Showing On

We take for granted much of what we have in the NorthEast. And wonder why more visitors don’t come our way.

Fully two years after ‘foot and mouth’, our show season is back up to strength. A few missing stalls but substantial gate takings as people are back.

The fly in the ointment has been the weather. Not the weather that last year saw me struggling to drive out of the mud in one rural show’s car park. This time the heat.

For my part I much prefer ‘cool’ to ‘hot’. When I visited the New Deer show I sweltered in the 20s and at Turriff it must have been well over 30 deg C in the narrow, crowded alleys of the stalls area where my surgery caravan was based.

But the person for whom it was very definitely too hot was, Rural Minister Ross Finnie. I met lots of people at the Turra Show who wanted a word in his ear. And many of the words are not ones I would wish to write here!

I had one brief glimpse of him scurrying between appointments with a retinue of civil servants sweating in his wake.

Farm incomes might have risen this year – a bit, the weather may have been kinder than often to our crops, but the long-term outlook remains uncertain – at best.

On farmer suggested that I should follow up on the 1959 Weeds Act. Hogweed is a dangerous plant for many of our farm animals and our roadsides are awash with this pest. And how many prosecutions have there been for failure to cut it back? I am told it is none.

Another is very concerned about changes in the scheme which currently prevents beasts over 30 months entering the food chain.

While a third spoke to me of the unfair competition he experiences from foreign meat producers who do not have to work to the very high animal welfare standards in force here.

I hope that the Minister heard these issues and plans to act on them. He will hear them from me in any event.

The ending of the Aikey Fair has been a disappointment. It was one of the last of the real ‘horse fairs’ in our area. But the agricultural shows continue from strength to strength.

The Royal Highland Show at Edinburgh is a major national and international attraction. For tourists are encouraged to visit it and add to the diversity of their Scottish holiday.

But despite our strong local shows, and with Turra’s national reputation, there is little evidence that bodies like visitScotland are promoting them as visitor attractions for foreign tourists.

With history, scenery, beautiful beaches and weather we should be awash with visitors. Yes, there are more than last year, but far fewer than our assets deserve.

Our Shows are on. It is now time for a little showing off.

Drugs

Like much of Scotland the mis-use of drugs is a problem for us albeit that it is on a substantially smaller scale than towns in the central belt where much larger parts of their populations are affected.

But a new dimension, a new drugs problem, appears in my email ‘inbox’ almost every day. That is online retailers attempting to bypass the strict controls on prescription drugs.

Today I received a claim to be “your secure source for medications that help you achieve your goals”. And so on.

In the 19th century, anybody could make up and sell drugs to the general public with quite outrageous claims made. Such ‘snake oil’ salesmen were quite properly brought under control to protect the public.

With the Internet enabling emails to be imported into our country offering products which bypass our strict standards, we could be the brink of a significant health problem. Because there is almost no drug without a side effect.

If unsupervised by medically qualified people, or delivered at concentrations higher than can be safely self-administered, drugs can damage and kill.

I do not yet know of people who have bought drugs by this route. Are they being ripped off? Are they being hurt?

We must not find ourselves fixing the problem after it has happened if we can stop it.

Supply through our local chemist is safe and proven. Let’s stick with that.

Orchid Allies

It seems that the Scottish Prison Service may have been caught out again. Their site for a planned new prison in West Lothian is home to three varieties of wild orchid.

Although it might be possible to move the ‘common spotted’, ‘heath’ and ‘northern marsh’ orchids to another site an alternative move might make more sense.

Increase prison capacity with a new build on the prison land at Peterhead.

The Peterhead community knows it makes sense. When will SPS HQ wake up?