All is quiet on the farming front after big cash bonanza; commons touch.

Byline: Paul Flynn 

FOR a whole month, not a whinge or a whine from the farmers. The myths of farming poverty are collapsing.

We were told that the foot and mouth epidemic cost sheep farmers money.

Charities coughed up billions.

Now we know the cash given to the Welsh sheep farmers in six months of FMD was more than was received in three or four years.

The assembly spokesman confesses that compensation for animals was at the rip-off rate of 'two to three times' the market value. Just a small part of the cash bonanza enjoyed by the rural community of hauliers, slaughterers, valuers, vets and de-contaminators.

Most businesses suffer annual bankruptcies of about 5 per cent. That's forty times the rate for farmers. They leave the industry by selling their farms and land at prices that have doubled in ten years.

Even the repeated claims of falling farm incomes and personal tragedies in 1999 and 2000 are proved to be false.

It's not just the one Welsh farmer who pocketed pounds 1.3m in compensation. Nearly 250 other farmers had cheques of more of than half a million.

Before FMD, taxpayers gave pounds 5bn subsidy a year to, mostly, rich farmers. That's the same as 2p on income tax. Yet, a basket of food that costs pounds 85 here was bought for pounds 39 by the Consumers' Association in New Zealand. They abolished all farm subsidies 16 years ago!

It's a treble rip off. Huge subsidies, income support for millionaires and the dearest food on the planet.

FIFTY years ago, all road journeys in South Wales were planned to avoid the monstrous jams at Port Talbot and Newport. Now, the Brynglas Tunnels are becoming legendary.

Without a decision to build a by-pass motorway around Newport, the south Welsh economy will be blighted.

Brynglas Hill will mark the divide between the eastern world of free communication and the out-of-favour west beyond the obstacle.

Environmental objections have faded since the urbanisation of unspoilt land by LG and Llanwern.

The price to build the road will be enormous. The price of not building will be ruinous.