At the risk of being controversial.

The stolen cheese.

For those of you who have been following this story, the front page of the Salisbury Journal, 23/8/07 had a headline that read 'Faith in the police shaken', and it is clear that policing in South Wilts is in total disarray. Alongside is my contribution to the following weeks paper. Will the powers that be listen?

More silage going into the pit, all this rain it just keeps growing.

Sir, I write in response to the headline on the front of the Journal last week and add my grievances. This will come as no surprise to Robert Key or the Chief Constable  as I was ahead  of the game and fired  a pretty blunt mail to them on the 21st July and the 27th. We farm and make cheese at Landford, and since March we have had our stainless steel milk tanker stolen, we have had a cow shot with a cross bow on Easter Sunday (and had to be put down by the vet), and have now had 1/4 tonne of cheese stolen, and we are not prepared to put up with it. I would largely agree with the statement made by the business community, that blame the system, not the police on the ground. It is pathetic that we have to call Devizes, our experience is that you can wait anything from 5 minutes to 20 minutes to get through. Your front page states that 70% of calls get answered on time, this in my book constitutes gross failure, nothing less than 100% should be acceptable, quite apart from the fact that we should be calling Alderbury or even Salisbury. The problems are largely political, too much red tape and paperwork, not enough men on the ground. I have asked Robert Key to tell us what difference the Conservatives will make, sadly no reply, but have had meaningful discussions with the police to improve things. We have drugs on every street corner, children carrying knives at school, and children being gunned down on the streets of Liverpool, welcome to Britain 2007. This all has to change from the top down, those 99% of us, that are law abiding decent citizens are not prepared to countenance what amounts to mob rule. We want to see changes, we want to see the Policeman back on the beat and a local telephone number. Yours Mike Smales Lyburn Farm Landford Salisbury SP5 2DN www.lyburncheese.co.uk

At the risk of being controversial.

In the early hours of July Monday 16th. 2007 a vehicle made its way through the back fields of the farm and the occupants broke into the main cheese production area and the store and helped themselves to just over 1/4 tonne of some of our best cheese.

This is not the only incident to plague us in 2007, as you will note from the news page our milk tanker was stolen in March never to be seen again.

On Easter Sunday at about 1pm in the afternoon, when we were all at Farmers Market, I have not previously put this on the web site as it is a bit grisly, someone came in and shot one of our cows with what is likely to have been a Crossbow, straight between the eyes.

Locally 5 days ago, the Nobles at Manor Farm Sherfield had all their meat stolen, not to mention their equipment, and the local butchery on this estate, three weeks ago had all its meat stolen.

Yet, today we have heard from the Home Secretary, can't remember her name, they never seem to be in the same job for more than 5 minutes, tells us all, all 60 million of us in Britain, that the crime rate is dropping and that crime is a figment of our imagination, and the inate fear of crime locally is misplaced.

The woman is either a complete idiot, a liar, or so totally out of her depth, the sooner she goes on Gardening duty the better. Madam, in the unlikely event you read this ' Crime in the countryside is spiralling out of control so fast we almost have mob rule.

A very nice lady from the Police rang me this morning, to ask if I needed counselling, to which she was told to 'Get off the phone and out of the office and start catching the bandits', well that was the gist of it anyway

That's a relief, I have just been told I am not being contraversial just stating the facts.

'

A few days ago, I, a number of farmers, the NFU and Robert Key had a long constructive meeting regarding policing in the countryside of South Wiltshire. There is consensus that it is woefully inadequate and the 0845 number is a shambles, and Robert Key has committed himself to rectifying the position. Suddenly everybody is listening. Lets hope we can put this one to bed.