Animals don't need human sentimentality

Do you think that a cow is a cuddly friend, or a burger on four legs? I'm always entertained by our bizarre relationship with animals, and the emergence of foot and mouth in the Home Counties has resulted in an outbreak of the usual guff in the press. Obviously the sight of culled cows lying on their backs doesn't play well with the British public, and so editors have been desperate to find a way to "personalise" the current crisis. Most of us eat meat, but don't want to know too many details about how the stuff goes from being a living breathing animal munching grass to that lump of red stuff down at the local butchers.

On the Continent, it's still possible to visit butchers where carcasses hang up in full view, or shop at fishmongers where they cut you a steak off a large bloody tuna or swordfish. Here, we have displays of disgusting "apple, pork, mint and cherry" sausages. Anything except real unadulterated meat.

Every crisis needs a heroine, and this time around we have Mabel the Jersey cow whose life is "hanging in the balance" for the second time. Shortly after her birth, her mother died and Mabel was saved from the abattoir, currently residing at the Noah's Ark children's nursery within the current 3km exclusion zone imposed by Defra. Every day her owners fear Mabel may be slaughtered if the current outbreak shows any further signs of spreading. Pass the box of tissues, please.

This emotive way of talking about foodstuffs is normal. A farmer, whose herd had to be culled, even though it subsequently tested negative for foot and mouth, said, "Every animal has its own unique value to us." It is a tragedy when a herd has to be slaughtered, but to talk about animals bred purely for our consumption as if they have human characteristics is dotty.

Many farmers have not operated at a profit for years - and the news that Gordon Brown plans to ensure they are adequately compensated is welcome. But we also need better education about food and modern farming. Having made quite a few television films on the subject, I am astonished by the general level of ignorance. Politicians don't help things either: farmers are driven crazy by the current level of bureaucracy inflicted by government and the EU, but they also produce food - from beef to milk to lamb - that we don't seem to want to eat.

If we really cared about the farming industry, instead of conducting a love affair with cute cows, then we ought to start eating the stuff they produce, rather than going for the cheapest option. Instead of panicking we ought to have more faith in home- grown produce. But the truth is, we don't really care about what we eat, and it will be the public, not foot and mouth, that puts British farmers out of business.

Life's too short to waste at BAA airports

The agreeable world of Brit-free Italian beaches

Good news that the Competition Commission has belatedly decided to look into the near-monopoly BAA exerts on our major airports. It took 24-hour queues in the departures at Heathrow, six-hour waits for baggage at Gatwick, and lines never shorter than 200 people at any hour of the day or night to go through security before the CC "noticed" there was a problem.

It took thousands of lost bags every day for weeks and hundreds of complaints from passengers daring to travel in the school holidays before anyone in government considered that allowing a monopoly to run our busiest airports might be a bad idea. A foreign- owned business, whose mantra is clearly "profit before people". A company that put shops selling booze and fags in the space between customs and your waiting relatives but who can't install one seat near its baggage carousels.

I, like many people, have decided never to go through Heathrow or Gatwick ever again if I possibly can. Enter the vicinity of either and you can feel your blood pressure rising, your temper boiling, an ache clamping itself around your head and shoulders. I value my life too much to shorten it by travelling anywhere run by BAA.

I've just come back from two weeks enjoying life on an Italian beach. First of all I was never the fattest person, by several hundred sun lovers in any direction. Secondly, there's something completely life-affirming about the sight of middle-aged men and women smoking, chatting on the telephone, standing in the shallows for hours on end.

No children scream or get clouted by their short-tempered parents. In Italy children are adored, played with, valued. Extended families play tennis together, mind the baby, read the newspaper. Teenagers don't feel the need to listen to loud music on radios. We were all packed in tightly in serried ranks on our sun loungers under matching umbrellas rented for a perfectly reasonable [pound]8 a day, but no one invaded anyone else's space. We all rotated in unison as the sun moved around.

We all left the beach at 1pm for a massive pasta lunch in the cafe conveniently located by the car park, feasting on home-made spaghetti alle vongole, plates of gorgeous buffalo mozzarella and luscious local tomatoes, for a bargain [pound]20. We all returned at about 4pm and snoozed, and we all generally left promptly at 6.30pm to prepare for another massive evening meal. I deliberately sought out the beaches where the penny-pinching Brits and the Germans don't want to go, and so I'm thrilled that in some Italian resorts the local authorities have decided to impose fines of up to [pound]700 on those unsporting types who arrive at dawn and bag the best slots on the public beaches with their towels and then go off and have breakfast.