Britain’s Prince Charles has been branded a ”hypocrite” by a campaigner.
Ian Hibberd, of the Save Truro campaign – an initiative which is opposed to an out-of-town supermarket, car park and housing estate on Duchy of Cornwall land in Cornwall, South West England – has slammed the royal after he warned of the threats to Britain’s rural way of life from ”insensitive development” during an address at a farming conference.
He told the Western Morning News newspaper: ”This is an outrageous speech. Prince Charles must have the skin of a rhinoceros not to recognize the hypocrisy of it.”
During Charles’ video address – which left Ian ”speechless and raging” – to the Oxford Farming Conference, he said: ”It is the people and what they do that creates the beating heart of our countryside, the vitality that comes from the busy village shop and pub, a thriving school, from the church and Women’s Institute.
”It comes from the tractors in the fields, the skilled workers, the livestock, the growing crops and the landscape’s biodiversity, now so much under threat from climate change, diseases and insensitive development.
”All of these elements make up a living, breathing countryside which is as precious as any ancient cathedral. This is why everything must be focused on making sure that farmers are able to keep on farming in a way that provides them with a decent living.”
John Stone, a Truro resident opposed to the local planning proposals in the Tregurra Valley, east of Truro, also hit out at Charles’ comments.
In a piece on the Save Truro campaign’s website, he wrote: ”These 55 acres of best quality farmland were essential to the farming enterprise to which it was let by the Duchy. The loss of land means a reduction in the herd, an increase in costs and, quite possibly, a reduction in milk quality because control over the quality of winter feed cannot be maintained.
”Never mind the ‘spirituality’ of the countryside, these are business factors which Prince Charles has created by choosing to tarmac and concrete over this land.”