Farming

Guardians of the landscape with a strong sense of independence which makes them resent the fact that city dwellers keep telling them what to do. As a result their politics lean to the right with most in the main agricultural regions from Perthshire up to Aberdeenshire and the sheep farming areas in the Borders avid Conservative voters. A pity then that the Conservative Party has quickly sacrificed farming along with the fishing industry in their pursuit of Brexit and the closure of EU markets and a slew of free trade deals which will see imports flooding into the UK as the prices will undercut local producers. It needn't be this way. All those EU customers paying top prices for meat and fish were paying for quality not because they watched Braveheart. Scotland as a brand is about a strong as it gets. It's about time that brand was allowed to develop so it can support the agriculture and fisheries sectors of the economy.