z in the porridge bars of Islington, then she was going to make it a success in the cafe-culture of
Ambridge.
Just as Bridge Farm’s newly-promoted “kefir manager” looks set to achieve her objective, boss Tom Archer has axed the whole project. Now I’m not one to rake over anyone’s past mistakes, but let’s remember this is the same Tom Archer who once left Kirsty Miller waiting broken-hearted at the altar of St Stephens.
Now he has gone and dashed poor Susan’s dreams of management status. Will the girl from the council houses – sister of Post Office robber Clive Horrobin and the feckless Tracy – ever be able to escape her humble origins? Not in Ambridge it seems.
Never mind that she and husband Neil now live in their own, grand designsstyle residence known as Ambridge View. Wherever the tracks run through Ambridge village these days, she seems destined to live forever on the wrong side of them.
Things are not looking a great deal brighter for her husband Neil. As I feared, his recent back trouble and enforced absence from work has had consequences. Hannah Riley, his deputy at the Berrow Farm pig unit, wasted no time in exploiting the situation.
She quickly fired an unreliable staff member who Neil has been making excuses for. She also introduced an experimental weekend work roster aimed at saving the company money while heaping a bigger load on the staff.
She even found a way of cutting the transport costs on a load of pigs sent off to the abattoir while Neil lay groaning on the sofa.
Ever considerate, she thought it kinder not to consult Neil on these initiatives. She decided he should be left to nurse his painful back at home without being troubled with work issues. She did, of course, ensure that pig unit owner Justin Elliott knew all about her timely actions to boost company profits.
When Neil returned to work he was greeted by a jubilant Justin who insisted Hannah should be paid a bonus for stepping into the breech. The message for Neil: If you’ve got an ambitious deputy make sure you get into work each day even with a bad back.
I can’t help wondering if Hannah’s ruthless management style is a foretaste of what we’re going to see more widely postBrexit. Hannah has worked in Ambridge before. Some years ago, as an agricultural student, she was teamed up with Jazzer looking after Tom’s outdoor pig herd.
In the intervening years, she has spent time in the United States which has some of the largest – and it has to be said – most unpleasant pig farms in the world. Is this the kind of animal technology Hannah wants to see in Britain? Pig farmers across the Westcountry will be hoping in never happens. Nor will they want to see the pork from these horrific places coming into the UK under new trading agreements.
What Neil and Susan Carter must be pondering as they sip their evening cocoa, is why Tom Archer seems to have it in for them. Not only has he dashed Susan’s hopes of a permanent management role, he also seems to be on surprisingly good terms with Hannah.
As Tom confessed to his new girlfriend, Natasha, he has a house-share arrangement with Hannah. And until now it has been a house-share “with benefits”.
As an organic farmer, you would not expect Tom to approve of intensive pig operations like Berrow Farm. It is one more piece of evidence that Tom’s moral compass is stuck firmly pointing south.
Shortage concerns will cause panic Met Office and councils get it wrong