The photographs haven't yet appeared in our
local newspapers, but on the television there they are in all their horror. Huge skips full to overflowing with dead sheep, their legs in the air, presumably soaked in gasoline or kerosene, and burning away quietly with lots
of dark smoke fouling the atmosphere. It's all because of this new epidemic of foot and mouth disease. They tell us that it's a disease which doesn't affect humans, only animals with cloven hoofs and rats as well. It
can be spread on the wind by dust, and by the feet of any animal, including you and me. Unfortunately the virus prefers cold weather to hot, and icy weather grips England at present.
It seems very sensible to get all
our visitors to walk through a little wet pool of antiseptics in order to sterilise any dust on their shoes. But why, please tell me, are they killing and burning all these animals, in the U.K. and in Europe?
A friend
who was on a farm in Kenya tells me that their animals got over their local epidemic of foot and mouth and went back to work, eating, excreting, making babies, making milk and meat. Why do the English insist on killing the lot? One
suggestion is that when the animals recover they are permanently damaged, no longer profit-making creatures.
Are they ten percent worse than before, in which case it doesn't seem worth killing them, or only half as
good as before, when to kill them would be very sensible. And it seems that all the European countries are doing the same thing. Why?
The farmers are paid compensation by the Government, but English farmers tell me
that the compensation is much less than the value of the animals. Come on you vets, explain the justification of this extraordinary policy.
In the war now going on in England between Town and Country, there are many
more voters in town than there are in the country, and the townies want cheap food. The British Labour Party has always been a town party while the Conservatives have had their traditional support in the country. So one can perhaps
understand that the Labour Party, now in power in the UK, doesn't give a damn about those bloody farmers, who go hunting instead of to football matches and now want to get rich on our Socialist urban taxes. All country people are
wickedly elitist, of course, and are terribly cruel to their animals, just as the ancient Bajans were cruel to their slaves. Hunting the fox is a sport derived from hunting down escaped English slaves, didn't you know!
It's different in Barbados, of course. The labour costs of growing and making sugar have been increased every year by our saintly Union, so that it is now a loss-making industry. Serve those wicked planters right! We
subsidise it already, and will increase the subsidy as the labour wages increase every year. The cane-cutters naturally deserve bigger and better cars, whether the crop is disastrous or not. But it will be difficult to find out the
actual cost to our taxes of Mr. Trotman's unselfish annual efforts.
We burn our cane because it looks so pretty burning and surely it will sprout again for next year, won't it? But soon Mr.Trotman will make cane not
worth planting and our fields will go back to ugly tropical scrubland instead of beautiful sweet giant grass with its flowering arrows. I expect we'll happily keep the cane workers in comfort and obesity for the rest of their
lives. The extra taxes to pay for that will go on to the cost of all our exports, making them even less competitive than usual.
In England, as urban Labour votes get all the power, the fields will eventually not be
worth farming, and the grazing animals will disappear. Maybe the English government will buy the farms for capital enough to allow the wicked, rich farmers to invest in modern urban industry. A few pretty fields around the tourist
areas and motorways will surely be enough to support that great international scene. But to make farming a successful way of earning a living would only increase the Conservative vote.
Do you think the
foot and mouth virus was brought in to England on the shoes of Labour voters? Conservative shoes would never carry it.
