Land & People activist, Barry Bennett, provides us with the results of a midnight’s “amphibian safari” conducted in the depths of a Dorset garden.

Barry writes: Amongst the plants found in a leafy suburban garden in Bournemouth, a watchful pair of eyes is seen glaring hungrily at slugs and snails. The light of the torch reveals golden eyes patiently watching its prey.

This should be “the night of the amphibians”, but in this location, it’s “the night of the toads”!

As recently reported by Land & People, frogs have been suffering the effects of the upsetting of their delicate ecological balance of nature, due to pollution and the introduction of deadly diseases carried by imported species.

Fortunately, in this area, the toad has found refuge in many locations. But for how long?

The toad pictured (left), has recently started out in life. It’s a baby, not much larger than the pound coin shown.

Whether it will reach adulthood and help us rid our gardens of the unwanted slugs, snails and other pests that destroy our prized plants, is up to you!

Its habitat is under attack. It needs ponds to breed, gardens to live in and clean water. It also needs the assistance of humans who understand that there is more to life in Britain than TV and cash. Oh, and ditch the slug pellets please! If the toads aren’t happy, ultimately nor will you be. It follows that what poisons them will ultimately poison us.

The toad (left) is blissfully unaware that its existence, along with its cousins - the frogs and newts - is under attack.

Attack from the developer who knocks down family homes, fills in ponds and builds on the green belt.

Attack from the government and Establishment political parties- - who see amphibian habitats as fair game for blocks of flats and the housing estates needed to house a booming immigration-fuelled overpopulation.

Attack from GM pollutants, herbicides, pesticides and a thousand and one chemicals. The latter being responsible for the death of 90 million bees in France it is claimed.

Attack from people who live in boxes, watch boxes, and end up in boxes �“ people who never take the time to find out what wildlife exists beyond their front doors.

Well amphibians do exist, and they are probably resident in a garden near you - if you are lucky to live in an environment free from the scourge of overbuilding and pollution.

Next time you are stressed out, because of increasing bills; or you are not sure which Euro zone you live in, or for any reason whatsoever; then just think how lucky you are that nature and its wonders are all around you and for free!

Maybe then you’ll start to fight for yours and our wildlife’s rights to exist in Britain �“ OUR green and pleasant land.

Take a look, make sure it’s quick or you might miss a glimpse of these amazing creatures living in your very own back yard.

Our amphibians need you!

Land & People has pointed out, on a number of occasions over the last few years, how some in farming - the “big boys” as we call them - have been doing rather nicely out of the sequence of crises to hit the industry. This has manifested itself in larger estates �“ be they privately or corporately owned �“ buying out the struggling “little man” and selling off surplus farm houses and converted farm buildings, to urban outsiders as second homes.

A recent report from the Commission for Rural Communities supports this view as it shows that almost half of people buying farmland in the South West in recent years have not been farmers and that a significant area of land is now being bought by non-farming interests for housing and development as well as “agri-business”. The report goes on to claim that nationally, 38% of farmland purchasers were non-farmers, a figure that rises to 44% in the Westcountry.

The report also suggests that factors, which may have some longer-term impacts for land management - include low and fluctuating incomes for farmers and the average age of farmers, especially for small farms, is getting older.

None of this is news!

The State of the Countryside report also claims: “The trend is for a smaller number of larger farms, and for former agricultural buildings to be separated from farmland for residential use.

The primary function of farmers remains as food producers, although there is increasing interest in a wide range of crops for industrial uses and bio-fuels. At the margins, food production is declining as agricultural activities, such as hill sheep farming, become uneconomic due to changing policy and decreasing farm subsidies.”

However perhaps the most worrying message from this report is the assertion that Britain’s capacity for self-sufficiency in food continues to decline, down ten per cent for indigenous food and now just 60% for all food.

Such is the sorry state that British farming finds itself in after eleven years of Labour incompetence and Tory opposition intransigence! Once again we ask �“ is the eradication of the “small man” from British farming accident or design?

