The bull and the Borg

NOTE: This satirical piece is rooted in facts. Having been to Australia on tour myself, I also heard the claims of bureaucratic abuse from many of the farmers who attended my talks. While Monckton’s essay has some biting satirical humor in it, laugh at it, but know that the issues he writes about are all too real. – Anthony

Guest essay by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

Captain’s Log, Stardate 2013.67: Antipodean climate extremists are going to have a field day with this one. In Australia (where else?) a pedigree Hereford bull has been named “Lord Monckton”. And the Prime Directive forbids me to intervene.

Peter Manuel, who farms many thousands of acres in the Lofty Ranges, became so exasperated with the Natural Resources Management Board of South Australia for interfering with farming that he arranged for Lord Monckton (the real one, that is) to visit the state and give a series of talks to farmers.

Peter is chief executive of Farmers’ and Landowners’ Group Australia (FLAG), which campaigns to defend farmers against the ridiculous environmental over-regulation that is destroying their livelihoods.

Earlier this year, I spent ten days with Peter and his family on their beautiful, impeccably-maintained spread high in the hills above Adelaide. The only way for us jackaroos to cover all the rolling acres and herd the cattle and sheep (in Australia, the word “sheep” is spelt “IPCC”) was on off-road motor-bikes, keeping a sharp eye out for snakes as we thundered across the rock-strewn terrain at speeds that would have been illegal on the roads.

After I had ridden (or slidden) fearlessly after my kind host down a shifting, rock-strewn 60-degree brae that no visitor had dared to attempt before, Peter announced that this year’s best pedigree bull on the farm would be named Lord Monckton, and would make an early appearance at the Adelaide Show.

Australia has more poisonous critters than any other continent – including the spooky, spiky officials of the ever-expanding Natural Resources Management Borg, who now outnumber police officers by a handsome margin in the country districts, where former precinct houses and cop-shops have been Assimilated and are now nests of Borg, dedicated to the eradication of farming throughout South Australia in the name of Saving The Planet against non-existent “global warming”.

Farming is Australia’s biggest business. Or, rather, it was. The number of farms in this vast, desert continent is down by 100,000, and, remarkably, the state of Victoria has already become the first in the Federation to become a net importer of food – in Australia, of all places, where a vast continent the size of Europe feeds a tiny population the size of greater London. Peter Manuel is determined that South Australia shall not be the next net importer of food.

The pretext for the Borg’s cruel attacks on farmers is Agenda 21, the U.N.’s sinister plan for global domination via environmental over-regulation.

The Borg, a universally-hated bureaucracy, are actively putting the U.N.’s nihilistic, anti-irrigation, anti-pesticide, anti-farming, anti-business, anti-environment, anti-population, anti-human, anti-capitalist, anti-Western, anti-everything Agenda 21 program into ruthless effect.

During my visit to the Lofty Ranges, Peter introduced me to a local farmer with a shocking story. For weeks bureaucrats with binoculars had hidden behind a shed and spied on his farm. Then, one night at 11 pm, They pounced.

Three of Them drove at the farmer in a pickup truck with a massive roo-bar on the front. He ended up hanging from the bar, with an agonizingly bruised leg. He had to be taken to hospital with bruising, lacerations and post-traumatic stress, and remains in pain to this day.

The Borg got to the police before he did, for he was still crook. They alleged he had driven at Them and not the other way about. Wisely, They did not pursue that allegation, but it was enough to ensure that the police disregarded his allegation against Them.

Instead, They took him to court for unlawfully extracting water from a nearby creek. In his absence – his injuries had rendered him unfit to attend – the rube judge in the local criminal court, on no evidence and taking no account of his condition, savagely fined him $18,000 for allegedly having used water from the creek near his property to irrigate his crop of lucerne on the day of the bureaucrats’ raid.

Fortunately, the farmer neither paid the fine nor did the 320 hours’ community service the hanging judge handed down on learning that he had not paid. Though the judge had inflicted what – even if a real offense had been committed, which it had not – was a flagrantly disproportionate fine, not everyone in the civil service is heartless. The judge’s order was simply ignored. The farmer went unpunished.

Just as well: for he had committed no offense. True, he had extracted water from the creek that day, but he had used it to fill his cattle-troughs. I have seen his permit granting him the lawful right to extract water from the creek for his household and for his cattle.

The court is soon to be asked to set aside its judgment and expunge the victim’s record of this non-offense. It may yet also be asked to issue a summons against the Borg ex proprio motu for conspiracy to attempt to pervert the course of justice and conspiracy to perpetrate wilful misfeasance in a public office.

