Why the King’s tour with Sir Keir Starmer didn’t sit right with me - Sarah Todd

Instead of listening to these grass-roots concerns Sir Keir was basking in the public’s warm welcome for the King.

Fair enough, it is completely understandable that the King would want to showcase this environmentally friendly housing project but please do it in private, away from the glare of the cameras.

While our King would mean no harm by it and has spent a lifetime supporting the countryside and agriculture, the whole tour just didn’t sit right. It may well be that yours truly is reading too much into it, but it felt like the Government was cocking a snook at the farmers’ Inheritance Tax protest by so publicly cosying up to the monarchy.

Also part of the visit was Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, who is at the very heart of Government policy to build 1.5 million homes ahead of the next election.

Now straight off, there is a question to ask about who is actually going to live in these houses that Ms Rayner says there are “no excuses” not to build. Will developments include any bungalows for the Government’s favourite sector, pensioners? With thousands wanting to downsize but stay within their local area, just start and notice how few bungalows are being built these days.

Can doctors’ surgeries cope and what about pupil numbers at the schools…Will there be new classrooms and teachers or a case of budging up? Will the roads, already peppered with potholes and tailed-back at junctions, be able to handle all the extra traffic? Then what about water, sewerage, public transport and broadband connections? As an aside, it’s as rare as hen’s teeth to see solar panels on the roofs of any new builds. So shocking at a time when industry is being made to jump through net zero hoops and prime agricultural land is being taken out of food production and covered with solar panels because we’re supposed to be so desperate for them.

To rewind, sewerage was one of the infrastructure essentials mentioned and some listeners reported being put off their tea when BBC Radio 4’s long-running drama The Archers featured human waste seeping up the drain at Tony and Pat Archer’s Bridge Farm. Worse was to come, down the road at the new housing development Joy’s kitchen and all her carpets were ruined after it started spewing out of the toilet and shower.

Other properties on new-build Beechwood Estate are in the process of being cleared up and, time will tell, but it’s looking a bit like the system in place can’t cope.

Something like sewerage seeping into your home could be more than enough to trigger some stress.

Talking of which, we live in a world that throws pills and benefits at people who would, a generation or so ago, be helped by friends and neighbours to pull themselves together again. Before everybody writes in, yes there are some very serious conditions that need the intervention of medication and professional help and can’t be put right by an old-fashioned shoulder to cry on.

There has been a surge in mental health-related claims for disability payments in the news this week. The Resolution Foundation blames the rise on a sicker population and broken welfare system that “incentivises claimants to apply for disability benefits” which cannot easily be revoked later.

As part of this writer’s work, a lot of interviews have been done north of the border in support of an organisation called Farmstrong. Founded in New Zealand, it pushes the message that it’s no good farmers looking after their livestock and machinery if they don’t look after themselves. It’s all about ploughing on but taking time to “have a blether” and looking after the basics, like eating properly during busy times like lambing. Getting out to the livestock market or agricultural shows, mixing with a few folks.

While we’re not all living off the land, or located in the wilds of New Zealand or Scotland, with a record half a million adults currently claiming disability benefits for anxiety and depression we would surely be wise to take a leaf out of their book and, as a nation, start helping others to help themselves.

Perhaps Sir Keir and the King should organise a visit?