English National Sheep Dog Trials to be held at Castle Hill Estate near South Molton

“Robin Page's piece:-

"Hooray! TV has rediscovered the countryside, with rural affairs programmes ousting those interminable cookery and property shows to earn themselves a primetime slot.

Just one problem: real country people - and the things they care about - aren't on the agenda.

Take the BBC's Countryfile, which has been moved to a plum slot on Sunday evenings.

It is supposed to deal with 'issues'. But the only issue I can see is the sheer awfulness of Countryfile - and how it portrays rural Britain as a theme park for the amusement of urban do-gooders.

Small wonder, then, that the BBC's message boards have been buzzing with protests objecting to the show's dumbing-down.

Take this post: 'I thought I had been watching a programme where professional journalists covered serious rural issues sometimes in a light-hearted way.

'I now realise I was actually watching a ratings-chasing jokey entertainment programme.'

Before going further, I must admit that I do have an axe to grind - albeit a valid one.

Several years ago, I was sacked from another BBC rural affairs show, One Man And His Dog.

Thousands wrote to the BBC in my defence, but they were ignored. However, my objections to Countryfile are not based on a professional grudge, but on my fury as a man who has lived and worked on the countryside all his life.

The problem is, Countryfile is not about the 'real' countryside; instead, it deals with the countryside as seen from the second homes of Auntie's leftie mandarins.

Rural Britain has never been threatened by more important issues: food security, overpopulation, badgers and TB, GM crops, the galloping spread of ragwort, the disappearance of our orchards, the incompetence of Defra (what used to be known as the Ministry of Agriculture), the list goes on.

But is Countryfile bothered? Of course not. But then I wouldn't expect anything else of the BBC.

After all, this is a programme that religiously talks in grams, metres and kilometres - when no one else in the countryside does - and whose main presenter, Julia Bradbury, lives in London.

The countryside is a living, working place, which covers 80 per cent of Britain's surface. It is not a theme park for Sunday night suburban titillation.

It deserves much, much better from our national broadcaster. One octogenarian countryman I met on Saturday confessed that he had given up watching Countryfile (as I have).

'It brings on SPS,' he explained. 'That's Senile Profanity Syndrome. It makes me swear so much that I've had to stop watching it."

And so say all of us.

Charles Henry”

“This story should remind people of another political disgrace of the 'establishment' and the BBC. One of our greatest countryside presenters; a man who was in tune with real country people was summarily sacked as presenter of One Man And His Dog. . Robin Page a true countryman, but a man who was despised by the Urban Elite.

http://tinyurl.com/dxdyuoa

http://tinyurl.com/cnvr72l”

“English National Sheep Dog Trials to be held at Castle Hill Estate near South Molton

I blame the pigs. Mr Blair (otherwise known as George Orwell) did warn us.”