“If the story-tellers could ha’ got decency and good morals from true stories, who’d have troubled to invent parables?” – Thomas Hardy

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For years now, we’ve all eaten three buckets of manure for breakfast every day.

It wasn’t always this way, but everyone alive has never known a time when we haven’t eaten three buckets of manure for breakfast every day. This country produces a lot of manure and spends a lot of resources to produce that manure. We export it around the world so that others can eat three buckets of manure for breakfast every day. We pity people who can only afford to eat two buckets of manure for breakfast every day or who even have to go without any on some days. Weirdly, while we export a lot of manure, we also import a lot of manure. This is because there are different grades of manure. Thin, grassy manure is better for a light snack while you’re on the go but thick, gloopy manure is better keeping folk warm in the winter.

Things are changing. We’re starting to recognise that eating three buckets of manure for breakfast every day isn’t actually good for us. It’s actually really, really bad for our health. It’s not even that fun. Only a very few people actually enjoy eating three buckets of manure for breakfast every single day.

One of the big problems with eating three buckets of manure for breakfast every day is that the companies that produce the manure are some of the biggest and most powerful on the planet. They pay a lot of taxes, as do the people who buy the manure, but they also spend a lot of money convincing politicians to keep the taxes that they pay as low as possible.

There have been a few people out there who have been trying to develop alternative breakfasts. Porridge, they say, is better for us and the oats can be grown readily here. We wouldn’t need to import so much manure and we’d probably all enjoy our breakfasts more. Even the people who say they like eating three buckets of manure for breakfast every day generally quite like the benefits of porridge once they try it.

The manure companies are pushing back though. They say that they understand that porridge is a better breakfast and it would be better if we transitioned to it, but it must be a transition. We must continue eating manure for breakfast for a long time. Sure, maybe we can do our part to eat smaller breakfasts – maybe two buckets is enough – and maybe we could mix some oats into the manure to spread it out a bit. But it is important that we keep eating manure for breakfast every day because we’ll need it for a long time. Maybe we could even start recycling and eating our own manure from time to time!

One of the latest political battles is over a new field that has been found up north. It’s rough farming but the manure companies say it could produce enough manure to provide one bucket a week to everyone in the country. And because it’s local manure, it’ll be better than importing manure from elsewhere – though nowhere else seems to be saying that they’ll reduce their manure exports if we stop buying it from them. Eating three buckets of locally produced manure for breakfast every day doesn’t seem like fewer people overall will be eating less manure.

Maybe the porridge eaters are right and we do need to transition away from eating three buckets of manure for breakfast every day at some point but, right now, the politicians and the companies tell us that it’s very, very important that we all eat manure.

Anyway. That wind turbine is ugly and Rosebank is such a pretty name.