My heart goes out to those going to London today to protest. While members of my family and the wider Bedford Borough farming community are attending I have a full day planned here at Borough Hall.
My heart goes out to them because this is a vindictive and nasty tax aimed at our farming community that follows a number of attacks that the new Labour Government have made. These attacks started with private schools and have also come to strike vulnerable pensioners. With the cold weather coming it brings home how vindictive they are.
I have a horrible feeling that this is much more about driving down the price of land to enable more housebuilding in rural areas than it is about protecting the countryside. I hope that I am proved wrong.
It's pretty grim when you have to leave your fields to go all the way to London to explain the type of family farming that we have here in Bedford Borough rather than the huge corporate farming they have elsewhere.
