IF you are going to have a week's holiday at all, then pick one when positive, popular, public action has bled dry the petrol forecourts of the country and you are blissfully unaware of anything amiss, walking your way through the Pre-Pyrenees of northern Spain.

I am sorry, but I did enjoy it and watching from afar as the industrial action reverberated around Europe, I found it a little ironical that it was the French that sparked it all off as they did in 1798 during their last big Revolution!

Come to think of it, Napoleon's scorched earth policy was not too dissimilar to the petrol starvation strategy of the petrol price demonstrators.

On my return to questionable civilisation, I would make three comments:

I paid 47p/litre for Spanish diesel; and yet their lorry drivers still blockaded Barcelona because of the 40pc hike in prices since January. I found the comparison odious and caps the credibility of those commercial businesses forced to try and compete in Europe whilst paying obscene prices at the pump.

Our journey back across the Pennines from Liverpool airport found most petrol stations with a trickle of supplies but I was ashamed to discover widely varying prices. On the motorway, diesel was running at 81.9p/ltr, as I gather is the case still at quite a few spots around Ryedale. However, there were some garages proudly displaying diesel available at 88p/ltr and this surely is pretty inexcusable profiteering.

If there was a good reason for it, then perhaps one such operator would be good enough to reply.

There is an old English saying that behind every dark covered petrol pump there is a silver lining; and local shop keepers appear to have been one of the few beneficiaries, apart of course from the rating of the Tory party. Philip Place tells me that Malton market place was buzzing again during the mid-week of the crisis and Frank Turner reported that he had customers through his Rillington butchers' shop that he had not seen for many a year.

In the aftermath of the troubles, it is patently clear that Tony Blair and Co have no conception of what they have done and, worse still, have not the ability to handle the crisis. Has it anything to do with his selection of ministers? - I saw a little paragraph in the Telegraph on Sunday which revealed that neither Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, nor Stephen Byers, the Trade Secretary, can drive and have never had to buy a litre of petrol in their lives!

Don't forget that the cattle census returns for older animals has to be sent back by September 25 and Charlie Breese is still available to help those who would like to despatch the information electronically.

MAFF's website has had its frustrating teething problems but nevertheless there is the definite advantage in getting all Ryedale's cattle onto a database and even if you sent back your form manually, we would still ask that you bring a copy in to Charlie so that we can record it on our local database for you.

Charlie's eyes have gone a funny square shape having being chained to his computer for a week.

I have, for a while, thought that the EC Beef Strategy Committee must have all gone through the Karachi School for Cricket Umpires as they display such similar traits in the decisions over English players in the cattle business. The latest abuse of the level playing field rules was being discussed at the end of last week whereby, due to budgetary pressure, the slaughter premium is to be dropped on all over-30-month cattle but only in the UK.

This, presumably, is because our OTMS cattle are being kept out of the human food chain and burnt, again, strangely enough, at the behest of that same management committee.

For example, Roland Mason had a magnificent Simmental stock bull in the market yesterday which would weigh 1,000 kilograms and, in the normal course of events, would have been worth £1,000. Instead he will get around £500 under the OTMS scheme; and to further rub salt into the wound, the EC now propose to take away the £17 slaughter premium scheme that one would have thought should be available to every animal that is going to slaughter.

To give you an idea of cost, next year the slaughter premium rises to £33 per head and this would have given farmers £42m overall which may be denied them.

The half year trade figures have been just published and it will be no comfort to our pig producers to learn that pork imports have increased by over 25pc compared to last year and we have just crunched our way through over 120,000 tonnes of foreign pig meat.

As far as I can see, our own beef exports since the ban was lifted a year ago have been too negligible to even register in the statistics whereas 75,000 tonnes of foreign beef has been served at British dinner tables.

The sooner we have proper labelling which tells us where our meat comes from the better.

Tuesday brought in a miserable weather front, frustrating those anxious to finish harvest. The market was reasonably full, with 245 cattle of which 114 were young bulls. John Cundall had a good trade and the continentals would average just short of 100p/kg which must be sufficient to tempt a lot of doubtful producers back into Malton.

I can only say that we do need your support and prices at the minute justify it.

Top bull of the day was shown by England Bros of West Lutton at 116p/kg and the best heavyweight at 113p/kg came from John Harrison at Fryup.

We had 130 clean and trade again was very buoyant with the Intervention-type steer making over 100p/kg up to 109p/kg achieved by Jim Welburn. Highest priced steer of the day was shown by Chris Beal at 116p/kg but this was topped by George Marwood's heifer at 134p/kg.

There were just a disappointing 879 sheep in the market and the average was around 82p/kg. Top price of 88p/kg went to Tom Scaling.

Pigs are in short supply and there were 220 sold at Malton over the two days. The overall average ran around 80p/kg up to a top 87.5p for a pen of lightweight gilts from Fred Horsley of Skirpenbeck.

Don't forget it's Goathland Sheep Sale next Tuesday and Farmers' Market, in Malton, a week on Saturday.