(Link: The Guardian, 5 January)
This article represents remarks made in a speech by Defra Secretary Caroline Spelman at the Oxford Farming Conference.
    Addressing delegates, Spelman called for the fundamental reform of the European system of subsidies for farmers. Her proposals include less reliance on giving farmers direct payments, providing them instead to farmers and landowners who take steps to protect the environment; an end to export bans; and an expectation that wider public goods should be delivered in return for taxpayers money.
    Hinterland readers already following the conference may have seen press coverage of a rival event co-organised by Colin Tudge and aptly titled the "Oxford Real Farming Conference", believing the flagship conference at which Spelman was speaking to be pro-GM. While both events in different ways seek to reconcile the relationship between food and nature/landscape, the role of science and food security; what is unrefuted is that tens of billions of Euros are being spent through the CAP each year.
    Decisions need to be taken about its future post 2013 and this requires a move away from CAPs problems to its prospects. Importantly, many reformers are aware of what is wrong with the CAP and want to work to ensure that the resource it represents is better used. At the same time that the conferences are taking place the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has published an Index documenting the soaring prices of sugar, grain and oilseed in December 2010, surpassing the levels of 2008 when the cost of food sparked riots around the world.
    What might the reform agenda being proposed by Spelman mean for rural communities, the big society, the environment and public health?  

(Link: The Independent, 5 January)
According to this article, bins in some parts of the country have been unemptied for up to four weeks. Bob Neill (the Minister responsible for local government and planning at CLG) has now written to council leaders telling them that refuse collection is a service that should be provided.
    In response, Clyde Loakes, Vice Chairman of the Local Government Association (LGA) Environment Board, has said: "residents can rest assured that waste collection is a priority. The lengthy bout of unusually severe weather in December disrupted a number of bin routes. As a result some collections had to be missed for safety reasons and made up later...The vast majority of councils have caught up with the backlog and are now offering a normal service".
    In November 2010, Defra published municipal waste management statistics, including data for individual local authorities and regions of waste generation and management. Encouragingly, the statistics reveal an annual downward trend in the household waste generated since 2006/07 and the proportion of household waste sent for recycling, composting or reuse increasing since 2008/09.
    With many Councils implementing fortnightly rather than weekly collections and enhancing their offer through food waste collection services, and planned incinerators dubbed 'dash for ash' planned across the UK, waste and how to manage it remains a challenging issue.

(Link: The Independent, 5 January)
Against the following background information let's "rural proof" last month.
    "The average temperature for December was minus 1C, significantly colder than the long term average of 4.2C and lower than the previous coldest December in 1981, when temperatures averaged 0.1C over the month. December 2010 was the coldest month in England and Wales since February 1986, the coldest in Scotland since February 1947 and in Northern Ireland it was the coldest on record. It has emerged the Met Office informed the Government in October that this winter would be exceptionally cold, but did not inform the public."
    I think - more rural schools (in number) were affected, more miles of rural road were affected and have long term damage which needs repairing, more rural dwellers were isolated and cut off and the higher costs of fuel to rural dwellers imposed a heavier cost burden on rural communities and individuals. I am sure you will have other angles.

(Link: Daily Telegraph, 5 January)
This article makes me reflect on the publication (last week) by the Office for National Statistics of the latest Economic and Labour Market Review, which shows that the cost of living in rural areas is £2,600 a year more than in urban areas.
    Rural dwellers had an average weekly spend of £500 compared with £450.20 in towns is a reminder, amongst other things, of the value of the national urban and rural definitions. Designed and implemented under the leadership of my good friend Professor John Shepherd at the Rural Evidence Research Centre at Birkbeck College, the definition and the classification of local authorities are unique in that they are based upon a highly detailed geographical model of settlement patterns within rural areas (eg. towns, villages and hamlets) which is comparable across England and Wales and allows other data of a social economic nature to be added to the settlement categories which then has a clear and statistically independent base for analysis and policy.
    In the six years since its inception the definition/classification has been invaluable in a vast range of urban-rural analyses including employment structure and productivity , affordable housing, fuel poverty, local authority and primary care trust costs, availability of services, the impact of recession, location of historic buildings and monuments, the condition of parish churches and many more.
    The fact that we are now all singing from the same hymn sheet where the definitional urban-rural matters are concerned has been an inestimable boon to all concerned with getting rural policy messages across.

Daily Mail, 5 January
This article tells how a family has discovered their cat is the oldest in the world after reaching its 39th birthday.
    Pet Lucy was born way back in 1972 when Ted Heath was Prime Minister and petrol was 33p a gallon. Cat experts say she has clocked up the equivalent of 172 human years - and cats live to be about 15 on average which means Lucy has more than doubled her life expectancy.
    I wonder what level of strain it is now putting on the cat's pension scheme - I hope it is not index linked!