APPENDIX 1
Memorandum submitted by the Future of
Rural Society (A2)
RURAL WHITE PAPER—OUR COUNTRYSIDE?
It is with due respect to your Committee that
the convenor of Rural Society, now aged 60 and remaining without
the basic or material effects with which to further such a life,
having made his family contribution to "Social Enterprise"
and subjected to the previous Member State's deplorable and negative
representation when the winter of 1981-82, frozen up and snow
bound from mid December 1981 until the following February.
The subsequent hailstones which added to the
displacement and wiping out of his enterprise which was fully
in keeping with the Member State's Rural Development Plans legislated
in October 1980 when the convenor purchased a neglected smallholding
with his three young daughters, he relates that given the continuous
statements made by Minister's "I do not wish to see the Countryside
turned into a museum—but a working Countryside" (John
Gummer MP when Environment Minister) and now with a Labour Member
State "A Living & Working Countryside".
Since the tragic and stressful period of that
time, he has never been idle for one day, he has researched more
of the rural and English Countryside in the past 18 years, has
conveyed reports to the former Department of the Environment Transport
and the Regions, refused to recognise the victimising and incompatible
Jobseekers Allowance and now, at such an age has been left since
October 1996 destitute via the "competence" of the Member
State.
He relates to the Chairman, to the Honourable
Members that given the loss of such Rights and Freedoms whilst
Minister's and their Civil Servants abuse and ridicule his life,
he also faces the loss of his basic pension, is this what this
Committee wish to further as the wholesale exodus of aged and
ruined farmers also have to face, he urges this Committee to review
the Rural White Paper, let those within Rural Society be left
with some financial and human dignity rather than left to the
fiscal obscenity that the convenor cites as the precedence via
his own experience.
To the Chairman and Hon. Members as another
winter descends, there must be a vision for the continuing change,
rural development will fail as the elements of market forces across
the rural property market dictate otherwise, less pretence and
more realism on the part of this Committee is what is called for
and more than justified.
Future of Rural Society
24 October 2001
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