Unlike the Labour and Tory parties the British National Party is dedicated to the expansion of the farming industry �“ not through driving farming families from the land as is the Labour and Tory way �“ but through encouraging the breaking up of the large corporate agricultural estates to free up land leading to the establishment of traditional family-run farms. The BNP will actively promote a “return to the land” programme. A programme that will reflect the strategic importance of the farming industry to the country and one which will assure the “small man” of a secure future in farming for himself and his family.

Yet another warning of the looming energy crisis (this time from the Sunday Telegraph) that we are all going to have to cope with. And all because of the inertia of the Westminster politicians - who have been too busy selling our birthright to either notice or care.

On this issue, as on most others, the only Party that is awake to the problem is the BNP. Why? Because it cares, really cares:

About both Britain and the British - its Land and its People

Future of UK’s energy supply is dark indeed

By Christopher Booker

With every week that goes by it becomes clearer that, within a few years, Britain will face an unprecedented crisis, thanks to the shambles the Government has made of our energy policy.

After years of dereliction, when only a crash programme of measures could keep our lights on and our economy functioning, our policy has become so skewed by blinkered environmentalism and diktats from the EU that we are fast heading for the worst of all worlds - a near-total dependence on foreign sources of energy which will not only be astronomically expensive but which can in no way be guaranteed to supply all the electricity we need.

What are the hard facts?
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Between now and 2015 we shall lose 40 per cent of the generating capacity we currently require to meet maximum demand (still rising), due to the phasing out of almost all our obsolescent nuclear reactors and the closure of nine of our major coal- and oil-fired power stations under an EU “anti-pollution” directive.

Gordon Brown talks about building a new generation of nuclear power plants, for which we would have to rely on the French - having two years ago sold off Westinghouse, the only British-owned firm capable of constructing them.

But even if the French play ball, which seems less likely since the collapse of Brown’s plan to sell off British Energy to France’s EDF, the new plants could still not be built in time to plug the gap.

The only short-term remedy will be to build yet more gas-fired stations, at a time when we are fast running out of our own gas supplies and when gas prices are shooting through the roof, reducing us to dependence on countries such as Mr Putin’s Russia or Qatar, both of which have recently announced caps on future exports.

Our best bet might seem to invest urgently in a dozen more coal-fired power stations, which still supply more than a third of our electricity.

But own coal industry is so run down - though we still have more than 100 years of reserves - that barely a quarter of the 62 million tons of coal we used last year was British.The rest had to be imported, including 22 million tons from Russia and 12 million tons from South Africa.

At a time when rocketing world demand for coal has already doubled prices in a year, we should again be dependent on unreliable foreign sources, to generate electricity by means which excite almost as much fury from environmentalists as nuclear power - as we saw with last week’s demonstrations against plans by German-owned E.On to build a new “clean coal” station at Kingsnorth in Kent.

With this colossal crisis fast approaching, our ministers are still lost in the cloudcuckooland of Mr Brown’s £100 billion “green energy” plan, to meet our EU target of generating a third of our electricity from renewables by 2020.

Not an energy expert in the country says this is remotely feasible. Our present 2,000 wind turbines supply just 1.5 per cent of our power, and even if Mr Brown’s 7,000 additional turbines could in practice be built, we would still be more than 200 per cent short of our EU target.

Worse still is the fact that our electricity investment market is now so skewed by the various subsidy and “carbon savings” schemes adopted to meet our various EU targets that these are now uselessly soaking up more than £5 billion a year which should otherwise be urgently invested in proper generating capacity.

Our major power companies can now make so much money from “renewables” subsidies and other “planet saving” schemes that they have much less incentive to risk capital on those which might keep our lights on.

Our energy policy is now so constrained and distorted by EU requirements that, even if we had a government with the knowhow and will to sort out the mess, we should soon be breaking EU laws all over the place.

Tragically, no one seems to remain in more blissful ignorance of all these harsh realities than our Conservative opposition which, when the crisis arrives, may well be in power.

Not only will those at the top of the Tory party, on present showing, have no idea why the lights are going out, but they will have even less idea of what to do about it - because by then it will be too late.