Sir, – As we get older we tend to reflect to the past!

I had inherited the family croft when I was 18 and over the years have read many issues of The Scottish Farmer, which has highlighted the many different trends that farming/crofting have gone through across time.

The biggest impact on our industry is the different cabals and cliques that government has set up and enforced over the years, plus the amount of public and private funds that have been thrown at many quangos by the establishment to keep them afloat. To name a few – SNH, QMS, Crofters Commission, RSPB, SEPA, James Hutton, SRUC, and community buyouts etc.

Now ask, what have they really contributed to agriculture over the last 50 years? I cannot recall much good, but I can easily recount the cost to their meddling in our way of life.

Never in our history has so many laws been written to protect 'their experiments' from our way of life. Our politicians have become junkies to them and will only listen to the science that they 'dream up'!

In recent times, our agricultural hero, Fergus Ewing, has also jumped on the bandwagon, setting up cliques and cabals. But these 'panels of wisdom' all run on the fuel called money.

Where are we going? What will happen to all of those so-called 'companions', created over the years by government, when the cash cow finally gets mastitis? Maybe we will get freedom?

Angus A Macdonald

Balivanich,

Benbecula,