Yesterday I got really cross about our cows!

(watercolour and contributory thoughts by my wife, Maggie)

I drafted out a blog yesterday about John Humphrys, milk and our cows and saved it to chew over later. I continued to seethe, changed the wording as Ed Davey bowed to his wind energy paymasters, but decided blasting off words onto a blog and sending a tweet that few people read would be useless at best and counter-productive at worst. But I know and love cows, as a pre-teen I rose every morning during weekends and school holidays, to help with the morning milking on a neighbouring farm and would not return home for breakfast until the milking parlour and its yard were properly cleaned and the cows contentedly returned to their grazing of our deep green Devonshire grass!

Whenever I pass cows in a field, happily a frequent occurrence in the part of rural France where I now live, my heart gets a lift, and I will often stop to exchange something I cannot explain that lies in the eyes and the stares of these tranquil beasts. Cattle herding in this part of France, where the Artenacian culture thrived before 2,600 BC, is a mark of mankind's gradual civilisation, to watch it disappear from our countryside to be replaced by giant dairy factories, wherever they are located, will erode not just our civilisation but our humanity. Cows give to mankind their trust, milk and beef; in return we must maintain the pastoral environment they deserve and ensure that their useful lives are passed pain free and in comfort in the countryside both species needs for the good of their souls.

I spent much time in Switzerland at one stage of my life. The Swiss pay a premium on their milk to sustain the husbandry of their cattle high in their mountain meadows and Alpine villages - one reason they have been saved from the horrors of the EU, thanks also of course to their direct democracy!

Here is a chance for we in England to make a stand against the EU. We should defy all their rules and ban the sale of non-English milk within our country. Farmers should be guaranteed a minimum milk price and comply with strict rules on the care,  grazing and winter accomodation for their cattle. Here is surely where the fight- back against the evils of the EU, the consequences of which we see all around us, and daily hear from the likes of Jonn Humphrys and his colleagues within the BBC, can begin.

I quote below my initial furious blog on this topic drafted yesterday, to forestall any email requests for details:

The Lib/Dem energy minister Ed Davey, should eventually face charges of criminal negligence for this absurd waste of 3 billions of funds at a time of supposed austerity and following yesterday's announcement of the destruction of the army and this morning's cries for help from our farmers at the destruction of cattle herding in this land, a symbol of our civilisation since the dawn of time, brushed aside by the BBC Radio 4 Today presenter, city dweller John Humphrys, now entering his scoffing and giggling second childhood of self-delusion, brought on, perhaps, by senile dementia! Read the report on the wind farms here. Rant ends.