From my local deli to Jeremy Clarkson’s TV farm, why can’t meddling politicians stop stifling business?

UNTIL recently it was my habit to stop once a week at my favourite delicatessen, which I pass on my drive home from walking the dog in the park. There, I would buy a few slices of the shop’s exquisite Italian ham with rosemary and a pot of its artichoke hearts or plump green olives in spiced oil — murderously expensive, but worth every penny, in my book.

That was until a short while ago, when yellow lines appeared on the road opposite the deli, making parking in the area much more difficult. Since then, I haven’t shopped there nearly as often as in the past, forgoing my once-regular treat except on those rare occasions when I spot an empty space.

I suspect that others, who used to come from far and wide to sample the deli’s delights, may have stayed away for the same reason. Whatever the truth, those yellow lines can only be bad for the business.

Don’t ask me why the local council saw fit to restrict parking on that particular stretch of road, which was always wide enough to allow two lorries to pass in opposite directions, with plenty of room to spare, even with cars parked on both sides.

But then if you give politicians the power to stop us from doing anything we find convenient or enjoyable, you can bet your shirt that they will use it — no matter how much harm this may do to those enterprises that pay the taxes and business rates on which public services depend.

Wretched

Of course, my difficulty in finding a parking space near the deli is a very trivial illustration of the way regulation by government, local or national, stifles economic activity. (I won’t mention the smoking ban’s crippling effect on the pub trade, or regular readers will start to think I’m obsessed!)

A more dramatic example than those yellow lines is how London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s £15 daily congestion charge — with £12.50 on top of that for older vehicles that venture into his Ultra Low Emission Zone, which he plans to expand — is sucking the commercial heart out of the capital.

Indeed, just about everything this wretched man does — in those rare moments when he’s not posing for yet another photoshoot, or gabbling away on TV, in that peculiar way he has of running his words together (‘lemmebeperficklyclear’), blaming all his failings on the Government — seems calculated to make London a less attractive place to do business.

But you don’t have to live in the capital to understand how over-regulation is the enemy of the growth that alone can rescue us from the economic dumps and lead us back to prosperity.

For those who haven’t seen the first two series already, I warmly recommend Clarkson’s Farm, on Amazon Prime, for the dazzling light it sheds on the difficulties faced by farmers in their struggle to make a living and put food on our tables, while national and local bureaucrats do everything in their power to frustrate them. I confess that when friends first urged me to watch it, I rejected their advice, thinking that a series about Jeremy Clarkson’s experiment with farming in rural Oxfordshire sounded pretty dull.

I’d much enjoyed the first couple of dozen instalments I’d watched of his motoring programme, Top Gear, since I share both his juvenile love of cars and his politically incorrect outlook on life.

But the truth is that I was beginning to tire of all that laddish banter with his co-presenters, James May and Richard Hammond, and those formulaic, clearly rigged races between sports cars and hang-gliders, speedboats and the like.

Clarkson, I felt, had delighted me enough.

But when I finally got round to watching Clarkson’s Farm earlier this month, starting at series one, episode one, I realised at once how right my friends had been.

Having binge-watched series one and two, I’m now longing to see series three. (I’m happy to say rumours that this wouldn’t be shown after Mr C’s shockingly over-the-top abuse of Meghan Markle appear to be unfounded.)

True, the show is clearly not a scrupulously accurate depiction of the average British farmer’s struggles against adversity.

Joke

Unlike Clarkson, after all, most who try to make their living from agriculture can’t throw hundreds of thousands of pounds from Amazon’s limitless resources at every problem that arises — buying top-of-the-range machinery and labour- saving devices, constructing outbuildings or buying sheep, cattle and chickens whenever the fancy takes them.

But the wonderful cast of characters makes every episode a riveting watch, often laugh- out- loud funny and occasionally moving, even for a cynical old townie like me.

I especially like Kaleb, the lippy young local from Chipping Norton who knows everything there is to know about farming, and nothing whatsoever about anything else. Then there’s Charlie, the quiet, patient, sensible, highly knowledgeable land agent, who makes it his forlornly vain mission to inject a bit of reality into Clarkson’s madcap schemes for such projects as opening a farm shop, brewing beer from his barley and starting a restaurant in a tiny converted barn in the middle of a field.

Another star of the show is the unfailingly sweet-natured, ever-laughing Gerald, whose unintelligibly thick local accent (unintelligible, anyway, to most who were not born and brought up around Chipping Norton) is a hilarious running joke throughout both series.

But artificially staged though many scenes undoubtedly are, and unrealistic though it is in many ways, I would have no hesitation in describing Clarkson’s Farm as a truly educational programme, if only for the way it highlights the horrendous bureaucratic hoops that ordinary farmers must jump through in order to survive from day to day.

I’m not just thinking of West Oxfordshire District Council’s bloody-minded refusal to grant Clarkson permission for a car park next to his farm shop, or to open his restaurant in a large lambing shed he has adapted for the purpose, when the goahead would substantially have increased both enterprises’ chances of bringing employment to the area and offering a lucrative market to neighbouring farms.

Strict

I’m thinking, too, of the page after page of Whitehall forms that farmers must fill in, under regulations governing everything from animal welfare to employees’ health and safety, on pain of losing their livelihoods if there’s a single box they fail to tick.

To me, at least, the programme was a real eye-opener. So whatever your view of Mr Clarkson — and I know he’s far from being everyone’s cup of tea — if you have access to Prime, do give it a try.

Of course, MPs and councillors will always plead they have good reason for every new regulation they enforce. Those councillors in Oxfordshire who denied planning permission will say they have a strict obligation to preserve the area’s beauty (and never mind that the beauty in question was created in the first place by farmers exploiting the land for a living).

In the same way, Defra will say every form it sends out is essential to ensure the quality of the food supply and the health of both animals and the public.

Meanwhile, Sadiq Khan will claim his ULEZ zone must expand, and his congestion charges must go up, for the sake of the planet and the health of London children’s lungs.

I dare say my local Lambeth councillors will even manage to come up with some plausible- sounding reason for their decision to paint yellow lines on the road opposite my favourite deli.

I just wish MPs, councillors and quangocrats would pause a little longer before imposing new regulations, to consider what effect they are likely to have on businesses and the economy.

God knows, this country’s enterprises, large and small, are urgently in need of a pick- me- up, after the grim years of lockdown brought the most crippling restrictive rules in our history.

If politicians want my vote, they had better start scrapping regulations, instead of adding to them. Or might I just as well urge pigs to take wing?