Sir, wool here, wool there, wool everywhere, but no decent payment in sight! Is the British Wool Board operating for the good of the producers?

Or is in a similar plight as was First Milk? Does it need a person to sort out the mess?

Employing some 180 persons it must have a hefty wage bill to meet every week, plus pension benefits.

There is also fancy offices to keep up, and expense accounts when those tasked with selling the wool go on foreign trips?

They – British Wool – say that the market is depressed, that might be true, and as the largest of markets was China probably didn’t help when Boris sent the Royal Navy to the sea named by the Anglo Saxons to bicker on China!

But reading many years in The First Voice (the magazine for the self employed) a young women from Yorkshire saw the waste of wool dags going to land fill, so she came to an arrangement with British Wool that she would take the wool and save them a fortune in landfill costs.

She developed a process that the wool was turned into house insulation, and built a reputation to supply customers.

Then British Wool had a change of management and imagine her surprise she go a hefty bill backdated for wool products, and the only avenue left for her was to go broke, and then the board was very happy to meet the costs of landfill, and I wonder how much costs they have today for landfill?

This year all producer got new bags – what did that cost come to in a depressed market? Was there a need?

They are going broke – farmers and crofters are not sending their wool, especially like one crofter on Skye got a cheque in the post when the stamp and the envelope and paper cost more than the payment, one pound!

The question that arises in my mind do we need jokers and inept persons running any type of operation?

And also where do they get the cash to keep this donkey on the road?

Angus A Macdonald Balivanich Benbecula