Without a doubt the biggest single controllable threat to our environment is that of overpopulation. Indeed England is one of the most crowded places on the face of the earth and getting more crowded by the day. Fuelling overpopulation, as the Government’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) will verify, is immigration. If it were not for half a century’s worth of immigration, then our population would be considerably smaller than it is today. Yet as overcrowded as we already are on this tiny island, things are going to get even tighter �“ much tighter in fact!

According to the experts, the Government �“ with the backing of the Tory opposition - plans to allow around another six million migrants into Britain over the next twenty years �“ which is why, of course, Labour needs the three million new homes it is currently attempting to force local authorities to grant planning permission for across the country!

This planned boost to overpopulation, being despite the detrimental affect immigration is already having on housing, employment, education, heath services, social services and law enforcement �“ and lets not even start on exasperating the demand for more water provision, energy generation, sewerage treatment and rubbish disposal!

So it comes as something of a surprise to learn that “mainstream”, so-called, “environmentalists” aren’t clamouring for a halt to immigration to safeguard what remains of our countryside and environment! You will see them protesting about the symptoms �“ a housing development on green field sites �“ but you will never see them protesting about the cause �“ far less actually campaigning for an end to this �“ the greatest controllable threat imaginable to our environment.

The problem is, you see, that “mainstream” environmentalists are caught on the horns of a dilemma. On the one horn they know immigration is the driving motor behind the overpopulation that is wrecking our countryside and reducing the quality of life for everyone. But on the other horn they are conditioned to believing that opposition to immigration is “racist” and should they oppose it, then they will be �“ racists! Far safer then to enter a self imposed state of denial and engage in a limitation exercise campaigning against the symptoms than to be seen as unacceptably politically incorrect by recognising and addressing the real issue!

As an example of what we at Land & People mean, we invite you to visit the web site of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) and there to do a site search using the key word “immigration”. The CPRE remember, is one of the largest and most influential “mainstream” environmentalist groups in the country �“ yet a search of their website produces just 1 (one) find for any article mentioning the word “immigration”! That, we believe, speaks volumes for their credibility as serious environmentalists!

A growing number of scientists are suggesting that the growth in the use of mobile phones could be a major contributory cause behind massive food shortages, as the world’s harvests fail. They are proposing the theory that the radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible explanation behind the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops.

As recently as last month, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which was first reported in the United States - was beginning to hit Britain as well.

The theory that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees’ navigation systems, preventing them from finding their way back to their hives was initially regarded as improbable - however some scientists now claim that there is evidence to back it up.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), as this outbreak is known, occurs when a hive’s inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers. The vanished bees are seldom ever found, but thought to die singly far from home. And, strangely, the parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.

It is reported that CCD now affects half of all US states. The US West Coast is thought to have lost 60% of its commercial bee population, compared to an even more alarming 70% missing on the East Coast.

CCD has reportedly since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And only last month one of London’s biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned! Furthermore, other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales and north-west England. Yet despite the growing concern in Britain, the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) insists: “There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK.”

The implications of the spread are alarming - not least because most of the world’s crops depend on pollination by bees. Indeed, Albert Einstein once famously said that if the bees disappeared, “man would have only four years of life left”!

Yet despite research no one knows for certain why it is happening. Various theories involving mites, pesticides, global warming and GM crops have been proposed, but all have drawbacks. Yet, interestingly, German research has long shown that bees’ behaviour changes near power lines. Now a study at Germany’s Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could provide a “hint” to a possible cause.

Meanwhile the head of a massive study conducted by the US government and mobile phone industry of hazards from mobiles in the Nineties, is reported as saying: “I am convinced the possibility is real.”

Although it is clear that much more research is urgently needed, Land & People wonders what the reaction from both government and mobile phone manufacturers will be, should it be proven that the radiation from mobile phones and their supporting networks, are responsible for this catastrophic decline in bee numbers. Bees are expendable - mobile phone companies profits are not, will be the reaction, we suspect!

Concern has been raised in southern England after permission to drill for oil was granted to a petroleum company on the South Downs. Environmental groups are angry that the local council is allowing such a development on a designated area of outstanding natural beauty.

West Sussex County Council granted permission earlier this year for Northern Petroleum to sink a test well in Markwells Wood, an ancient woodland outside the village of Forestside, near Chichester. The company reportedly became interested in drilling in the area after oil prices started to soar.

Conservation groups opposed to the plans claim that the drilling - which will destroy over two acres of woodland in an area which is likely to become part of the South Downs National Park - amounts to an act of environmental vandalism. But the council, contrary to its own ecologist and landscape officers objecting to the scheme, decided that the application met all legal requirements and approved it on the understanding that the company will replace and enhance the woodland when it has finished working on the site.

Notice the use of the word “understanding” - rather than “obligation”!

A spokesman for the Woodland Trust, said: “This is in ancient woodland which we consider to be irreplaceable. It’s our richest habitat for species in the UK and we would consider it as the equivalent, in terms of importance, to a rainforest.”

