THE jailing of farmer John Price for doing good in his community is a disgrace. This smacks of a very nasty authoritarian state.

I went to Kingsland to look at the “damage” done.

Looking upstream over Mr Price’s land from the medieval bridge was a beautiful bucolic, Constable-like vista. They call Mr Price’s river an SSSI or, as I call it, a Site of pSeudo-scientific Interest.

I looked at the literature produced by the Environment Agency and English Nature.

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There was not a jot of analytical data; it was more an ideological Green “mishmash” than what might be called science. Why have the Tories allowed these Green fanatics to flourish on their watch?

I remember hedging and ditching in the 1950s. I don’t remember my father asking for permission. Nature ran away when his big boots arrived and quickly returned when he returned to other tasks on the farm. He knew that we had to keep ditches called rhyns clear or the land would return to marsh.

Similarly the newts, kingfishers, water voles, herons, etc that delighted me as a child will quickly return to the river Lugg.

BRIAN ORGAN

Sutton St Nicholas