48 Comment Safwynt Plaid with Simon Tomas I AM SURE Christmas has
been a busy time for many of you, with family visiting or visiting family and much food buying and preparation. I have talked before about how important it is to buy as locally as possible. My week leading up to Christmas was filled with discussions with our farmers turning around the key issues affecting the agricultural industry, including bTB eradication, the dairy industry and the proposal to create Nitrogen Vulnerable Zones (NVZs) here in the west. If we don’t get these issues right
for the environment and farming over the next few months, then our farmers could have an even more uncertain economic future. And that’s without factoring in the continuing uncertainty over the terms of Brexit. I was pleased to visit Berian farm,
Morice’s Gwarcaeau,
Llangwyryfon, near Aberystwyth, with other NFU Ceredigion members to discuss these issues. The implementation of NVZs could be particularly problematic. Though there are places in the region with poor quality water where
BADGER’S
nitrogen run off needs to be addressed, the evidence that NVZs that only address farm use can deal with this is limited. The proposals include placing
strict limitations on the amount of slurry, farmyard manure and nitrogen fertiliser which can be used on farm, as well as imposing closed periods on farmers which would limit the periods of the year when we can apply these nutrients onto land. These means that farmers would
need to be able to store slurry on farm for up to five months of the year. The cost of such investment at a time when the average farm business income on Welsh dairy farms has fallen by a 53%, in the 12 month period up to March 2016, could be prohibitive.
One local farmer wrote to me
telling me it could cost his dairy farm £70,000 to meet these requirements. bovine TB continues to cause
untold heartache and stress to cattle farmers and places an enormous financial cost on the taxpayer. It is a complex disease that must be tackled in the round, including addressing wildlife disease reservoirs in areas where the disease is endemic, if we are to stand any chance of eradicating the disease. The Welsh Government’s new
proposals to deal with bovine TB are currently being examined by the Climate Change, Energy and Rural Affairs Committee on which I serve in the National Assembly.
Eluned Morgan Mid & West Labour AM
I’VE BEEN in St Davids for
the New Year spending time with my family. You probably heard us banging our saucepans at midnight! I hope you’ve also enjoyed a great Christmas break. Not everyone is so fortunate, of course. For those without families and friends, the holidays can be a lonely time. That’s why I was so heartened to learn that around 100 people got together to celebrate in Milford Haven at the annual Christmas Together event organised by Labour County Councillor Guy Woodham and Town Councillor Colin Sharp. It’s amazing what a difference volunteering makes to our communities, both in terms of giving support when needed as well as being rewarding to those stepping up.
A Welsh Labour Government
decision which will make a difference for the better for our communities in 2017 is the setting up of the Welsh Development Bank. The new bank will be tasked with providing more than £1 billion of investment support to Welsh business over the next five years and will ensure micro to medium businesses in Wales have greatly improved access to finance, support services and management advice. The Development Bank will be working alongside businesses and banks, providing top up finance where necessary and helping businesses to access innovative sources of funding such as crowd funding. It’s also welcome news that the Welsh Government will be investing
an additional £53 million to meet Welsh Labour’s pledge to building 20,000 new affordable homes across Wales. The availability of affordable housing is one of the significant challenges of our time, and I know it’s a worry to many. In total, £1.36 billion will be invested during this Assembly to delivering this ambitious commitment. There will be extra money too for local authorities to help them tackle homelessness. There’s much to build on as we
go into 2017. If you’d like to send me your views on what matters to you in the year ahead, you can find me at
www.facebook.com/ elunedmorganAM or contact me via my website - www.elunedmorgan. wales.
Blwyddyn Newydd Dda! DYNAMIC TENSION THERE comes a time in every
badger’s life when thoughts turn to regaining the svelte form of one’s past, or perhaps to making an effort to at least attempt to recapture the svelte shape one imagines one’s past self as having. Badger has had perhaps three
periods in his adult life when he was in something like tip top physical condition, the last of them many (many) moons ago. Now - as years of idleness, indulgence and sloth begin to make themselves felt in a variety of subtle and not-so-subtle ways - Badger has a choice to make. As he considers saving the life of a stranger 15 years hence, he has to decide whether he would be prolonging youthful vigour or risk ending up like Tithonus, a long life in ill-health like some sort of Struldbrug. It’s a tricky one, readers. After all, as a host of unoriginal
advertising features in any number of local newspapers across the UK will tell you it’s ‘New Year, New You’.
But what if you like the old you? Badger means to ask you: is
there so much wrong with a life of tea, books, and Radio 4? Is there a way in which sweating and gasping on a treadmill is qualitatively better than snuggling up with an un- improving book of verse or worse? Badger is prepared to give
healthy eating a go. There is not much difference between roasted dormouse and fried, after all. And hedgehog stuffed with slugs does not have to be battered to get a proper crunch going on. As long
as brassicas and swede are off the menu, Badger can stomach almost anything. And, over the course of his life, he has. But when it comes to donning
training shoes on his paws and pounding the pavements with day-glo earphones on his noggin while he listens to suitably rousing music – Beethoven’s 5th, The Lark Ascending, the theme to Roobarb and Custard – your furriest of chums draws the line. And yet we are told that
moderate physical activity is the key to improving one’s health and prospects of longevity. So, ruling out exercise of any form would appear to be counter-productive. Perhaps there is some form of exercise one could carry out sitting down, while listening to The World at One or Gardener’s Question Time. Modern technology being what
it is, Badger saw no point in trying to re-invent a larger circular object often used as a means of propulsion. He used Google. Imagine Badger’s delight at the
cornucopia of knowledge that a simple search produced. Badger discovered ‘exercises
you can do while sitting down in the office’. Number one was ‘buttock clenches to give you buns of steel’. Badger discounted that one: with
a diet rich in carbohydrates, he did not want to risk any unseemliness as a result of compressing his lower intestine too much. Moreover, and he is prepared to concede he may have misunderstood the idiom, Badger sees no point in buns of
THE HERALD FRIDAY JANUARY 6 2017
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