SIR, – I was very interested in the comment last week of Aidan Walsh of Texacloth, suggesting the British Wool Marketing Board (BWMB) was giving misleading information to wool producers.

Would it not be more accurate to have said the loyal producers of Cheviot wool will get about as much in their second payment from BWMB as his full payment last year?
Is he going to give his customers the 15p, 16p or 17p we’ve already received (our first payment) – I doubt it? Will he do research and marketing as the board does on behalf of producers?
He is under no obligation to do anything for us and I would respectfully suggest that his interest is in Mr Walsh’s prosperity.  Will he go to the Islands and buy from the many small producers there as BWMB have an obligation to collect any number over 10 fleeces from a producer? 
Why in the 1930s slump did the producers form the Scottish Wool Growers? The answer to that is that they thought that they were been ‘FLEECED’ by merchants.
Having had the good fortune to have lived a long life I can remember seeing a string of 13 horses and carts with wool from one of the largest sheep farms in Sutherland (Forest Farm) to be loaded at Invershin railway station. That was part of a consignment of 5000-6000 fleeces, probably more, as the price was so low the previous year no wool was sold. (I think that was in 1931). I don’t know how many trips they made, but you don’t get many bags of wool on a cart.
It would be good for producers to remember the old saying ‘United we stand, divided we fall’.
What would milk producers give for the old Milk Marketing Board today? The recent article relating to ‘the great milk robbery’ caption has affected many people and we don’t want the word ‘wool’ substituted for ‘milk’.

G M Murray and Son,
Morvich Farm, Rogart Sutherland