Is this the right time to try it?

A recent edition of Countryfile made a concerted effort to promote a positive view of 'regenerative farming'. But however fashionable it may be it's worth noting where utopian visions of farming can lead. A nationwide experiment in organic farming by the Rajapaksa government in Sri Lanka went catastrophically wrong. In April 2021, Sri Lanka became the world’s first organic-only nation, by banning all agrochemicals.

 

Here's the start of an article from Foreign Policy from March that explained what happened next:

Faced with a deepening economic and humanitarian crisis, Sri Lanka called off an ill-conceived national experiment in organic agriculture this winter. Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa promised in his 2019 election campaign to transition the country’s farmers to organic agriculture over a period of 10 years. Last April, Rajapaksa’s government made good on that promise, imposing a nationwide ban on the importation and use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and ordering the country’s 2 million farmers to go organic.

The result was brutal and swift. Against claims that organic methods can produce comparable yields to conventional farming, domestic rice production fell 20 percent in just the first six months. Sri Lanka, long self-sufficient in rice production, has been forced to import $450 million worth of rice even as domestic prices for this staple of the national diet surged by around 50 percent. The ban also devastated the nation’s tea crop, its primary export and source of foreign exchange.

Interestingly, even the BBC - last September - saw this coming.

It would be interesting to see a Justin Rowlatt report about this. Or Roger Harrabin.

“BBC delivers progress on Impartiality Plan” - a review

BBC delivers progress on Impartiality Plan, the BBC Media Centre boldly asserted today.

The BBC says it has updated its whistleblowing policy and how it handles fast-tracked complaints. Given past horrors over the treatment of whistleblowers [e.g. Mark Killick and Liz MacKean] the former needed close attention, and Ofcom has expressed dissatisfaction with the BBC about the latter. 

The BBC has appointed two External Editorial Experts. That's a step forward, given that the BBC has long been reluctant to having outsiders looking at bias, with a Tubbs and Edward-like resistance to 'non-locals' at the corporation. The two appointees in question - Caroline Daniel and Michael Prescott -  held senior rolls at the FT and Sunday Times respectively. 

The first thematic review, into BBC taxation and public spending output, led by Sir Andrew Dilnot and Michael Blastland, is still going on and due to be published this year. Will it show that the BBC thinks public spending is the solution to most of life's problems?

The content reviews remain internal and will look at editorial standards and culture including impartiality, freedom of expression, diversity of voices, accuracy, fairness and trust. The first ones will look at BBC Breakfast, Countryfile and the English language morning radio news programmes in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. “These selections have not been made because of particular impartiality concerns,” the BBC insists. The Daily Telegraph, however, cites sources “acknowledging that Countryfile was a show which regularly prompted complaints,” so I'm not convinced that either that programme or BBC Breakfast [with its co-presenters who mock our country's flag] was innocently chosen.

Over 24,000 BBC people have received impartiality training, and all newcomers will complete impartiality training. I must admit I'd have thought impartiality training would have been standard at the BBC for years rather than just up-and-running since last year.

BBC staff surveys looked at impartiality for the first time. 94% of staff from across the BBC who took part said they understood why impartiality is important. You do wonder about the remaining 6% though who don't think impartiality is important. What BBC jobs are they in?

"Recognising the pain of the past and the lingering ambient racism we don’t get to feel"

 

Ellie Harrison

A decade ago I remember a lively chat in the comments at Biased BBC about Countryfile's Ellie Harrison after she appeared on The One Show sporting an impartiality-busting CND T-shirt. 

Some complained about BBC bias, but others said they'd forgive her anything and claimed they hadn't even noticed the political T-shirt covering her bust. 

Of course, that's truly appalling #everydaysexism, guaranteed to make all of us self-respecting feminists (female or male or whatever) lunge for our handkerchiefs and our smelling salts. 

Anyhow, Ellie - endlessly leg-flashing and ultra-conspicuously blonde - thrived and prospered at the BBC whilst simultaneously flagging up her fulsome commitment to feminism in media interview after media interview.

And now she's approaching that perilous age where many a brave woman before her has been controversially, and lawsuit-inducingly, dumped into the Countryfile thresher for becoming middle-aged, and has clearly gone ostentatiously out of her way to hit the headlines by talking divisive, BBC-friendly, 'woke' drivel about racism and the countryside. 

(My sexist friends tell me she still looks great, so I'm sure she'll be safe for a few years yet. And, in response to the criticism about them dropping women for reaching middle age, the programme disinterred Radio 4's Charlotte Smith - one of those they'd culled in 2009 to bring in young, pretty Ellie).

Here's a flavour of what she said:

I spooled through the comments [to the report], which broadly came in three flavours: ‘I’m not racist so there is no racism in the countryside’; ‘I’m black and I’ve never experienced racism in the countryside’; and importantly, ‘I have experienced racism in the countryside’. 

So there’s work to do. Even a single racist event means there is work to do. In asking whether the countryside is racist, then yes it is; but asking if it’s more racist than anywhere else — maybe, maybe not.

Until this point [the Black Lives Matter campaign], I believed ignorantly that me being not racist was enough. I believed that I should keep quiet and listen to black people. That’s because I read and loved every Alice Walker book as a teenager, have watched Oprah every day since I was a youngster . . . it wasn’t my problem.

There is a big and crucial difference between being not racist and being anti-racist. At times in the past I have given measured and polite replies to people — sometimes close to me — who had said racist things. But being anti-racist means being much clearer that it isn’t acceptable.

