A Cautionary tale....

SIR, – Across the recent festive period, the Australian ‘Soap’ Neighbours was not broadcast in the UK, but here in Scotland we had (and have) the crofting wars to fill the gap.
I don’t know who has the ethical and legal high ground (or even if the two coincide), but would remind the parties of a cautionary tale told to generations of farmers in our neck o’ the woods. Some time ago two farmers from Balquidder sought ‘help’ from their lawyers over a long running dispute. It is alleged that at an informal meeting between the two lawyers one said to the other
“twa fat sheep frae the braes o’ Balquidder, you fleece yin, and I’ll fleece the ither”.
If you are 62 years old, or under, you are unlikely to have direct experience of food rationing. Not only that, but for most of the last 60 years the price of food has become lower in real terms. 
Economics for most of the population was not formally taught in schools. Like sex education pre 1970, you were expected to learn from your parents (or experience). 
In this infertile ground, myths and prejudices grow, just as some weeds grow on cleared ground. So, many are far from sure what farmers are paid for and if it is earned. 
Many of the population work less than 1800 hours per year, leaving them a lot of time to fill. Some (quite a lot) take up issues about ‘saving’ particular photogenic species from the vandalism (their words) of modern farming. 
It is said that the camera never lies, but how often does the contents of some food packaging live up to the carefully photographed images on the outside? 
If the correspondents in this last week’s The SF are to be believed, ‘hard Brexit’ for farmers will mean less support, and what support that is miserably grudged will be packaged in just as much, if not more, red tape. 
Reading between the lines on the experiences of the New Zealand farmers post the loss of subsidies in 1980s crucial to their economic survival was government not interfering and banks being sympathetic and constructive.
There seems little chance of that happening here as our establishment was under no pressure from Europe, or farmers, or the lower ranks of the civil service, to gold and platinum plate regulations. Yet it happens, and those who caused it to happen are still there and resisting any dilution of their efforts to have farming dance to the tune of special interest groups.
People want all sorts of things, and true to their natural hypocrisy, want others to pay most, if not all of the cost. I wouldn’t mind people putting lynx and other predators into their own wooded areas, so long as they put and maintain a lynx proof fence right round it (and have full third party insurance).