THE Prince of Wales spoke yesterday about the "nightmare" of foot and mouth and warned that a flare-up of the disease in the autumn could spell the end of the countryside as we know it.
"The future of the countryside is one of the crucial issues of our time," he said as he launched his own campaign to revitalise rural areas.
"The anguish in the countryside goes on and not just where foot and mouth is still spreading. And believe me, it has not gone away even if it has come off the front pages of the newspapers," he told a press conference at St James's Palace.
"Even before the disaster of foot and mouth, average farm incomes were £5,200 per farm and last year alone 20,000 jobs were lost in agriculture. Behind these figures is a way of life at risk of collapsing."
As three new outbreaks were confirmed in Cumbria, taking the UK total to 1,887, the Prince spoke of "a real problem developing in the autumn and winter" when cooler weather conditions will favour the virus.
Farmers are anxious that seasonal movements of lambs and young breeding ewes could again spread the virus far and wide.
The Meat and Livestock Commission, which promotes beef, lamb and pork, agreed that there was a danger of an autumn upsurge if the virus was not stamped out within eight weeks.
With outbreaks averaging up to four a day, the farming industry expects the epidemic to run well into next year - making nonsense of the Government's election claims that it was in the final stages of defeating the disease.
Launching his Business in the Community - Rural Action initiative, the Prince urged people to support their local shops and businesses.
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Prince launches own initiative to revitalise rural shops and firms (Electronic Telegraph)
By David Brown, Agriculture Editor
(Filed: 25/07/2001)
THE Prince of Wales launched his own initiative to revitalise rural areas yesterday, using a team of company executives currently dealing with measures to regenerate inner cities.
The Countryside Agency has already pledged £150,000 over three years to aid the project - Business in the Community-Rural Action.
At a press conference at St James's Palace, the Prince called for action to improve rural services and urged people to support their local shops and businesses.
"One of the features of life in the countryside today is a lack of services," he said.
"For instance, there was a time when the pub used to be at the heart of village life, but now 40 per cent of villages do not have one.
"At the same time, village stores and Post Offices are shutting at an alarming rate - 100 rural pubs a year, they say." The local pub should become "the hub" of local communities, combining post office and village store, he said. He cited an example in Suffolk where this was already happening.
"I am hopeful that we can extend this idea far and wide through a best-practice guide," he said.
The Prince urged business leaders to support local shops and services.
"Buy your food locally for your stores, for your restaurant, or for your canteen. And why not even buy your office furniture from local craftsmen?"
The Prince paid tribute to the women of rural communities who had a "remarkable talent" for enterprise.
"Already farming families are diversifying from bed and breakfast to cheese-making to high-tech companies," he said.
"The utter tragedy of foot and mouth has been the effect on these enterprising farming families who had already diversified only to have the ground cut from under them."
More needed to be done to revitalise market towns, once the "economic engines" of rural life.
"But recently they have been in desperate decline with many of the problems of inner cities - crime, drugs, vandalism and so on," he said.
Affordable housing in rural areas was a further area of concern which needed to be tackled.
The Prince, who has taken executives on fact-finding tours in Wales, North Yorkshire, Cumbria and Shropshire, said they could help "to keep living communities and entire cultures surviving within our unique and glorious countryside so that people born and bred there can find an economic future".
He added: "The consequences if we fail are too awful to contemplate."
Alun Michael, Minister of State for Rural Affairs, said the Government was already channelling billions of pounds into the countryside.
But he added: "I support and applaud this initiative by the Prince of Wales."
Ewen Cameron, Countryside Agency chairman and the Government's Rural Advocate, said: "The strong leadership of the Prince is an encouragement to us all to make a real difference. I very much welcome his support."
He added: "Business in the Community, led by the Prince, has been very successful in the past in getting many larger companies to address the problems affecting urban areas. But they have an equally important role to play in rural areas."
He wanted businesses to regenerate market towns and "provide expertise and resources to strengthen rural communities".
Charles Secrett, executive director of Friends of the Earth, said the Prince had articulated the "huge challenge" facing the Government over the rural economy.
He called for increased organic farming and renewable energy sources which could both provide major new industries bringing jobs to rural communities.
Tesco, Britain's largest supermarket chain, said it would encourage "rural markets" in its store car parks where local entrepreneurs could sell fruit, vegetables and arts and crafts.
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Gallery displays image of wounded 'Diana'(UK Times)
BY ALAN HAMILTON
AS THE fourth anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, approaches, an Irish art gallery is displaying disturbing and possibly distasteful images of the manner of her tragic end.
Photographs of a Diana lookalike on show in Galway show her bleeding from a deep arm wound inflicted by the familiar three-pointed badge of a Mercedes, the car in which she was travelling when it was involved in a fatal collision in Paris underpass in August 1997.
Like the fashion icon she was in her lifetime, her double pouts for the camera in tiara and extravagant hairstyle, but with the addition of red-rimmed eyes.
Icons were once depictions of Christ or of saints, revered and kissed by clergy and congregations in the Eastern Orthodox Church, and to deface them was sacrilege. Modern icons are subject to no such constraints, and Diana is not alone. Other pictures in the exhibition include images of Jackie Onassis, with her husband’s blood and tissue spattered over her face and clothing, after his assassination outside the Dallas book despository in 1963.
One photograph featuring a pregnant woman was deemed too gory even for such tasteless company and was withdrawn from view.
The Diana pictures are the work of Erwin Olaf, a Dutch photographer better known for his work on advertising campaigns including Camel, Heineken, Carling, Silk Cut and Diesel jeans.
His collection of eight Blood Royal photographs, already seen in Lille, Paris and Amsterdam, is on show for the first time in the British Isles at the Galway Arts Centre until August 11.
Maura Kennedy, the gallery administrator, said yesterday: “We were aware of the effect these images might have on people, and we don’t want to offend anyone, so we warn the public in advance that they might see things which shock them. We feel this is a strong and important show of art from a top photographer who has exhibited all over the world.”
The show has been open for a week and has so far drawn no complaints. “We feel that people know everything about Diana and Jackie Onassis, and there is nothing left in their stories to shock,” Ms Kennedy added.
“People are showing more interest in the images of more obscure aristocrats like Marie Antoinette and Tsarina Alexandra.”