It’s our individual work to wrap our heads around history. The work also includes recognising the pain of the past and the lingering ambient racism we don’t get to feel. It means acknowledging that we have benefited from the past, the behaviours of many generations ago.

My favourite bit there was where she said, in signalling her virtue about racism whilst simultaneously signalling her virtuous recognition that as a white women she still needs to signal much more, "That’s because I read and loved every Alice Walker book as a teenager, have watched Oprah every day since I was a youngster". 

That's still making me chuckle. It's the kind of line a truly great satirist would write. 

Except, of course, it's not satire.

Though it may disappoint a certain, male segment of the Countryfile audience, I'm sure Ellie will realise what she has to do: check her white privilege, leave Countryfile and make way for someone better suited to tick BBC boxes.

The programme has been giving black and ethnic minority presenters a big push in recent years, but exponentially more still needs doing. 

Hopefully, on their Christmas special this year, a newly-roasted John Craven will be served up for the endlessly diverse newcomers with stuffing and parsnips and horse chestnuts and a festive gravy made from a freshly-composted Tom Heap - something that would make a great cover for the 2021 Countryfile calendar.

Very personal

"Not fast enough for my pixie boots"

Exasperated cries of "The BBC says trees are racist" went up this weekend after BBC One's Countryfile took its knee to Black Lives Matters and broadcast a piece about racism and the British countryside from an unbalanced, BLM-supporting angle. 

Though Countryfile has ostentatiously gone out of its way in recent years to prove that it is hitting all the right targets and ticking all the right diversity boxes (first young female presenters, then Asian presenters, then black presenters, then disabled presenters), this was still a clear and dramatic gear change bias-wise: an in-your-face gesture of empathy/sympathy towards the controversial, highly divisive, identity politics-driven agenda of Black Lives Matter - albeit delivered by a very nice-seeming young black man. 

What intrigued me though was that Countryfile veteran Ellie Harrison introduced it by describing it as "a very personal investigation". 

That's BBC language I recognise. It's 'distancing language'. And I'd suggest it hints that certain brave souls at the BBC weren't entirely happy with it. 

If so (and it's hardly a big, consequential gesture anyhow), I wouldn't blame them in the slightest. 

Yes, Countryfile has become over-politicised in recent years (in predictable directions), but why would the regulars on the team, both in front of and behind the camera, feel wholly comfortable with having such toxic, inflammatory stuff broadcast 'in their name'? 

I know I wouldn't.

Titbits

Here are some titbits that you may have missed from the dead tree press this weekend:

I

Charles Moore on Nick Robinson:

Someone like Nick Robinson, for example – another of the Today presenters – is just as good as Humphrys in the role of crazed dentist looking for holes in a politician’s teeth, but one feels that his motive is different. The essential Robinson message is “I know more about politics than you, so let me handle this”.

II

Camilla Tominey on Question Time:

If we view Southampton as a microcosm of Britain, last night’s episode taught us two things: firstly that Boris Johnson is not quite as unpopular as his detractors - including the BBC - care to make out and secondly, that the Liberal Democrat’s new “cancel Brexit” policy is anathema to huge swathes of the general public. 

III

Not so Fab-u-lous for another Craig:

Strictly Come Dancing judge Craig Revel-Horwood, 54, has been banned by the BBC from using his ‘Fab-u-lous’ catchphrase outside the show. He was reportedly hoping to use it as the name for a range of wines. Judges cannot exploit their on-air roles for commercial gain.

IV

Inaccessible Ben:

Yes, I am undeniably privileged, something I am enormously thankful and grateful for. Socially, my opinions on class, the economy and politics are often dismissed because I’m “privileged” and therefore also “disconnected” — or, as the BBC referred to me when I was dropped from presenting Countryfile, “inaccessible”.

V

Justin Webb on John Humphrys:

‘Oh, wearing jeans, are we?” It’s four in the morning last Thursday and John Humphrys has arrived for his final appearance on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. Actually, my trousers are pressed cotton, clean on and neater than anything he normally wears. But this is no normal day: it’s a special day and John has dressed special. In a suit. As he would have done growing up at home when something happened — a funeral or a wedding, perhaps. A working-class respect for time and place. For occasion.

VI

Rod Liddle on John Humphrys: 

One or two directors-general resented both his interviewing style and his prominence. I remember being told by a middle manager, in about 1998, that our interviewers should “go easy” on Blair’s government because it was terribly popular with the people. It was an instruction I totally ignored and certainly never passed on to Humphrys, who would have merely ratcheted up the ferocity a bit more. Later managers worried about the fact that he wasn’t quite woke, like all the rest of the BBC’s employees — forgetting that 75% of the country (that is, the licence fee-payers) aren’t woke either, and won’t be woke no matter how many alarms you set or how much our dozing bodies are prodded by the hyperbolic liberals in an attempt to make us so. 

Who ate all the pies?

Tom's pie chart

Comments here and elsewhere noted that this week's Countryfile took a sharp left turn, with Tom Heap looking at  UK land ownership and tax avoidance, and concluding that "it's clearly very important that the countryside doesn't simply become a tax haven for the super rich".

Land reform campaigner Guy Shrubsole from Friends of the Earth appeared, as did Robert Palmer from the left-wing Tax Justice Network. (You might as well face it he's addicted to stamping out tax avoidance).

Here's a transcript:

ELLIE HARRISON: Now, many of us have strong feelings of shared responsibility and even a sense of ownership over our countryside. But is too much of it now in the hands of the super-rich looking for tax breaks? Here's Tom.

