THE Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is not only a mouthful to say, it’s a sprawling behemoth of government. When I interviewed former incumbent Owen Paterson back in 2013, he waved at me a mind-boggling, Jackson Pollock-esque Venn diagram: food and farming overlapping with rivers, coasts, clean air and green energy, fishing, fieldsports, flytipping and fruit pickers, pet passports and pigeon-shooting licences. The conflicting interests of myriad bodies, from the NFU to Buglife, and the scope for political banana skins of the Scotch-egg variety is infinite.
In an unusual example of ministerial consistency, the affable George Eustice, 49, has worked at Defra for eight years, under five secretaries of state. He has the rare political advantage of looking like a man who knows one end of a cow from another and isn’t uncomfortable in a farmyard —probably because his family’s centuries-old Cornish enterprise includes the UK’s largest herd of British Lop pigs. This does bring pressure, however. ‘I think farmers welcomed someone with farming experience, but they also understand political judgement: that they can’t have everything they want and that I do care passionately about the environment and wildlife,’ he explains. ‘You do get polarised views and there’s a huge responsibility to exercise judgement, balance arguments and review evidence, even if you’re initiated in the subject. It’s craven to be buffeted by public opinion; you’ve got to be brave enough to do what you think is right.’
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der March 03, 2021-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der March 03, 2021-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
