mine's a large scotch please!

Living out in the sticks, sometimes l get really bemused by journalists from the smoke going on about this or that, blowing stories way out of proportion to reality. Take today for example, most important news for country dwellers is closures of Post Offices, what do we get big time? prince harry not going to Iraq because it's too dangerous.

Every radio, TV & newspaper is screaming out about Harry. Why? Surely if he goes out to Iraq he will be endangering all his comrades who will be victims of any 10 bit suicide junkie for miles around. So what IS the big deal? Royalty have fought & died on battle fields but Iraq is a different war scenario as here the enemy seems intent on killing themselves & everyone else nearby. In this case PH is different ,he becomes a valid high profile target along with anyone with him. Can you imagine the headline if Harry went & he & his regiment were hit by waves of suicide bombers? How many parents would be losing sons & daughters needlessly. l personally think Mr Blair should volunteer to take Prince Harry's place on the front line.

So post office closures might seem a wee bit boring to the hysterical tabloids, but our village has l shop with post office. If it closes, those villagers who don't drive will have to walk the 3 miles to the next village, wait for a bus that may or may not come or beg a lift. This government seems to forget that the green bit between towns actually houses a great many people who rely on village Post Offices & their cars because to get to anywhere you have to drive, why? Because there are no pavements to walk along or buses / trains to catch or cycle lanes to ride along.

Oh, l'm being opinionated today. Must be lack of sunshine, just grey blanket cloud everywhere. My tolerance levels must be at their lowest at the moment, anything can get me going when l'm like this. You just feel that living in the north & in rural England that this is the land that politicians have forgotten.

We have the crisis in UK agriculture, l received an email the other week from the NFU stating in black & white how much dairy farmers are loosing on every litre of milk sold. Does anybody care? No. 5 years ago there were 25 good sized dairy farms in this area now there are 3. This area of east Yorkshire held the largest pig population in the UK now there are a few large contract pig business's. OK so why is agriculture different from say..coal mining, car manufacture, ship building? because we need to feed ourselves and to reduce the food miles piled on by shipping / air freighting the stuff from all 4 corners of the globe.

Robert Wiseman's profits you'll be pleased to note are up as are Sainsburys, Tesco et al.

Can l apologies for the rant, hopefully by tomorrow l will be a bit more calmer.