TOM HEAP: The value of our countryside speaks for itself. A wise man once said, "Buy land - they're not making it any more." But here in the UK, getting your hands on a slice of the pie isn't easy. Today in England, 50% of the land... ..is owned by less than 1% of the population. And in Scotland, a little over 1,000 people... ..own 70% of the land. That's a lot of our land being swallowed up. But what does it matter who owns the countryside? Well, the Scottish Land Commission has warned we're facing a land monopoly that could lead to an abuse of power. And there are also concerns that some landowners are more interested in securing tax breaks than managing the actual land. So is the UK countryside in danger of becoming little more than a rural tax haven? Trying to find out who owns all this land isn't easy. There is a Land Registry for England and Wales, and separate ones for Northern Ireland and Scotland, where we should be able to look up ownership - but in many cases, the entries simply aren't there. Take the land around me here in West Berkshire - it's among the millions of acres that the Land Registry simply doesn't have an entry for. Guy Shrubsole is a campaigner who's spent years digging through the English register's dead ends, and he's discovered nearly a fifth of our land is not properly accounted for.

TOM HEAP: So why have you brought me to this particular spot?

GUY SHRUBSOLE: Well, this is a spot of actually unregistered land, which means that we don't know who the landowner is.

TOM HEAP: It seems so bizarre. I mean, how come?

GUY SHRUBSOLE: 17% of England and Wales is actually unregistered land. The Land Registry has been around since about 1862, yet it still hasn't actually finished the job.

The HM Land Registry puts the missing figure at 14%, but say they aim to have it sorted by 2030. While a lack of information is one issue, Guy thinks it's what the records DO tell us that's the real problem.

GUY SHRUBSOLE: A really large number of big estates can trace their land ownership back as far as the Norman Conquest from 1066, when William the Conqueror came over, conquered England and handed out the land to his 200 barons. I think it says quite a lot about how concentrated power, wealth and land still is in our country and I think that's quite worrying for how we look after the countryside. 

Including the unaccounted-for chunk, Guy estimates nearly half of the land is where it's been for centuries - in the hands of old money. But the landscape is changing. Today, almost a fifth of land rests with new money - oligarchs, entrepreneurs and investors. Approaching another fifth is owned by private companies...with the rest split between the public sector, charities, the Crown and the Church. Modern-day land barons range from the Duke of Buccleuch, who owns more than 200,000 acres or 81,000 hectares, and the Duke of Abercorn in Northern Ireland - it's thought he owns at least 15,000 acres - to foreign investors like the Sheikh of Dubai, with more than 60,000 acres in the Scottish Highlands, and the American energy company Valero, which is reported to own 17,000 acres running from Wales to north-west England. With 95% of the land eaten up, there's little left for the rest of us. And that lack of opportunity is being felt across rural communities. Some say this is a land grab that has left small-scale farmers across the UK struggling to expand their business, or even get a foothold on the rural property ladder. One man who dreams of doing both those things is Matt Launder. He's a first-generation tenant farmer giving it his best shot in Welshpool.

TOM HEAP: Tell me about the struggles you've had in the last year or so with land and getting the right ground to farm.

MATT LAUNDER: Predominantly I am a tenant farmer, I farm 11-month tenancies, so when it comes to that you don't ever know year-on-year if you're going to keep that ground, so there was about 300 acres of the farm which I rented that was sold off, you know, and that's...

TOM HEAP: A big proportion.

MATT LAUNDER: It's a big chunk of my business, yeah. But it was, you know his choice to do, it was his land. I don't know of many tenancies about now which are longer than 11 month, so us as the next generation or the first generation of farmers, that's how we do it, it's all risk. But to grow my business, it's something I'll have to keep doing, and it's just part of it, I think.

TOM HEAP: You must know other young farmers like yourself - what are they telling you? How difficult is it to get established as a farmer today?

MATT LAUNDER: It's seriously hard, I think, it's seriously hard but very worthwhile. You know, we're coming from nothing and competing with someone who's established, but that is the way of the business. And one day I will hopefully be that established person. But it's the beginning and, you know, no good songs are written about an easy start, are they? 

Matt is clearly one to watch. He's got the drive to succeed in a tough business but he risks getting left behind as farmland is snapped up by those who can afford it. Even with a recent slow-down caused by Brexit, the price of land has gone up fivefold since 1995. And estate agents are marketing UK farmland to attract the richest investors from across the globe. It's clear where they think the value of land lies - farmland is transferable to the next generation in a tax-efficient way. It sounds more like trading stocks and shares than looking after what's around me here. Some of the attraction lies in Agricultural Property Relief - or APR for short - which was written into inheritance tax law 35 years ago. It was designed to help family farms survive when they are passed on to the next generation. But today critics say it's allowed the wealthy to harvest tax breaks. Robert Palmer is from the campaign group Tax Justice UK.

ROBERT PALMER: The idea of what we want to do is build political momentum to get a fairer, more effective tax system here in the UK.  

He says the UK Treasury has lost millions as wealthy investors deliberately buy up land so they don't have to pay inheritance tax:

TOM HEAP: Just as an example, say I had a £500,000 house and I wanted to pass it on to my kids, or I had £500,000 of agricultural land, what would be the difference? 

ROBERT PALMER: So on the agricultural land, you could pass on the whole amount tax-free to your children. For your house, you'd have your £325,000 threshold and above that you would pay 40% tax on the amount that was left. So you'd be paying about £70,000 of tax. 

TOM HEAP: In what sense is this unjust? 

ROBERT PALMER: There is absolutely no cap on it. Our research shows that there are just 60 families sharing £100 million of tax relief between them. These are huge amounts of money that are going to already wealthy families. 

