Farming

Dom Perignon, Pimms, Carling Black Label, Coca-Cola — one’s as good as the other, so far as they’re concerned. Even if they don’t manage to drown in the stuff, they spoil the taste for drinkers by creating panic out of all proportion to their size. They destroy the ardour of al-fresco lovers in an instant. They are the joy-killers: the destroyers of summer, determined to prove that the wild world is a plot against humanity. Is there anything good about wasps? Is their sole purpose in life to harass humans seeking the fleeting joys of summer? Does this black-and-yellow air force exist only to ruin the few fine days reluctantly

My pen hovers — but refuses to touch the postal ballot paper. I pour a drink (I won’t say whether claret, schnapps or English ale) and break off to watch Versailles, with its parade of lecherous continental backstabbers. The blood stirs, but still I cannot choose. So I defer the moment of decision, Remain or Leave, until after a short trip to France… Middle-aged match Meanwhile, business as usual. Microsoft is spending $26 billion to acquire LinkedIn, the social network for job-seekers. That looks a crazy price for a venture which lost $166 million last year on revenues of $2.9 billion and has never been regarded as cool. But what

When an old friend X came to dinner in London, I sampled what it must have been like during the American Civil War, when families were split asunder from aligning on opposite sides of the Mason-Dixon. Lo, this warm-hearted, well-read, intelligent Midwesterner is backing Donald Trump. This was my husband’s introduction to X, whose electoral preference clearly queered the first impression. Our threesome didn’t talk long on the matter. The disconnect being so absolute, there was little to say. X is the only Trump supporter I wittingly know. But I was chilled by the difference between this and countless heated-but-civil suppers of yore, at which a dinner guest plumped rambunctiously

As Nigel Farndale wrote in this magazine in February, leaving the EU would have a dramatic effect on British farmers and the agricultural industry. When it comes to British agriculture, the EU very much sets the rules – with regards to both regulations and funding – so a vote for Brexit would mean change, in a big way.   But what makes the EU debate even more interesting when it comes to farming is that the farming minister – George Eustice – has placed himself firmly in the ‘out’ camp. Eustice, after all, was once a Ukip candidate in the European Parliament Elections, and was Campaign Director for the No

It was the nightingale I liked best. Or maybe the auroch. The nightingale sang strong and marvellously sweet when all the other singers had given up, his voice filling the night. Each nightingale has a personal repertoire of 250 phrases made from 600 individual sound units. I ran into the auroch at six the next morning: enormous, uncompromising and emerging from the bush with a formidable set of horns. Now it’s true that aurochs went extinct 400 years ago; they were the wild cattle of Europe, Asia and North Africa, ancestors of all our domestic stock. But this wild and extraordinary place is full of free-ranging old English longhorn cattle,

As our Barometer column reminded us this week, a campaign is underway  to reintroduce the Eurasian lynx – which became extinct in the UK around 1,300 years ago – to the British countryside. But is bringing back lynx to the wilds of the UK really a good idea? Well, for starters there are many farmers and livestock owners who certainly won’t be very pleased to see them. Lynx UK – who are behind the plans – have claimed that they are willing to subsidise farmers for any loss of livestock that the lynx are responsible for. But that probably won’t put farmers’ minds at rest – especially hill farmers, whose animals would