I remember the F&M outbreak in 1967 - it was brought under control within six months, and less than 1% of the national herd was slaughtered. This time, the outbreak started in March, and, six months later, there is no sign of it slackening and at least 5% have been culled. It's reached Skipton, Thirsk and Whitby, and one fears Ryedale will be next. The Government don't seem to know what they're doing, or to understand the countryside or the feelings of people who live and work there.

They can't break loose from the advice of their "Chief Scientific Advisor"; their "Chief Vet" or the NFU. These have all committed themselves to a policy of killing every farm animal within three miles of any confirmed case. So what do you expect these eminent men to say when their recommended policy fails? Are they going to admit they were wrong?!

The Government also cannot acccept the logical consequences of their own policies. Their main policy is to keep food cheap - which means giving superstores the power to strangle farm incomes. As we don't have the Euro, superstores can buy meat from Euroland at a price which, alrthough it may be a good price for Euroland, becomes a very low price in the UK because of the high pound. So farmers have to sell at very low prices in order to compete, and are suffering badly. However, when valuing the animals who are to be slaughtered for compensation, the valuers are giving farmers not the price they would receive from the superstores - but the value the government thinks they should fetch if supermarkets had never existed. So farmers are now receiving over three times as much compensation for animals which have to be culled because of F&M than they would have received if they had been sold for meat! So should it be surprising if there are rumours that some farmers may be deliberately buying infected animals - so as to infect their own animals, and yield a better profit than the amount they would have received from the superstores?

Indeed it is now becoming apparent that there are "compensation millionaires" - farmers with several thousand animals, who have each received over a million pounds in compensation!

Instead of showing sympathy to the farming community, the government seem to be making farmers scapegoats - and blaming them as much as they can, and saying that they see the F&M outbreak as an opportunity to "reform" farming. With friends like these in high places, who needs enemies?

So, who is going to hold this government to account for its folly? The Tory party says it supports the countryside and the country way of life. However, although they polled 32% of the vote, they only have 166 MP's instead of their fair share of the vote which would have given them more than 200. The Tory leadership campaign is well under way now. Kenneth Clark is the experienced politician, who could probably make something of the Tory Party, but unlikely to win because of his views on Europe. His competitor, Ian Duncan Smith, is so far to the right of William Hague that Attilla the Hun would have been proud of him. William Hague's right wing views lost the Tory Party the General Election. So, how can IDS expect to do any better? That leaves the LibDems, who are seen by many as the only effective Parliamentary opposition. They received 19% of the vote, but unfortunately only have 52 MP's instead of the 120 seats they would hold, if their parliamentary representation had reflected fairly the proportion of votes cast for them.

Meanwhile, Labour, who received only 42% of the popular vote, hold about two thirds of the seats in the House of Commons. With a majority like that, who needs to worry about any opposition? They can get away with blue murder, and seem to be doing just that.

How can we continue to be proud of our constitution, when it is obvious that, if Parliamentary representation had provided a true reflection of voters' intentions, there would have been a full public enquiry into the government's handling of the Foot and Mouth crisis by now? This is what both Tories and LibDems have been calling for for some time.