DIARY
MARTYN HARRIS ollowing the World in Action report this week on mad cow disease, I found myself visiting a dairy farm, where I learned that the modern cow can now produce 16 gallons of milk a day, a staggering figure compared to the five or six of 20 years ago, or the one or two gallons of a century before that. These cows, which go under picturesque names like Number 456, spend half the year indoors, and produce more milk on winter silage than they do on grass. In fact there seems little reason to put them out to grass at all, apart from stopping them getting depressed. The modern cow is nothing more than a hugely efficient converter of vegetable protein into milk, and this is exactly how some farmers refer to them — as converters. One of them told me proud- ly that he had fed his own herd of converters for some weeks on a container- load of spoiled Jaffa Cakes and another time on a lorry-load of cheese-and-onion crisps. I don't know if he took the wrappers off, but I imagine not, for the modern cow will, as he told me, 'eat bloody anything', — including, as World in Action points out, dead sheep. It strikes me as curious that while we must be told exactly what ingre- dients went into a Jaffa Cake, we don't need to be told exactly what went into a cow. Of course it is typical urban humbug to complain about the treatment of cattle on the one hand, and the price of milk on the other. If animals were not treated like machines then hardly any of us could afford to eat them, but all the same I haven't been able to abolish the faint odour of cheese and onion that has hung about my cornflakes for the last few days.
If you criticise the Government's Aids Campaign in any way then you are routine- ly accused of gay-bashing. A very mild piece I once, wrote about the Health Education Council's poster campaign, for Instance, caused a full-scale gay demo outside the Telegraph offices in the Isle of Dogs, which was flattering in a way, but also rather alarming. There isn't much you can do about this except make ritual noises about Aids being a dreadful thing, some of my best friends being gay etc, which always sound self-serving, although they are true. In the Telegraph the other day Sir Donald Acheson, the Government's chief medical officer, said that critics of the campaign were expressing 'denial'. Psychiatrists know this mechanism well,' he added sombrely. Over the next few weeks Sir Donald will be appearing in a series of television advertisements on Aids costing some £2.7 million. These are aimed once again at the general, heterosexual Population, despite the fact that only 5 per cent of the 2,920 Aids cases so far have
resulted from heterosexual intercourse, and these are almost all partners of people in high-risk groups. Last year the Health Education Council spent £11 million on Aids propaganda, which was half their entire budget and ten times more than they spent to combat smoking and heart dis- ease. Of course 'denial' may be a bona fide clinical condition for all I know, but used in the context of a public debate it is simply one of those truncheon words like 'defen- sive' which are used to club down argu- ment, without answering it. How can I defend my position without being 'defen- sive'? Please, doctor, how can I deny Sir Donald's arguments without suffering from 'denial'?
eturning from the in-laws in Cheshire last weekend we hit the London traffic jam outside Rugby, just 90 miles from home. 'Smash right through them like in the film, dad,' said Tom, who is four. It was tempting, 1 must admit, but instead we ground along at ten miles an hour for the next three hours, singing 'Fifty Men Went to Mow' and 'A Hundred Green Bottles', which was almost as much fun as having our teeth pulled. We always have the same conversation in traffic jams. How selfish, inconsiderate and lazy other people are to drive everywhere on these wholly unneces- sary journeys. How cars are ruining the local high street, poisoning us with lead, destroying the good old-fashioned walk 'Waiter, there's a fly in my fish soup.' etc. We shall definitely get rid of our two cars soon, we tell each other sternly. It's probably cheaper taking taxis in the long run. We already only use the cars for essential things like taking the children to school when it is wet, and getting the shopping from the North Circular Tesco, and, urn, popping round to the video shop and so on. There are twice as many cars on the road as in 1970, and they are supposed to double again in the next 20 years. Somehow or other I can't see Cecil Parkin- son's extra lane on the Ml and his handful of bypasses doing much for that lot. But by then of course I will have written my blockbuster, and will be able to afford a Harrier jump-jet hovering over the back lawn on permanent standby. In the mean- time we shall just have to fall back on 'A Thousand Green Bottles'.
went to the Ministry of Agriculture on I Thursday to interview Mr John Gummer. It was late in the evening but half a dozen brisk young men in shirt-sleeves were still in attendance. John had been held up at the House, but Bert wouTd drive us to find him in the ministerial Rover, which he did. At the House of Commons another brisk young man told us John had been held up in the lobby, but would be with us in a moment, which he was, for 4a moment, before Bert whisked him off again to a dinner at the Athenaeum. One is half impressed, half envious at the swanky efficiency of all this: the sense' of the enormous cosseting which surrounds a government minister. Doubtless it is all essential to the smooth progress of the Food Safety Bill through Parliament, and to Mr Gummer's wrestling with the intrica- cies of the Green Pound, but there is also a grain of _unease. A friend who was a political adviser at No. 10 during the last Labour government (he is a very old man now) says it was the only efficient sector of the British economy in which he had ever worked. Cars arrived on the dot, phone calls were trouble-free, books were re- quested and appeared in a wink. In my ideal society all politicians will be forced for a month each year to live in the London Borough of Haringey, and to travel to Westminster by Tube. They will be com- pelled to write and stamp and post their own letters, to make their own sandwiches for lunch, and to use a coin-operated phone at the local pub. It will make them humble. It will make them aware of the things which really irritate their electors. It will also allow them to do only about a quarter of the things they do at the moment, which would be no had thing.
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