Helping ourselves

Who would have predicted a year ago for example that a global institution once held in the highest regard would turn into a worthless, ineffectual talking shop? I am of course referring to the United Nations Security Council.

It has spent the last year debating useless, watered down resolutions supposed to solve some of the world’s biggest political or humanitarian problems and failed totally. The impact of this has never been so visibly and tragically apparent as the images from Syria on our TV screens over the last year.

With a total policy vacuum from the West (us included) towards the Syrian and wider Middle Eastern problems, the Russians and Iranians in particular seemed to have seized the opportunity to further their own national interests.

The result has been catastrophic on three fronts. First, for the poor ordinary folk who happen to live there. The human misery is so awful even 24 hour news channels have almost given up trying to report the horror of it.

Second, that misery has spread across the world with both political and economic refugees flooding out of the region. The EU, like the UN, has also spectacularly failed to deal with this issue as it limps from one failed summit to another waiting for Germany to tell it what to do as usual.

And, thirdly, the killing which has become such a way of life in Syria, and the region more generally has now spread to almost every country in the world, especially in Europe.

Concert goers, party goers, holiday makers, Christmas revellers, in fact anyone appears to be fair game for those that seem to thrive on religious and political hatred.

And still politicians prevaricate seemingly more comfortable addressing the symptoms than the causes of this tragedy.

Nearer home although not life threatening, horrific or tragic on the Syrian scale it’s been that kind of year as well.

Just as we began the year never believing D Trump could be US President, neither had anyone really taken much notice of the EU ‘in, out referendum’ as it seemed a foregone conclusion.

The political elite (on either side of the debate) seemed totally convinced it was a done deal as the comments of Liz Truss at the Oxford Farming Conference a year ago made clear. She just didn’t have a plan B for agriculture in the event of a ‘leave vote’ as if truth be known no-one ever thought it would happen – at least until it was too late to change the outcome.

A year later and guess what, we still don’t have a plan B in the event of Brexit as the UK’s Ambassador to the EU has just spectacularly laid bare.

We have lots of hot air from politicians promising to get the best deal for us. But the reality is none of them know what a deal might look like.

And what the UK might like isn’t the same as what the Germans will allow!! So all this rhetoric is as hollow as the numerous UN resolutions and promises to protect civilians in Aleppo or the communiques from EU summits promising to tackle the appalling migration crisis.

To get a deal, you need to know what you want and, frankly, we don’t have a clue even for agriculture. Farmers know some of what they want, but whether it is realistic or deliverable either at a UK or Scottish level, is debatable.

And, of course, first we need to find out if there is the political will to fight for this north or south of the Border?

Farmers want freedom to farm without as much red tape and regulation, which is expensive and stifles entrepreneurial flair and business development, but what is the reality of this.

Peter Chapman now the Tory agriculture spokesman in the Scottish Parliament proposed a raft of recommendations some 14 years ago about reducing red tape and bureaucracy for Scottish farmers. What happened to that, answer – nothing.

Brian Pack more recently did the same and what happened, answer – nothing.

The reality is even when the decisions are Scotland’s alone Scot Gov too often choose to gold plate regulations. How about greening and linked holding movement rules as two current overzealous examples?

Of course as in these examples, these decisions are dressed up as initiatives to protect or enhance habitats or disease control respectively (without a shred of evidence to support either), but they are gold plated bureaucratic madness nonetheless.

Secondly, most farmers want some kind of level of support to allow a managed transition from where we are to whatever a post-Brexit world might look like and timescales to go with this.

But in Scotland we don’t even know what our current support payments are worth or when they will get paid, so what chance of the certainty needed to plan your business during a seismic shift like leaving the CAP? Answer – none!

Thirdly, access to export markets for our food is even more important than red tape or subsidies to be honest but we have absolutely no idea at a UK level how we might get access to either the EU ‘single market’ or other important destinations for our food products.

The suspicion is if we get access to the single market (and IF is still IF never mind WHEN) then there is no way the rules and regulations that currently govern food production across the EU will be watered down to suit us, even if there was the political will to achieve this in the UK never mind Europe, which is doubtful. Worryingly, when we finally get bilateral trade deals with other countries like the Mercosur block for example, will agriculture (especially beef in the case of this South American trade block) be sacrificed to get deals for the financial services sector so important to the S-E of England?

I think we all know the answer to that when you consider the evidence of what Defra (never mind Treasury) Ministers want for UK agriculture, indeed what they have argued for inside the EU for years now. And remember how much we have relied on the French and the Irish for the last three CAP reforms, that protection has now gone.

So, while all these huge global events will dominate the news in 2017, what would be handy is if in Scotland we concentrated on a few important issues that may help farmers right now which are in our gift. These would also be much easier to deliver if we could just get some focus on them rather than wasting a lot of time warbling on about things that frankly we just won’t influence.

For starters, surely it can’t be beyond the wit of man to actually deliver workable CAP greening rules for Scotland?

Surely it can’t be beyond the wit of man to leave the current LFASS scheme alone until after Brexit?

Surely it can’t be beyond the wit of man to change the Beef Efficiency Scheme to actually concentrate on what it says on the tin, namely ‘efficiency’ rather than the crap we have at the moment that wouldn’t know what efficiency looked like if it saw it, to name but a few?

And, surely, 48 years after man landed on the moon and the year after Tim Peake spent six months in space we can do better here in Scotland with these things we can control?

I was lucky enough as a wee boy to meet the inspirational Neil Armstrong when he visited Scotland 45 years ago. I can only imagine what he would say if the computer system that controlled the Apollo II Mission to the moon was as much use as the one supposed to pay a few Scottish farmers some EU support?

“One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” would never have happened, and my goodness we sure could do with some small positive steps of our own in 2017!