Although he agrees that APR is vital to the survival of smaller family farms, Robert thinks the relief should be targeted to avoid abuses.

ROBERT PALMER: So one of the very obvious things would be to put a cap on the amount of relief you could get. So for example you could say the government will give tax relief up to £1 million worth of property, and after that there's no more. You could also say, for example, that if farmers had held the land for ten years or more they could also be able to get the relief. 

HM Treasury says APR relief can only be applied to working farms, which means any landlord claiming it must prove a commitment to farming the land. But is money flowing from business into the countryside really all that bad? Last year I put these very tax concerns to Sir James Dyson, the vacuum cleaner tycoon who's bought up large swathes of the countryside.

TOM HEAP: So this isn't just something that you're doing for tax purposes, a tax dodge.

SIR JAMES DYSON: No, no. Far from it. I'm investing a lot of money. We've built 93 miles of hedging. We're building 15km of dry stone walling, we're repairing all the ditches, about 650 hectares, and set aside grass. 

So big estates can provide real payoffs for the countryside and environment. One businessman who's bought into land, albeit on a much smaller scale, is Roger Saul - he started the fashion brand Mulberry. 15 years ago, he moved from handbags to grain sacks as he began growing organic spelt on the Sharpham estate in Somerset, which he bought from a neighbour.

TOM HEAP: So why the move from bags to farming?

ROGER SAUL: I'd had a crash landing with Mulberry at the end and sadly came out, but the farm came up for sale. It was the dream because I used to spend all my summer holidays with my grandparents over in Suffolk, farming.  They were farmers, so that had been sort of instilled in my brain. 

Roger converted the rundown dairy farm to grow spelt, when a doctor recommended it for his sister, who was dying of cancer at the time.

ROGER SAUL: She had been trying to get something that could work in her tummy that could perhaps rebalance the alkalinity and acidity of her body. And somebody said, "Try spelt." It's good for the mind, good for the body, good for the soul. 

With his gift for marketing, Roger has expanded the business in the past 15 years, breathing new life into the farm and the local community.

TOM HEAP: Roger, I can see you've really got a passion for this. But do you understand that for some farmers, money coming in from the outside kind of prices them out of getting on to the property ladder?

ROGER SAUL: Yeah, I can quite appreciate that. But I suppose if you look at it from my position, the fact I've created a spelt business out of nothing from here over a 15-year period and that we're probably doing, I don't know, 15 times the turnover and we're employing eleven and a half people, and we've got seven farmers growing for us - we're creating wealth for those around us - not on a big scale in any way, but we're making this all possible whilst protecting the soil, whilst protecting the environment. And I think that's vital.

TOM HEAP: So do you think this inheritance tax relief which makes that passing on easier, do you think it's right? Or do you think it's just being used as a tax dodge?

ROGER SAUL: I think in a farm of this sort of size, it's crucial. Already it's tough enough if you've got three children, I would imagine. Are you going to split your farm in three or is it going to go to one? Add that capital tax that would come in, I think it would destroy farming. 

From ancient estates to insecure tenancies, the way land is owned has a huge impact on the way it's farmed. And while it's difficult to legislate for people's motives, it's clearly very important that the countryside doesn't simply become a tax haven for the super rich. 

Heaping on the Bias

Not Ellie

What with one thing and another I've become much less of a regular Countryfile viewer than I used to be. And I've also become much less of a regular reader of Christopher Booker's Sunday Telegraph column.

We all came together today, however, when Mr Booker wrote about last Sunday's Countryfile and, via a tweet, I was reunited with both of them. (I was all ready to run into Ellie's arms, to the strains of cod Rachmaninov, but she wasn't on, alas).

Mr Booker's piece is headlined BBC groupthink is undermining its claim to impartial reporting and its particular focus was last week's report from Tom Heap about fracking:

Apart from a brief, dismissive interview with Cuadrilla’s chief executive, the item was no more than a relentlessly one-sided commercial for the vociferous anti-fracking lobby. 

The report, he says, "makes nonsense of any pretence that this is the 'impartial' reporting to which the BBC is legally committed by its charter". 

Naturally, I had to watch it myself to see if it was anywhere near as bad as Christopher Booker says. I thought he might be exaggerating.

To my surprise, not only wasn't he exaggerating but the piece was actually much worse that he'd led me to believe.

If we do a Top 10 Most Biased BBC Pieces of the Year 2018 award at New Year this year, I'm tipping this to be at No.1 (even with a third of a year still to go). I can't see anything beating it.

*******

A full transcription follows but you really to see the whole thing - the images, the background music, the inflections in Tom's voice, Tom's body language, everything.

*******

How to sum up why it's so biased a piece of BBC reporting? (And whether you favour or oppose fracking is not the issue here).

Well, just look at the was it's framed from the very start, as something "controversial" that flies in the face of hopes and expectations and history. 

And look at the loaded language used throughout, which is heavily biased from the word go. Note especially Tom's uses of  "for some" and "Some say" and "fears" and "some people speculate", etc. It all tends, and trends, just one way (against fracking).

And look out for the Bias by Placard Placement. (The link, if you click on it, explains all).

And the Government's go-ahead is repeated painted as being against the advice of its own experts, with the experts ("impartial", as Tom described them) and their findings being given uncritical treatment by Tom. 

And the Government is, again and again, made to look wrong-headed and shifty by all sort of hints and nudges from Tom. ('They delayed this, to help fracking, didn't they, nudge, nudge, wink, wink?')

