Urban types, initially sentimental about the farmers, are beginning to turn against them, and no wonder. And now there are rumours and reports that some farmers are moving their flocks illegally or even arranging to infect them in order to cash in on generous government subsidies. The favoured treatment available to farmers has always baffled me. Shipyards have closed here, and so has many a coal mine, but there were no billion-pound bonanzas for these displaced workers. Instead, they were enjoined to learn how to use a computer, and now the urban unemployed are speaking out, increasingly bitter.
Canadian farmers are also a spoiled bunch.
I can remember, back in the 1970s, when the Trudeau government paid them so much an acre not to grow wheat. Then, when Canada was suffering from a glut of wheat, our government announced, to parliamentary cheers, that we had just sold a billion dollars worth of bushels to China. But when I read the small print I discovered that we were lending the Chinese the billion bucks to pay for the wheat. Put plainly, it was hard-working city folks, their jobs ever at risk in unpredictable economic cycles, who were forking out to help Western farmers yet again. Farmers, I should add, who often wintered in Arizona, unlike men and women who worked in factories, or the suits who had to suffer ice and snow en route to a three-hour lunch.