Meanwhile a director of Friends of the Earth, added: “This application is a further symptom of our dependence on dwindling oil resources. Sooner or later we must wean our society off oil and the quicker we do so the better.”

In addition, a director for the South Downs Society, an environmental pressure group, said: “The damage to habitat, destruction of trees and hedgerows, the visual impact of the drilling tower and its lighting, construction of a new access through the wood, noise from vehicles: all of this is inappropriate in the Downs, where people go for peace and quiet.”

Yet despite the comments of respected environmentalists, a spokesman for West Sussex County Council is quoted as saying that the area was not as important as some were making out. “Technically it is ancient woodland, but to look at it you would not regard it as a very important piece of land,” he said.

“We granted permission for oil to be drilled for two reasons: one is that there is a national policy in favour of extracting minerals from the earth where we have them; and secondly because we have struck a deal with the company which will actually see the area of woodland improved when they are finished.”

The construction of the 120-feet high exploration rig will involve clearance of part of the wood and the building of a temporary access road and will take three months. Northern Petroleum has temporary consent for construction, drilling and testing for a period of three years, but they will need consent to remove the reserves if enough oil is found.

What happens next, if commercially viable quantities of oil are found, is anyone’s guess!

Yet it is no secret that the oil beneath the North Sea is becoming increasingly expensive to extract. In 2006, Britain changed from being a net exporter of oil to a net importer. Last year, the country produced 1.8 million barrels a day but used more and so had to import 145,000 barrels daily. This year, it is expected that the production rate will drop to 1.5m barrels a day and so 310,000 barrels will have to be imported. This means that the country is now spending £3bn a year on importing oil, compared to earning £3bn a year from exports, as it was in 2001.

Land & People concurs with those who believe that even if oil is found in commercial quantities, the likely effect on South Downs habitats - together with the likely short life of any such enterprise, gives rise to the question: “is it worth it”? We suspect not!

If one were to be asked for a prime example of Labour incompetence then you would be hard pressed finding something as far-reaching or expensive as their “handling” of the 2001 foot and mouth (FMD) crisis. So unbelievably “naff” was their inept and disproportionate response to this outbreak that many a farmer, even today, believes that malice played a role. The conservative British farmer, after all, has long been one of Labour’s Marxist “class-enemy” bogeymen! The combination of the FMD and Labour pestilence not only led to the slaughter of millions of perfectly healthy beasts but also dealt a crippling blow to what had been a thriving industry, putting many out of business.

Labour’s FMD debacle was followed by their appalling apathy towards the growing plight of dairy farmers. Whilst the Government allowed supermarket cartels and dairies to reduce the farm gate price of milk to less than the cost of production - the Government deliberately remained aloof from the resulting crisis. No surprise then that well run farms went bust the length and breadth of Britain. Such was the despair in the industry that some producers, facing insurmountable debt and the loss of both their livelihood and home, took their own lives! Quite apart from these localised tragedies, many struggling older farmers sold up and retired, whilst their sons and daughters, seeing no future in farming, abandoned the industry in favour of the relative stability of regular paid employment!

This entirely avoidable mess was swiftly followed by the shambles surrounding the introduction of the Single Farm Payments (SFP) system, where the Rural Payments Agency (RPA), acting on behalf of Labour’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), was charged with distributing some £1.5 billion of EU subsidies to British farmers. So incompetent (some think deliberately so) was the implementation of the scheme that only 15% of farmers received their cheques on time - in March 2006! Although the majority of farmers received payments by the end of that year, many thousands were still waiting well into 2007 for their subsidy money - more than a year after they were supposed to have been paid! This delay inevitably resulted in cash-strapped farmers going cap in hand to the banks, to arrange expensive bridging loans or to “top-up” existing ones. In no few cases, growing indebtedness and a sense of hopelessness resulted in a further tranche of farmers quitting the industry.

Now, summer 2008, we discover that Labour’s RPA has overpaid thousands of farmers to the tune of an estimated £38 million. This money will now have to be clawed back from the unsuspecting recipients. This is all very well if the money is sitting in bank accounts unspent. But, as it is entirely likely, much of this cash will have already been ploughed back into the business - perhaps into new plant or towards paying off existing bank loans, for instance - meaning then it is entirely likely that affected farmers will now have to return to the banks to arrange fresh interest-bearing credit to tied then over! Yet more profits for the banks, yet more misery for the farmer!

Meanwhile, as farmers continue to leave the industry at a time of historically high land prices, developers, giant agricultural combines and supermarket cartels hover, like vultures, to buy up even more ruined formerly family owned farms.

Whereas the Labour regime has put the farming industry through the wringer in recent years and driven thousands, of formerly successful family run farms to the wall - it would be wrong to think that there haven’t been winners. Those doing very nicely out of this crescendo of crises include the big property development companies - hungry for building land, the supermarket cartels - anxious to add to their land holdings and, of course, the giant agricultural enterprises - determined to turn farmland into depopulated featureless GM-growing prairies. A list that would be incomplete without the addition of the Labour Party itself - the recipient of donations from certain grateful commercial interests!

Labour’s mismanagement of farming - misfortune or design?