And look at the way Francis Egan from Caudrilla is treated - put on the defensive from the start, his contributions brief and obviously heavilly edited, never fully given the chance to advance the case for fracking, very much placed in the naughty corner throughout via Tom's questions and framing narrative. (Why on earth did he agree to participate? Tom Heap ran rings round him and made him - and his company - look stupid and dishonest. It's as if a trap was set by the BBC here and Mr Egan walked right into it, smiling broadly).

And look at how Tom spins the to-me-somewhat-surprising polling evidence to suggest an overwhelming public opposition to fracking that the Government is brushing aside. (I expected the gap to be much wider, and for the opponents of fracking to be well above 32%).

And look how the fears of anti-fracking Jane, with her dreams and her animals, are immediately given credence by Tom. ("Well, it seems Jane may have some reason to be concerned").

*******

I was already ready to write this post, having gone most of the way though the report and gasping at the sheer scale of the bias, when the coup de grâce fell.

We were introduced to an expert who turned out to be heavily anti-fracking. And that expert, introduced as being from a "think tank", without any mention of his recent BBC past, was none other than that most biased of all the BBC's recent environment reporters, Richard Black - a man whose BBC reporting was rarely free from charges of bias and even of pro-environmentalist activism. Richard duly trashed fracking.

Dick and Tom

(Didn't the team behind Countryfile have any qualms about that?)

As is Tom's way, his closing paragraph made efforts to appear balanced. But it was the soppiest of all possible sops to impartiality. 'The mother of all sops', you might say.

*******

Seriously, please watch the thing and read the transcript below. And if you want to vote for it in our (possible) Top 10 Most Biased BBC Pieces of the Year 2018 award, I'm behind you all the way.

Anyhow, here's the transcript:

Anita Rani: Now, we're often told that clean, renewable energy is the future, so why then has the deep drilling for gas under our countryside been given the go-ahead? Tom's been finding out. 

Tom Heap: From the air around us... to the water in our seas and rivers, and the sun's rays... ..the search for a greener, cleaner energy supply the UK can rely on continues. So, for some, the news that the UK is about to launch a whole new fossil fuel industry came as a bit of a surprise. And this is it - fracking, the controversial practice of onshore deep drilling for shale gas. It's an issue we've been covering on Countryfile for years, but now there's been a big leap forward. In July, the Government gave gas company Cuadrilla the final go-ahead to start pumping shale gas from here at its Preston New Road site in Lancashire. But is the Government pushing through fracking despite warnings from its own environmental experts? Some say it's putting short-term economic gain ahead of long-term sustainable energy needs. That's something that protesters here would agree with. Today, they're out in force as the site goes into lockdown while preparations begin. 

First female protestor: The residents and the locals have spent over the last seven years, must be clocking up to nearly a million in just fighting this.
Second female protestor: Everywhere that drill rig goes, a protest group will arise out of that community. We will not stop, obviously, because this has never been a choice for us. 

The work causing so much opposition here is hydraulic fracturing, where water and chemicals are pumped at high pressure deep underground to fracture rock and release natural gas. It will be the first such project in Britain since 2011, when exploratory drilling at a nearby site set off minor earthquakes. Since then, Cuadrilla has lobbied hard to convince us fracking is safe. I was supposed to meet their CEO, Francis Egan, on site, but three days before filming, we were told we'd have to have a chat outside the fence. 

Tom Heap: We were originally hoping to get on there today. You suggested we'd be able to, but it's not happening. Why's that?
Francis Egan: Well, there's a lot of activity on the site. The noise you can hear in the background is reversing alarms and I have a site manager who tells me that his job is more important than the BBC, which I know you'll find hard to believe, but that's the case.
Tom Heap: So it's a safety thing, is it? There's not something you're trying to hide from us over there?
Francis Egan: Well, I think you can see everything there is to see there at the moment.
Tom Heap: It shows you're getting pretty close to the moment of actually starting to frack.
Francis Egan: We are indeed, yes.
Tom Heap: And for a lot of people, not least the protesters, that's a worrying moment. They're going to be thinking about earth tremors and air quality issues and things like that. How can you assure them that it's going to be safe?
Francis Egan: Well, this site behind us here is probably the most monitored oil and gas site that there ever has been in the history of oil and gas. We're monitoring air quality, water quality, seismicity, traffic movements, and we've been doing that continuously for a period of 12 months. And if there are any issues, then the operations would cease. 

Despite these assurances, the British public are yet to be convinced. For the past four years, the Government has surveyed people on their support for fracking four times a year. At the last count in April, 18% were in favour, with 32% against. But it seems the Government's no longer that keen to know what we think because in the most recent survey, that question has now disappeared. They will now only be asking once a year. And fears the Government isn't listening to concerns about fracking don't end there. When it comes to big infrastructure projects like energy supply, the Government has a team of its own impartial expert advisers in the National Infrastructure Commission. And this wide-ranging report is its assessment of what the UK needs to run effectively and efficiently. And it clearly states that if we are going to meet our climate change and emissions targets, relying on gas is not the way forward. And yet just a few days after this was published, the Government gave fracking the go-ahead. At the moment, gas makes up more than 30% of the UK's total energy demand, used for heating, cooking and to produce electricity. The Government argues that it would be far better if that gas were home-grown. But some estimates say that could mean 4,000 wells being drilled across the UK, which could swallow up swathes of our countryside, including areas like here in Roseacre, just a few miles from Preston New Road. Cuadrilla are hoping they'll get the go-ahead to frack here next. Jane Barnes and her husband built their home here more than 25 years ago. Then, it was a dream location for her family and her animals. 

Jane Barnes: Hi, Lucy. Hi, Gaby. Good girl. 

