Andrew Arbuckle: When talking a load of bull means sweet talking a nice little cow

EVEN if you were quite far away, you might have heard my groan as I opened the e-mail. It announced a sale of a bull between two pedigree cattle breeders.

The value of this bull they had put at £15,000 and as I know both parties to be honourable men, I am sure that was the size of the cheque passed over.

The problem is that in the press we are getting more and more of these big money private deals being put in front of us in order to garner publicity for both seller and buyer. There is no-one to authenticate these sales and some less scrupulous parties are cashing in on that fact.

I did read this e-mail because all journalists are taught that some of the best bits of news are often embedded well down the copy. Sadly there was no extra news; the only feature that caught my eye was the one which said “the bull would compliment the herd” to which he was heading.

Old pedant that I am, I then had visions of this bull walking out of the delivery float and spying his new female company saying in bull like tones: “Well Bluebell you have such lovely deep eyes” or “Flossie you look ravishing”.

Meanwhile in my mind’s eye the farmer who had just invested £15,000 in his new stock bull was seen jumping on his bonnet in rage at the very polite but quite physically inactive bull.

I know and you by this time also know the publicist actually meant the bull would complement or genetically fill in some of the deficiencies in the herd but that is not what came out.

On matters of more substance, I would like to compliment that old war horse, the former president of NFU Scotland Jim Walker, for a 20 minute spiel I listened to at the weekend.

I know that in “Walker the Talker” time, 20 minutes is little more than a couple of breaths but in that short period he ripped into the problems of the eurozone, the future of the CAP and for good measure the debacle surrounding sheep identification.

I had forgotten the days, when he was Union boss, that the press always took two notebooks to a Jim press conference. I had forgotten his “rat tat tat” delivery and I had also forgotten his occasional politically incorrect moments.

After waiting all day last Friday for a banker to come forward with an opinion on the European financial crisis, I was listening to one being discharged at high speed. “Germany has now achieved what it failed to do 60 years ago without a gun being fired,” was his view on the collapse of governments in both Greece and Italy and the German chancellor’s proposal for more fiscal unity within the eurozone.

I find it difficult to disagree with that view as about the outcome of the present financial turmoil in Europe.

He was also straightforward in his views on the CAP reform which he rightly, in my book, stated would depend far more than any current Brussels bureaucrat is willing to admit on the size of the budget.

I know the current budgetary position where it is supposed to be guaranteed at the same level as it is just now but I would refer to the previous view on German financial dominance and the fact that German politicians are less influenced by their rural vote than are their Mediterranean counterparts. Incidentally, Walker pointed out that in both Greece and Italy, politicians had been replaced by technocrats or economists.

Ignoring or dismissing all the “green” frippery such as Set Aside mark 2 currently surrounding the CAP reform package, Walker concentrated on the need to produce more food and farmers’ role in producing same.

Then, linking that to the budgetary squeeze, he stated that he would happily shake the hand of any politician who would offer him a deal where his single farm payment was only 25 per cent less in five years’ time than it is currently.

On home ground, he expressed frustration at the inability of both the Scottish Government and the Union to deal with the sheep identification problem where the anger and confusion felt by sheep farmers faced with penalties bursts out at markets and meetings.

The latest example of this will come this week at Carfraemill and I am sure the temperature and tone of that meeting will be a good few degrees hotter than the stakeholders’ meeting on the same issue called by the Cabinet secretary.

Looking back in my diaries, it is more than a decade since Walker started his political career and, in a direct action move, led an army of farmers down in the docks of Stranraer.

His style is very much “in your face” and he has faults but I wonder if, like the aforementioned bull, his attributes do not complement rather than compliment the current lower key approach to problems by the Union leadership.