I GUESS we should be grateful that the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, finally got involved in the BPS debacle. 

Her intervention and that of John Swinney has certainly provided at least some respite to the ongoing cash flow crisis on Scottish farms.
 
By allowing national funds to be used to make part payment to everyone for BPS, LFASS and the Beef Calf Scheme that hasn’t already had an advance, they have at last provided a lifeline to many who literally didn’t know where to turn as debts continue to mount. 
 
Of course, this could have been done sooner, but SEERAD senior civil servants have been too busy trying to protect themselves in the face of the ongoing IT disaster to worry about us, their customers. 
 
However, their day of reckoning will come when Audit Scotland makes it clear who was responsible for the mess and that blame is laid squarely at their door. 
 
Mind you, why we need an expensive public enquiry to find this out when the Auditor General has been flagging the causes of this up for more than a year I have no idea! To me, an enquiry would just compound the waste of taxpayers’ money even further and change nothing.
 
Those that have been writing in defence of Richard Lochhead’s record as a Minister in The SF have also completely missed the point of the criticism of him and his senior civil servants (actually mostly one civil servant if the truth be told). 
 
The criticism is not about his record of trying to support Scottish farming or the food industry. The criticism is, specifically, that under his watch, his department wasted at least £100m on a failed IT system. 
 
This is taxpayers’ money and I’m afraid no matter how many good things he may or may not have done in the last eight years, the buck stops with him. And it isn’t over yet!
 
The FM and Deputy FM may have papered over the cracks for now by dishing out some much needed money, but the IT system still isn’t working. 
 
For example, I’ve been trying to transfer entitlements from some land we bought last year and there is no IT programme to allow this to happen yet. 
 
The poor staff in the Stornoway office of SEERAD, where this apparently is supposed to take place, have no idea what is going on and consequently won’t confirm anything to me. 
 
So the transfer forms have been delivered into a ‘void’ in the hope that they will be OK, but actually I’m not sure if they are. This is totally unacceptable by any measure of customer service in any walk of life.
 
This and many other failures in the system will almost certainly mean disallowances (fines for the Scottish Government) when EU auditors come calling. These could amount to up to £50m a year over the next couple of years by the governments’ own admission. 
 
With this as a background I’m sorry, but any criticism of Richard Lochhead, or more especially some of his officials, is entirely justified and it’s nothing to do with politics.
 
This crisis – and it is a crisis – is far from over and remember we are only receiving advance part payments, not the whole amount of any of those schemes where payment is due or overdue. 
 
An Aberdeenshire farmer asked me last week when I thought these balances might be paid. I replied I reckoned he would be on his combine before this whole mess was sorted out. 
 
With typical North-east wit that reminded me of the late Joe Watson (gone but not forgotten), he replied ‘would that be harvesting winter or spring barley’?! 
 
The truth is, no-one has a clue, least of all those in charge of making the payments so the pressure needs to be maintained by NFUS and others, to ensure it actually happens.
 
Meanwhile, the uncertainty of the Europe In/Out Referendum continues to dominate the farming media.
 
Having had the misfortune of dealing with the bureaucracy and eccentricities of the Brussels EU machine for years, it would be easy to recommend Brexit. 
 
However, that would be much too simple and, actually in my view, very dangerous for our industry in particular.
 
There is no doubt trade deals could be agreed with the EU or individual EU countries, but on what terms, or how long it would take is anyone’s guess. 
 
Non-EU countries like Norway and Switzerland have done it and continue to trade with the EU, but it is far from simple and certainly doesn’t reduce bureaucracy or, more importantly, the costs that go with it. 
 
Anyone who claims red tape and regulations will decrease being out of the EU is quite simply lying. It just won’t happen! I sincerely wish it would, or could, but it won’t. 
 
I hate what the EU has become and actually don’t think it can survive in the medium term in its present state. It is too big, cumbersome, undemocratic, expensive to run and at times just downright daft in the way it does its business through endless fudges, compromises and communiques that in the main aren’t worth the paper they are written on.
 
The EU responses (or should I say lack of responses) to the banking collapse, the Greek government debt crisis and more recently the Middle East migrant issue are stark and chilling examples of the inadequacies of this bureaucratic monster we have allowed to develop.
 
In such circumstances, it would be easy for your heart to say leave. But your head should tell you to stay. 
 
If it can be reformed (and I mean real reform not the Cameron version) to focus on what it was set up to do in the first place, namely to help facilitate a more secure Europe and a successful trading bloc then it may be worth saving. 
 
If not, I fear it will break apart anyway. These fundamental reforms are easy to wish for but, of course, much more difficult to achieve, and maybe impossible.
 
As far as our industry is concerned – although all of us would love to be able to prosper without subsidies – we are a long way from that goal, particularly at the moment. 
 
So, until that day comes, at least within the EU we can rely on the French and Irish to lobby for that support to keep coming. It may be late and the schemes that deliver it may be utter lunacy (which they are) but at least it comes.
 
After watching the cuts George Osbourne was trying to impose in his recent Budget, even on the disabled, could you rely on the UK Treasury for similar support? 
 
I think we all know the answer to that, despite some of the recent reassuring rhetoric of support for farming from David Cameron who, of course, is well known for sticking to his promises isn’t he!
 
Even more importantly, we rely heavily on EU markets to sell many of our agricultural commodities. If there was a backlash against the UK following a vote to exit where would that leave us? 
 
It’s not the first time French farmers have blocked ports and motorways and burnt British lorries. And the mood they are in at the minute, suffering the same poor returns as us, it wouldn’t take much to turn their anger on a new target, namely us, and that would be a disaster.
 
So, despite many grave reservations, I’m afraid it’s ‘better the devil you know’ for me. This is a position that gives me no satisfaction as I hate what the EU has become and how it operates. And whatever happens, it has to change!