Cuadrilla submitted plans to drill here in 2014, and Jane fears the impact fracking could have. 

Tom Heap: So what is it that so worries you about this potential site?
Jane Barnes: There's the light pollution and the noise pollution and of course the 17,000 HGVs coming through our country lanes. You have to realise that this is really heavy industry with all the pollution it brings, and we live and work here. So we will get no respite.
Tom Heap: Is this, in the end, the very definition of "not in my backyard"?
Jane Barnes: No. A local gentleman told me yesterday he calls himself a SIMBY, which is "safe in my backyard", and we do not consider fracking as it is being proposed at the moment to be safe in anybody's backyard. 

Tom Heap himself

Well, it seems Jane may have some reason to be concerned. This is yet another new report by another team of Government advisers, the Air Quality Expert Group. And this one says the local impact of fracking could be significant. Anyone living near a fracking site could see their air quality suffer. But despite being written three years ago, this report only got round to being published three days after the Government gave the go-ahead for Cuadrilla to frack in Lancashire, leading some people to speculate that the Government was trying to bury this deeper than our own shale reserves. Since it was written, air quality monitoring has been introduced, but why did the Government wait so long to publish that report? They said it: "It needed thorough consideration" and was "published as soon as our sign-off procedures had been completed": It added: "Shale gas has the potential to be a new domestic energy source, delivering substantial economic benefits, nationally and locally, as well as through the creation of well-paid, high-quality jobs". But even with those jobs the British shale gas industry would bring, does fracking really make economic sense? Richard Black, from think-tank the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, isn't so sure. 

Richard Black: It's really hard to see what the rationale is, frankly. If you look at what the Government and its advisers have put down for how we need to reduce the use of gas over the next decade, really, you see a declining role for gas.
Tom Heap: But we still need gas for central heating and cooking in our homes. Is it not better that that comes from Britain than Russia or the Middle East?
Richard Black: Something that's often missed is that the gas industry is almost entirely in private hands. So the gas won't belong to Britain, it will belong to Cuadrilla or whoever gets it out of the ground. We will still be in a European gas network, whatever happens with Brexit. So the company that owns it can basically trade it wherever it wants. 

Cuadrilla says its first site will supply the local grid, but how much bigger could this industry become? 

Richard Black: Well, my personal view is that we might see commercially viable shale gas, but it'll be a cottage industry if it's anything. The need for gas is going to decline, so you would be putting your money into an industry that has a finite shelf life. 

With so many experts saying fracking might not be worth it, for the environment or the economy, why is Cuadrilla CEO Francis Egan so fired up about shale gas? 

Tom Heap:  The National Infrastructure Report says we shouldn't be relying on a gas industry into the future. Doesn't that give this place a very short shelf-life?
Francis Egan: Well, I agree entirely we shouldn't be relying on it, in the sense that it shouldn't be the only form of fuel we need, but I don't think there's any credible commentator who doesn't believe we won't be using natural gas for decades to come.
Tom Heap: But gas is something we should be weaning ourselves off. How does this help?
Francis Egan: Well, because weaning yourself off does not mean coming to an emergency stop and halt, or else people will freeze in their houses. So gas is a fuel that in any scenario for decarbonisation will be required for decades to come.
Tom Heap: But you could drill down and find that gas flows really badly out of here, and then the whole thing's been a waste of time.
Francis Egan: That's what exploration is all about.
Tom Heap: So there's real jeopardy there?
Francis Egan: Well, you call it jeopardy, we call it uncertainty. 

That's an uncertainty fracking companies are willing to take a gamble on, but it's clear that divisions on what payoff shale gas will actually deliver to the UK run as deep as ever. With fracking due to start here in just a matter of weeks and gas flowing thereafter, we should soon have a much better idea if shale gas is just going to be a brief sideshow or a key component of our energy system, with all the resulting economic impact and environmental challenges. 

BBC and Sceptre

If there's one thing the BBC does well (and the BBC still does many things well) it's covering major royal events - despite the glaring exception of the BBC's 2012 Diamond Jubilee coverage, which was widely considered a fiasco. 

I agree, for example, with what seems to be the general sentiment that their coverage of the Harry-Meghan wedding was excellent. None of my royalist friends at work found anything to object to, or even thought of finding anything to object to. I can well imagine that 18 million of HM's UK subjects watched it, someway or other, mostly on the BBC.

Republicans (of the anti-monarchy rather than the elephantine US kind) accuse the BBC of "fawning" and being "sycophantic", and are doing so again tonight as BBC One marks 65 years since Her Majesty's coronation by re-broadcasting an hour-long programme called The Coronation (see here) soon followed by a Countryfile 'Royal Special' from Windsor.

This is an odd one as far as BBC bias matters are concerned. You wouldn't expect left-liberal metropolitan BBC types to be royalist - and the BBC Twitter accounts I follow show that many if not most of them are deeply cynical about the monarchy (just as expected) and enjoy cheerily quipping at the monarchy's expense.

But I also see BBC people - often including the self-same cynics - then exulting in just how good the BBC is at covering such events and sounding as if they're cheerfully getting caught up in the royal event themselves.

So, adopting a hand-wringing pose, should the BBC be biased in favour of the British monarchy when a small but not negligible proportion of the population is in favour of abolishing the monarchy? 

Well, we are a constitutional monarchy, and most people still seem to support the monarchy. (Declaration: I'm an arch-royalist). The BBC must reflect that and play its constitutional part. If sentiment changes and we become a republic then the BBC should support the new republic and play its new constitutional part.

As they say on exam papers, discuss (if you want to)...

