Help to educate a minister

While you have to accept that the majority of people in the UK live in towns and that most central policies are town based one cannot escape the impression that our current government oscillates between bemusement and active hostility in its approach to the rural population.

The bemusement can be summed up by an article Melissa Kite in the Daily Telegraph that comments that a government minister recently telephoned her for advice on horses. Something equine had been included in his brief and she was the only person who he know who owned a horse or had even ridden one.

The hostility became evident during the row over hunting with hounds during which a number of senior politicians gave the impression that they believed that the countryside was entirely populated by jackbooted aristos who divided their time between flogging the peasantry and disemboweling small animals.

They now seem to have decided to concrete over as much of the undeveloped part of the country as possible. Probably hoping to remove the problem for ever or simply as revenge for the miners’ strike. (I have always failed to follow the logic on that particular connection as the Thatcher government was, in many ways, just as urban based as this one. However, that’s another issue).

A lack of understanding of country life has to be part of the problem. For example, look at the background of Caroline Flint the current housing minister. Elected in 1997 and one of Blair’s Babes she rose on the coat-tails of the Orange One (Peter Hain). Following the Hain implosion she is out there on her own.

We learn that she has a strongly political background having worked for local government in Lambeth and as a union official for the GMB. In other words, never had a proper job. She sits for a mining constituency. Not much experience of rural life there.

In an attempt the educate Caroline the Council for the Preservation of Rural England has an e-petition about the 3 million new houses that the government is planning to build. (They are against it). If you would like to add your signature you can do so via their website at www.cpre.org.uk