Wilful Blindness

Wilful Blindness is the title of a newly published book by Margaret Heffernan. Much recommended.
It is also a condition suffered by members of the Environment Farming and Rural Affairs Select Committee of the House of Commons who want headage payments to encourage farmers to cover all our uplands with sheep and cattle taking us back to a situation we had not long ago when you could walk nowhere that didn't reek of sheep pee.

Launching the report Committee Chair, Anne McIntosh MP, said:
"The Government must find a better way to pay farmers for maintaining our unique upland landscapes.
Headage payments, together with appropriate environmental safeguards, could provide the answer for these remote farming areas.

It is of course well known to anyone who listens to countryside and farming programmes on radio and tele that there are people who actually seem to believe that our 'unique' landscapes are best 'preserved' by stopping native trees from growing on them. The horror of this can only be fully appreciated when you consider that the moors might then start to look natural.