On Countryfile

As you'll doubtless already know, Countryfile found itself in the firing line for anti-Brexit bias at the start of the week following a report on last Sunday's edition. 

The Daily Express, which appears to be in hot pursuit of Countryfile at the moment, picked up on the outrage of some on Twitter and the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph duly followed suit. 

The Daily Express scuffed its attack rather by blaming the wrong presenter, Adam Henson, rather than the man responsible, Tom Heap. Bizarrely, though published several hours later, the Daily Mail did exactly the same thing! - leading me to guess that the Daily Mail writer pretty much copied the Daily Express's article without bothering to do much checking. (After many hours the Mail {online} edited the article to change the name, without printing any acknowledgement that it had done so!). At least the Telegraph got the right man from start. 

It all allowed Tom Heap to ignore the substance of the complaints and laugh it all off:

It made me smile because, as a Countryfile fan, I remember Adam and Tom appearing on a special (from some Countryfile event) and joking that people can't remember which one is which - though that's no excuse for lazy journalists of course. 

As for the substance of the complaints, there's no question that this was a heavily one-sided, negative piece of reporting from Tom Heap. The balance of voices was entirely one-sided and Tom's narrative was cut from the same cloth, reinforcing the negative points being made.

The added irony of that was that Matt Baker introduced the second report by hinting that there would be some balance ("But is it really as bad as some seem to think?") but it never materialised. The second report was as full of people who seem to think its "as bad as some seem to think" as the first report was. There wasn't a positive anywhere to be found. 

I can well understand then why pro-Brexit people poured onto Twitter to complain and anti-Brexit people poured onto Twitter to tell pro-Brexit people that they can't handle the truth. 

Of course, the BBC would say that this is a one-off and judge Countryfile's Brexit coverage over time, but if a report's so biased in its own right, surely that overrules the 'one off' argument?

That said, Tom Heap last got into trouble for anti-Brexit bias with the Express and some people on Twitter for his report from Spain on the 5 March edition, but, to be wholly fair to him, he barely touched on Brexit (though he mentioned climate change a few times) and focused more on possible positive developments for farming courtesy of UK science, so not every complaint against him holds water:

No matter how innovative we are, extending the UK growing season of iceberg lettuces through the winter is never going to be economically viable. There's just not enough sunlight. So if we want them on our shelves in December and January, we're going to have to continue driving them across Europe to get here and that's not helping in our battle with climate change. And then there's Brexit. We don't yet know the future trade deal, but import tariffs are a possibility, so if we can't rely on produce from Europe, could science help us out?

Anyhow, here's a transcript of last week's edition. Please judge if my complaint about it holds water:

REPORT ONE

MATT BAKER: Now, agriculture is an industry that relies on migrant workers but with Brexit on the horizon, there are worries that we could be facing a severe labour shortage. Here's Tom. 

TOM HEAP: Growing, harvesting and processing our food is a big job. And even at this time of year, there is plenty to do. A small army are preparing for the summer strawberry harvest. The fruit may be quintessentially British, but most of the workers are not home-grown. And on farms across the UK, the changing seasons will bring thousands more European workers. 

ANTHONY SNELL: Well, we're a sort of medium-sized soft fruit business. We grow about 1,000 tonnes of strawberries and about 300 tonnes of raspberries. At this time of the year, we have about 50 to 60 workers and they start arriving here in early February and then once we start picking, in early May, we'll boost up the workforce up to 300 and then it gradually reduces during the autumn time. 

TOM HEAP: Herefordshire soft fruit grower Anthony Snell says it's a British success story, which could be derailed if migration restrictions are introduced. 

ANTHONY SNELL: This isn't anything to do with migration or immigration - this is just seasonal workers coming over here, working hard, benefiting our economy and then going home. TOM HEAP: Put simply, would this farm, on anything like this scale, exist if you didn't have these workers? ANTHONY SNELL: No, there's absolutely no doubt we'd be in serious trouble if we didn't have our seasonal workers coming here. We would be out of business. It would be absolutely catastrophic to our industry. TOM HEAP: Could we not go back to the way it used to be, when students and others used to work seasonally, you know, summer jobs in the fields? ANTHONY SNELL: No - the horticulture industry is a very specialised industry. We can't just have people just turning up and picking. You know, we have to train our workforce, these are skilled seasonal workers and there just isn't the British people who want to do this work, although we'd love to employ all British people. 

TOM HEAP: His concerns about recruitment are backed up by a recent National Farmers' Union survey. It showed that this time last year, before the Brexit vote, about a quarter of farmers had problems filling seasonal vacancies. But by September, the ready supply of workers was drying up and all growers had recruitment problems. High numbers of overseas workers are present across farming and not just picking and harvesting. Highly qualified jobs like vets are affected too. At this Cotswold dairy farm, two vets are being trained to carry out TB tests - a vital part of modern cattle farming. The trainees are Cristina from Spain and Olivio from Romania. Their tutor, Ana, is Spanish too. 

ANA CANGA: We have vets coming from Portugal, vets coming from Greece, vets coming from Czech Republic... 

TOM HEAP: In fact, nearly a third of all vets in the UK were trained overseas. And in public health work, like food safety and abattoir inspections, almost all the vets are from outside the UK. 

TOM HEAP: So, is it simply the case that vets from Europe are filling the jobs that British vets don't want to do? ANA CANGA: Exactly, that is what happens. The British vets don't want to work in those fields. TOM HEAP: And for you personally, Ana, you've spent 17 years here, what do you feel about it? Do you feel worried? ANA CANGA: I am, yes, because I have a partner here with me and we are looking for a home to buy. And at the moment, we don't know if we can afford to have a mortgage for 20 years because we don't know if I can stay in this country for that long.

