Poor farmers
Sir: In your editorial of 10 December you wrote: `if there is one scandal for which this Government may be remembered, it is the way in which agriculture has been grotes- quely pampered.'
The Midland Bank, quoting the Annual Review of Agriculture 1982, gives the following index for net agricultural income before tax, adjusted for inflation, since 1977: 1977 = 100 1978 = 91 1979 = 74 1980 = 57 1981 = 62 1982 = 84 Thus under Mrs Thatcher's stewardship, annual real net agricultural income has been on average 23.9 per cent below the level of 1977.
It may be that farmers were dispropor- tionately well off in 1977, but Mrs Thatcher cannot fairly be blamed for aggravating that disproportion. Has any other section of the community — even the unemployed taken as a whole — lost 16 per cent of its real income since 1977? What proportion of farmers' 1977 income do you consider reasonable for 1983?
As for the 50 tuneful Irish farmers found by Mr Christopher Hitchens 'in the most expensive restaurant in Athens': why is it acceptable for a reporter to patronise such a restaurant, but not a farmer?
Later in the same issue (10 December) Mr Anthony Starr gives the answer, 'the English elitist ideal is of someone who manipulates verbal symbols with effortless superiority, but who is entirely remote from the business of production which makes his civilised life style possible.'
C. Nicholas Phipps
Baldromma Christian, Onchan, Isle of Man
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