The farmer who wanted to water his cows is by no means the only victim of the Borg’s regime of terror here in South Australia. Another farmer told me They had used satellite photos to estimate the size of his reservoir.

The dam’s true capacity, when professionally surveyed on the ground, was found to be 6.1 million liters, but their Mickey Mouse method, using satellites monitored by zitty teenagers eating too many Krispy Kreme donuts and doing/drinking too much coke/Coke, had incorrectly overestimated it at 10.2 million liters – a shocking error. The satellites can assess the area of a reservoir but not its depth. The Borg’s rule of thumb is calculated to exaggerate the depth of just about every reservoir.

All reservoirs above a threshold capacity are cripplingly and expensively regulated, allegedly to conserve water. As a result of this incident, farmers all over South Australia with reservoirs that the Borg say are just over the threshold for regulation are now demanding surveys to check Their math. But farmers have to pay for the surveys themselves.

In any event, there is no need for regulation at all. Farmers’ reservoirs represent less than 1% of the land area; and, aside from evaporation, they do not cause a net loss of water flow through the creeks and rivers. For Lord Monckton and his fellow cattle do not so much drink the water as rent it.

While I was in South Australia, at the height of the blazing summer drought, the Borg decided to let out a third of the water in the Mount Bold Reservoir, the only major public dam in South Australia and the main water supply for Adelaide, which is now desperately short of water. You couldn’t make this up.

Of course, They were not billed for the water They used to top up the ocean. Their excuse for this monstrous waste? “To maintain environmental flow”. Yet in the summer months the natural “environmental flow” is vanishingly different from zero. They should have left well alone.

Another farmer who cleared silt from a river on his land to assist the river flow was fined a staggeringly disproportionate $35,000 by the vicious judges, who are in the Board’s pocket and act as though they were in Their pay.

Yet another farmer was told a costly water-meter had to be fitted to his borehole, so he could be charged for using his own water, even though water used for his household and his cattle is by law exempt from any charges. No one had been to read the meter ever since its installation several years previously.

Another farmer who had annoyed the Borg by refusing to comply with an unlawful attempt to enforce upon him a regulation that did not apply to him, was told: “We can fine you for shifting a rock.”

Bullying notices along the roadsides here tell passers-by that they must not touch or disturb soil or vegetation at all. Presumably people are expected to hover a few inches above the ground. But most of the population are not Catholic, so they cannot do that. So going for a walk in the countryside is now illegal in much of South Australia.

The Borg are ordering farmers all across South Australia to plant thorny weeds all along the road verges: and Their reason is that “some clusters of acacia paradoxa will protect the river banks from kangaroo intrusion.” The kangaroos, an indigenous species, were here long before the Borg. But now, in the name of saving the natural environment, the natural environment and its iconic symbols, They are out to destroy the kangaroos.

Planting acacia paradoxa is a bad idea. Only bureaucratic panty-waists who have never ridden a farm bike would have thought it up. Spiny acacia is also known as the kerosene bush. As its name implies, it catches fire explosively. The bushes planted on the Borg’s orders will help bush fires to spread. One farmer put it to me bluntly: “That’s what the Agenda 21 maniacs want. They want to burn us out and drive us off our land forever.”

He is right. I have spoken to a sheep-farmer whom the Borg menaced with massive fines because, They said, he had more stock on his land than the arbitrarily low permitted maximum. They had double-counted his lambs, math not being a strong point with the hive mind. In any event, that farmer had plenty of feed for his stock, which were in magnificent condition.

The Borg wrote ordering the farmer to reduce his stockholding. He complained to a senior administrator (Locutus of Borg, perhaps). Eventually They climbed down – but without any apology. Instead, an official, furious at having been caught out in yet another error, told the farmer They would now arrange a forced sale of his farm.

Many other tales, such as the story of the prawn-farmer and the bogus koala claw-marks, will have to wait for another time. But the Borg felt the lash of the Viscount’s tongue. Towards the end of my visit to South Australia, they began turning up at my speaker meetings and muttering angrily to Themselves at the back.

No doubt Ban Ki-Moon, secretary-general of the useless United Nations, is delighted that his willing agents at the Natural Resources Management Borg are making the corrupt U.N. and its environmentally destructive Agenda 21 program even more hated than it already is.

Time to arrange a forced sale of the U.N.’s lavish New York HQ and send its pampered officials to do some real work on Australian farms. I have said it before and I’ll say it again. Let us convert the U.N. building to fancy apartments for the rich and famous. I shall take the penthouse.

Meanwhile, may the Natural Resources Management Borg and all their works wither and perish in the drought Their mad policies have needlessly created, and may Lord Monckton and his vigorous progeny thrive not merely ad multos annos but usque in saeculum. Make it so!