THE Government's rural White Paper seems to have met with a mixed response in this area.

These are certainly some good measures in it such as the 50 per cent rate cut for village shops, pubs and garages, investment in health care centres and help for rural transport schemes. However, all this is just window-dressing as it does nothing to address the fundamental problem.

The countryside is about farming, and farming has been brought to the brink of extinction. Total farm incomes in the UK have fallen by 29 per cent this year alone.

Since 1995, the average income reduction has amounted to 70 per cent, and is now at its lowest level for 60 years. Imagine your own income was reduced by this level. Could you manage?

However, our farm owners can always take advantage of these new proposals by "diversifying". Planning laws are to be reformed to allow prime agricultural land to be developed, so we can, presumably, look forward to more theme parks and golf courses.

To be fair, a British government can do practically nothing to help farmers, because it is no longer in their power to do so: Agricultural policy is now decided in Brussels, by unelected Eurocrats, just as in so many other areas of our daily lives.

Once the EU is enlarged, and we have many more eastern European farmers to support, through the CAP, what are our farmers expected to do? Of course, they can diversify by concreting over their fields.

Then, they can dress up in ye olde Tudor costumes, to work in theme parks, or to act as golf caddies, in the fields they once farmed. This will enable them to earn enough to buy imported foreign food to eat.

R G SPENCER,

Malvern.