TOM HEAP: Others we spoke to say the fall in the pound since the Brexit vote has put some people off coming to Britain. The poor exchange rate means the most skilled pickers will earn around 75 euros less each week than a year ago. According to the National Farmers' Union, the migrant worker situation is a crisis in waiting, so what's being done? Well, that's what I'll be finding out later. 

REPORT TWO

MATT BAKER: Agriculture in the UK employs large numbers of overseas workers and with Brexit on the horizon, there are warnings of a severe labour shortage. But is it really as bad as some seem to think? Here's Tom. 

TOM HEAP: Every year, the UK horticulture industry employs around 75,000 seasonal workers, half of them coming from abroad. We're so reliant on workers from overseas to pick and process our produce that it's claimed that, without them, the horticulture business could collapse. And it's not just seasonal workers - farming employs plenty of foreign people who live here all year round, including many of our vets. The concern is that Brexit could mean restrictions on the number of foreign workers coming into the UK, so what can be done? Well, the minister responsible for farming, Andrea Leadsom, recently told farmers that technology has the answers. And for some labour-intensive fruit and veg jobs, we've already made great strides, from GPS-controlled tractors to robot weeders. But could machines replace thousands of seasonal workers? Earlier I met Herefordshire soft fruit grower Anthony Snell. This production line is processing frozen blackcurrants and, like his pickers, most of the workers are from across the European Union. 

TOM HEAP: What's going on here? ANTHONY SNELL: What we're doing now is sorting all the organic blackcurrants and they're going through their final process. TOM HEAP: They're picking out the duff ones? ANTHONY SNELL: They're picking out all the bad ones. The whole horticultural industry is spending a lot of time looking at mechanisation and robotics and everything but there's only a certain amount we can do. You saw us processing organic blackcurrants through a stringing processing line. TOM HEAP: "Stringing", that's a good word. Is that the machine that was shaking them all? ANTHONY SNELL: That's right. It's rapidly vibrating the frozen berries and knocking off the little bits of stalks and everything, clean and ready for your yoghurt. TOM HEAP: Yeah. Is there any more you could do in this packing side? ANTHONY SNELL: Well, there is, we're looking all the time because we are worried, we arre very worried about the future with the availability of labour. But basically, for the main tasks in horticulture, for picking and in strawberry crops, we need seasonal workers to pick our crops and we can't just replace them all with robots because it's a very specialised job. It would be a pretty clever robot to really replicate all the skills that our staff have. 

TOM HEAP: So what is the solution for the fruit and veg industry? I've come to Barfoots in West Sussex, a huge UK-based international vegetable grower. Three-quarters of their workers are from overseas. 

TOM HEAP: OK, Ewa, what are we doing here? EWA: I need 24 strings to have for one plant, yeah? TOM HEAP: These are the strings for the chillies to grow up. EWA: Yes, it's for the chillies to grow up and I put the thing in the up... 

TOM HEAP: Ewa is from Poland. She's been here six years.

TOM HEAP: You're very quick. Can I have a go? EWA: Yes. Yes.TOM HEAP: Once round... Oops. EWA: Yes. Then where next? TOM HEAP: Second time... I'm getting the hang of this. EWA: Yes. Very good. TOM HEAP: It'll be done by Christmas if I carry on like that. TOM HEAP: Given the choice, she'd like to stay. EWA: It's a nice job and no stress. TOM HEAP: Good money? EWA: Yes, for me, it's better money than I was in Poland. Yes, yes. TOM HEAP: Are you worried about anything in the future? EWA: Sometimes I worry about Brexit, yes, because I stay here. TOM HEAP: You want to stay here? EWA: Yes, yes, yes. 

TOM HEAP: There is hope for permanent workers like Ewa, but at the moment, their future here still remains uncertain. There's also a sense that the penny is starting to drop in government regarding seasonal workers too. Brexit Minister David Davis recently said Don't expect the door will suddenly shut. It won't." And the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, said just last week "We will need European workers to come and work here for many years to come". Ewa's boss is Barfoot's MD Julian Marks. He says growers and all their workers need a solution and they need it soon.

TOM HEAP: How worried is the whole horticulture industry about labour? JULIAN MARKS: I think the industry is worried in the short term - for 2017 and in general, there is some uncertainty as to whether we'll be able to source enough people to meet the requirements for the 2017 harvest. TOM HEAP: Really? Even for this year, there's already a worry? JULIAN MARKS: Even for this year, we're seeing the number of applications from individuals falling, and falling rapidly, as they make choices about where they go to work. 

TOM HEAP: The industry is suggesting its own solution - a new visa system to allow seasonal workers to come to the UK in a controlled way. But again, it's needed quickly. 

JULIAN MARKS: A seasonal permit system is absolutely critical. We need, in 2017, a trial of the scheme which could be applied in 2018. That would then, at least, create certainty for returners and for individuals coming in 2019. TOM HEAP: Do you think government get the urgency? JULIAN MARKS: I think they're constantly battling the political requirements of immigration and the issues surrounding that and often, perhaps, the economic importance falls away. TOM HEAP: It sounds like they don't get it. You're being too polite to say so. JULIAN MARKS: Am I being too polite? Well, they need to get on and do something in 2017. 2018 will be too late. 

TOM HEAP: Despite Julian's concerns, the government this week said there will be no workers' scheme in 2017 as employers still have access to EU labour, though it will keep the situation under review. But as for when we leave the European Union, the future still remains uncertain.