VICAR Dear Readers of Country Squire Magazine, I trust that You are well and have enjoyed new year celebrations. Happy 2022! This week as we get back to normality after this Christmas holiday season, please let us dwell on those persecuted Christians. Around the world, many believers are persecuted – imprisoned, even killed – for their faith. Since Jesus laid down His life, 43 million … Continue reading A Prayer for the Persecuted
BY JOHN NASH Dear CSM Reader. You are probably vaguely aware by now that there is something very, very, wrong with this dying government’s attitude to rural matters. After all, most people who make a living on or from the land thought they could rely on the Conservative Party for its down-to-earth policies – policies that once balanced the touchy-feely, self-centred anthropomorphic dreams of … Continue reading The Cancer at the Heart of Extremist Animal Rights Lunacy
BY JIM WEBSTER You load sixteen tons, what do you get Another day older and deeper in debt Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go I owe my soul to the company store It’s a funny old world. You really have to be careful what you read. As it was I picked up a book on the Dark Ages and medieval agriculture … Continue reading Whose Serfdom?
BY JON ALEXANDER Could Liz Truss be our next Prime Minister? With Boris Johnson experiencing a rapid fall in popularity and a recent sizeable backbench rebellion, attentions have been diverted to who could be his successor. Step forward one Liz Truss, current Foreign Secretary and former Queen of the trade deals, a woman who has managed the unthinkable for politicians of late. She has just … Continue reading In Liz We Truss?
BY EFFIE DEANS There is a difference between how we judge the taste of carrots and how we judge the effectiveness of face masks, the likelihood of Covid spreading and the performance of the economy. The statement “carrots taste great” can be both true if I say it and false if you say it. It is a matter of taste. It is subjective. But there … Continue reading Scottish Nationalism is not Truth
BY ALEX STORY The bell tolled for western civilisation on the 1st of July 2007. Some people will point to financiers. After all, they sold competence and instead delivered the Great Financial Disaster of 2008. The last was followed by a never ending tidal wave of Governmental incontinence, destroying trust and value in the process. Others will finger politicians across the decades for mistaking personal for … Continue reading The Key to Everything
BY IAN MITCHELL Nearly fifty years ago, I was working as an unauthorised clerk—the lowest of the white low—at Max Pollock and Fremantle, then the largest firm on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. It was an easy job, which I owed to pure nepotism in that my then girl-friend’s cousin was a partner. I enjoyed both the easy work and the fact that the staff were … Continue reading A Tale of Christmas Past
BY JOHN NASH This week, being close to the warm and optimistic celebration of Christmas and the season of goodwill towards everyone, the Mail on Sunday (MOS) ran a piece of hate-speech about British hunters going to Iceland to kill reindeer for “fun”, and “sharing gruesome pictures online of slaughtered reindeer on a pre-Christmas trip”. By some amazing coincidence, the Daily Star discovered this very … Continue reading Killing Rudolf, Killing Democracy
CSM EDITORIAL When Boris Johnson was Editor of The Spectator one of his superiors gave a well-known fixer open access to the magazine’s books and operations in the hope that he could fix the chaos that Boris had left in his wake. The content on the magazine was excellent but the operational mess was no longer avoidable. The fixer tried his best. A magazine is … Continue reading #Johnson
BY JAMES BEMBRIDGE One journalist has revealed what many have long suspected: that the advice given by SAGE is anything but sage. I refer to the scandal which now surrounds the government body’s endless modelling of questionably high death figures – not since Kate Moss’ party days has a modelling scandal involved so many illicit highs. Through a series of well-placed questions, the Spectator’s Fraser … Continue reading Informed By Policy
BY FREDERICK EDWARD Are you an expert? They seem to be everywhere nowadays. You can’t turn on the telly or read the news without an ‘expert’ passing their judgement on something. ‘Humanity to be extinct by tea-time next Wednesday,’ will claim one, ‘unless garden hosepipe ban immediately introduced.’ Invariably, a COBRA meeting will follow this pronouncement, with Generalissimo Johnson appearing before the nation looking like … Continue reading The Reign of Experts
BY DAVID EYLES For some time now, it has been apparent that something is happening in the world of politics. I don’t mean the stupid office parties during lockdown. What I mean is that large numbers of people are hugely disappointed in Boris and his government – and are beginning to feel completely disenfranchised. The dismal state of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition has only added … Continue reading The Sleeping Giant II
VICAR Dear Readers of Country Squire Magazine, I trust that You and Your families are well and excited for Christmas next weekend. This fourth Sunday of Advent we meditate on the peace that Jesus brings our hearts and our world. Scripture is the place we can find the promises of God. Let us meditate on these truths and allow them to comfort our hearts this … Continue reading Fourth Sunday of Advent
BY NIGEL BEAN As our regular readers will be well aware, the Editor of this magazine and I are in the middle of a legal dispute with the BBC’s Chris Packham and his charity the Wildheart Trust, now cynically renamed the Wildheart Sanctuary, which runs the Isle of Wight zoo. Well, when this charity recently reported their financials to the Charity Commission, we uncovered yet … Continue reading Isle of Wight Zoo’s Covid Appeal
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN Introductory Notes: In Greek mythology Sisyphus was the founder and king of Ephyra. He was punished by Hades for cheating death twice by being forced to roll an immense boulder up a hill only for it to roll down every time it neared the top, repeating this same action for eternity. In the final chapter of his ‘Myth of Sisyphus’, Albert Camus … Continue reading Our Sisyphean Liberty
BY STEPHEN SHELTON There was a chemistry professor in a large college that had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab, the professor noticed one young man, an exchange student, who kept rubbing his back and stretching as if his back hurt. The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he … Continue reading Wake Up America
BY ROCHELLE BLAKEMAN I always thought the French cared about their farmers more than the British. Much like in Italy, French culture holds food as sacrosanct. We Brits drench everything in lard and grease apparently, much to the dismay of some of my international friends – especially up North. We’re much more likely to eat casually whilst watching Coronation Street whilst our European cousins (especially … Continue reading France’s Forgotten Farmers
BY JAMES BEMBRIDGE The past two years have seen so-called ‘green’ and ‘egalitarian’ politicians attempt to ward off that most green and egalitarian thing: death. The pitiless debt collector for whom our every heart murmur, every latent lump, and every shadow-ridden scan serves as a reminder of our outstanding balance. When it came to Covid, politicians thought they could write this debt off, but in … Continue reading Proscribing Death
BY ANDREW MOODY There has been some recent debate within Hollywood about the merits, (positive or negative) surrounding the industry’s focus on making Marvel Superhero films, especially given their popularity within the millennial generation. Nobody has been more outspoken than fabled film director Martin Scorsese, who after an October 2019 interview for UK film magazine Empire, was forced to write a follow up in November … Continue reading Scorsese on Marvel
BY JIM WEBSTER The thing about farming and agriculture is that it isn’t just an industry, it isn’t just a way of life, it’s a world. All sorts of people come into this world and they might pass through, going about their lawful occasions. They might enter it and flee gibbering unable to cope with the proclivities of the natives. Some will arrive, breathe deeply … Continue reading Going Native
