Comment – the redundant wheelbarrow

Yes, incredibly, it’s rained this week! I did summon the rain, and claim full responsibility, by ‘chucking’ on the fertiliser just over a week ago, and boy, what a week, with approx 121mm in seven days. It does render May ’25 as the second driest May since records began (in ’21!). Beaten only by May ’23 with 40mm of rain. Boy did we need it though, with a mere 14mm of rain since the beginning of April, we were getting desperate. Of course we all know that once it starts raining, it often doesn’t know how to stop. Let’s hope I’m wrong.

Elsewhere I’m clearly getting ‘Tarriff fatigue’ and can barely raise my interest sufficiently to make sense of Trumps big 50% steel and aluminium tariffs raised this weekend. This explainer might help.

Closer to home the governments proposal to reduce the Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) requirements for smaller housing development (less than 49 houses) may reduce income options for some farmers. If you dont know what BNG is, have a read of this. In reality, farmers would have got paid for enhancing and securing Biodiversity on their farms as an ‘offset’ plus 10% of that lost by the building development. All good, but is there actually a gain over and above what was happening on the farm anyway?

Again in our backyard Toyota have announced £56 Million investment to build more cars in their Derbyshire plant.

Have a good week.

Andy