THERE are but weeks left in the leadership of Mark Drakeford as the First Minister of Wales. It seems, however, Mr Drakeford is intent on leaving having antagonised and annoyed the hard-working farming community of Wales — and anyone else who cast a vote in the Brexit referendum of June 2016.
Whether it is the knowledge now that he no longer has to hold his tongue or bide his time, the First Minister is, in these last weeks of his tenure, simply rude.
What gives you the right, First Minister, to blame farmers for their economic plight by suggesting that things would be different had they voted to remain as part of the European Union?
Have you, Mr Drakeford, some font of knowledge that has not yet been uncovered by political analysts or historians, on the voting records of farmers on that fateful day?
So before you go and kick your feet up in your west Wales holiday home, please consider these few facts, First Minister.
Firstly, who the heck are you to talk about democratic mandates of the way that things might have been? For what the 400,000 who signed the petition on 20mph speed limits, and the rest of the electorate of Wales, you and your cronies in Cardiff Bay had no mandate to impose those restrictions on our towns and villages.
While you’re kicking back in retirement, look around you at the farmers who toil and till and tend their fields and flocks, herds and holdings. What right does your government have to take away 10 per cent of their productive holdings and set it aside for trees? And then, on top of that, take another 10 per cent and set it aside as a natural habitat?
What other sector of or Welsh economy faces such a hit all at the altar of climate change? Mr Drakeford, farmers are stewards of our land for future generations? They, more than most, know how precious their land is, and how a changing environment will hit them hardest.
Why then does your government ignore the unified voice of everyone in the agricultural sector in rejecting your dumb proposals?
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!