March

Another month has disappeared as quickly as it arrived, I’m told due to my age. But I’m hoping that it’s partly due to the tremendous weather we have had during March.

However, we as human beings seem to have an innate behavioural defect in that we drive ourselves into the ground by thriving on bad news.  I am indeed referring to the ‘credit crunch/recession’ that we have talked ourselves into.  I am fed up with the media telling me how bad everything is.  The more they talk about the recession, the more we react to it by losing confidence in our own ability to carry on as normal.

Having said that, I am convinced that the the banks have behaved in an unbelievably bad way and they undoubtedly have much to answer for, indeed they are to blame for causing the problem in the first place. There clearly was some very irresponsible lending and also some very poor acquisitions made by people that were supposed to be very intelligent in the banking world. However, it takes two to tango and plenty of people it seems took on loans they could not possibly sustain, which is just madness.  We have it seems very short memories, or we just can't resist the lure of a better car, better home, better holiday – all on credit, what happened to people saving so they could buy these things? Why can't people look at the bigger picture and think about the future and simple things like cost versus income ? Have we simply  lost the ability to wait for things......why does evryone think that they must have things now ? It seems to me that too many people confuse the meaning of the words NEED and WANT.  One word sums it all up in my opinion and that is GREED.

This brings me back nicely to Banks. The bonus culture for instance I think is an absolute disgrace, yes, reward people and incentivise them but put a cap on it, as opposed to giving these city folk who are oh so important,  a bonus and remuneration package when they fail.  It's unbelievable.  If we did this in our little companies we would all do bust and I don't see anybody coming over the hill to bail out the small manufacturing businesses, farmers, or for that matter any small business.  The way these banks have treated small business people, us included, is disgusting.  Taking away overdraft limits, doubling interest, just so that they can make their balance sheets look better, making it clear that  don't give a damn about small businesses despite the fact that we are the life blood of the country.

Oh dear, I've got myself all worked up now, so while I am on a roll, who came up with the phrase "Quantitative Easing" ?. The reality is that it is all about printing money to put back in the economy, great idea, but why did we give it to the bank in the shape of government bonds? Are we mad?  Why couldn't we have commissioned long awaited road improvements, or much needed bypasses around villages and towns up and down the country that are being shuddered to the ground by endless amounts of traffic going through their restricted and congested centres.  This would have created a huge amount of work for the construction industry, labourers, shovel drivers, lorry drivers, architects, planning officers, etc and put money straight back into the ordinary mans pocket to give them security in their jobs and allowed them to spend and put the money back into the everyday economy.  For heavens sake, lets help the people that matter, the hard working ordinary families up and down the land that don't want charity , just a chance to make a decent livimg.

I am also fed up with the constant drip , drip , drip of bad news...why can we not talk up the situation?  Why can't journalists find something good and encouraging to report?  This would surely get people feeling more confident in their situations and in turn would uplift and energise them.  Just a small glimmer of hope or good news could achieve this.  I'm sorry, I will stop now, even though I could rant on for ages and probably will next month, but right now I need to get back to the farm where thankfully the immutable laws of nature apply, I understand them.

So with that in mind, here is some good news.  Have a look at this months photo and see how well our oilseed rape is coming on, it looks great.  Hopefully, you can see how much it has grown.  It's nearly out in flower and has had all its fertilizer for this year (140 units of nitrogen, 50 units of sulphur per acre).  Next week we shall be putting up the 'Andys Oil' signs on the fields so people can identify which fields they could potentially have oil from.

HEADS DOWN AND HAPPY DAYS