Pigs for free

Money for nothing and pigs for free

Jimmy Lyons

One is accustomed to receiving all sorts of strange communications by e-mail – just how several US-based companies have become aware of my ongoing battle with the electronic weighing scales my family gave to me on my last birthday really knocks me out – but the following is certainly one of the more interesting I have received for some time.
It is a copy of a letter sent to the British Minister for Agriculture, David Milliband, who perhaps not unconnectedly has just been transferred to the much less onerous Foreign Office. Read on, and I will be back to you later after a few press-ups:

Dear Minister
My friend who is in farming at the moment recently received a cheque for £3,000 from the Rural Payments Agency for not rearing pigs. I would now like to join the not rearing pigs business.
In your opinion, what is the best kind of farm not to rear pigs on, and which is the best breed of pigs not to rear? I want to be sure I approach this endeavour in keeping with all government policies as dictated by the EU under the Common Agricultural Policy.
I would prefer not to rear bacon pigs, but if this is not the type you want not rearing, I will just as gladly not rear porkers. Are there any advantages in not rearing rare breeds such as Saddlebacks or Gloucester Old Spots, or are there too many people not rearing these?
My friend is very satisfied with this business. He has been rearing pigs for 40 years or so, and the best he ever made on them was £1,422 in 1968. That is – until this year when he received a cheque for not rearing any.
If I get £3,000 for not rearing 50 pigs, will I get £6,000 for not rearing 100?
Another point: These pigs that I plan not to rear will not eat many tonnes of cereals. I understand that you also pay farmers for not growing crops. Will I qualify for payments for not growing cereals to not feed the pigs I don’t rear?
I am also considering the “not milking cows” business, so please send any information you have on that too. Please could you also include the current Defra advice on setaside fields? Can this be done on an e-commerce basis with virtual fields (of which I seem to have several thousand hectares)?
In view of the above you will realise that I will be totally unemployed, and will therefore qualify for unemployment benefits.
I shall of course be voting for your party at the next general election.
Yours faithfully,
Mr X
First of all, FUATRL (Farmers United Against Threats to Rural Life) have denied any involvement. Part of their recent election manifesto did touch on something similar, i.e. payments for the rearing and maintenance of wildlife, including birds, but sources close to the organisation have said “No, no, we have nothin’ to do with it, sure it’s an English thing anyway, but we might discuss it at our next meetin’.”
One’s initial reaction as a commentator on matters agricultural was along the lines of “Fe**in’ hell, why didn’t I think of that? – I could have knocked two or three columns out of it at least, between replies, statements from the IFA, the Department, Teagasc, MEP’s, the ICA, Jackie Healy Rae – jaze, what am I talking about, there’s at least one book here, if not a trilogy!”
Mature reflection of course has led me to outrage and near apoplexy at another uninformed, scurrilous attack on the beleaguered farming community.
Leaving aside the pathetic, juvenile attempts at ironic humour (we all know the type who have to resort to such low methods to get a reaction), there is so much to attack in this sorry missive, it’s difficult to know where to begin. But I will content myself with one telling blow (untelling ones don’t work in the written format). Does this wretched creature have any idea what a farmer has to go through in order not to be able to do something?
The Institutions for the Bewildered of this country are full with former upstanding tillers of the soil. They sit in corners, staring at the wall, muttering fragments of complex articles on winter beef margins from the Farmers Journal to themselves as they attempt to come to terms with their altered status.
Does Mr X not realise the difficulty, nay the near impossibility, of adjusting to a life of total idleness in this Cowardly New World?
After years of trying to avoid doing as much as possible, and admittedly having succeeded in the past five years or so in reducing the working day from 23 hours to a mere 21.75, the farmer now is confronted with the greatest damnation known to mankind, the realisation of one’s dream.
And as an obviously unthought-out consequence, or else this path would surely never have been set out upon – the removal of the very life blood of the rural way of life i.e. something, anything to complain about.

Jimmy Lyons studied philosophy, but is not really a philosopher. He owns a