There is more than a loss of confidence.

There is a loss of hope.

Some of our farmers, working all hours, are actually earning less than the minimum wage.

The gap between farm gate prices and retail prices grows wider all the time.

You can buy a modest cut of meat in the supermarket for more than the farmer is paid for the whole animal.

A time of general prosperity elsewhere has left our farmers isolated and disadvantaged. The Government's rescue package, although welcome, does not address a root cause of the crisis - the regulatory imbalance between our farmers and those on the continent.

Especially on meat hygiene, one set of rules applies to the British and another to everyone else. A case in point is Harrison's Poultry, the largest employer in the Antrobus area, which gives jobs to over 100 people and processes over 100,000 poussins a week. Until April this year Harrison's were paying £36,000 a year to the meat hygiene service.

By April next year, this will increase to £100,000 as they will have to pay for full time veterinary inspections.

That doesn't apply to their competitors in France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Greece or Portugal.

This is not an appeal for protectionism, just for equality.

The way we are going, the abattoir of the future will have one worker doing the business and four others with clipboards looking on and taking notes.

ANOTHER threat to our future comes from the sky.

Manchester Airport company's vision of the new millennium includes a steep rise in passenger traffic from 18 million to nearly 41 million by the year 2015.

The airport's development will increase still further the pressures on the Cheshire green belt, which is the county's most precious resource apart from its people.

I expect the second runway, for which part of the green belt has already been sacrificed, to be in operation at the latest by this time next year.

People in Knutsford will be hearing the difference immediately, with aircraft flying 200ft lower and significantly closer, especially on landing.

The wider effects will be felt much further afield.

The airport company is maintaining its promise - and must be held to it - of no night flights on the second runway.

It also argues that the entire area will benefit from the economic activity being generated - more flights, more jobs and more prosperity.

That is all well and good as far as it goes.

But only Knutsford and Mobberley will be paying the price for this.

Again there is an imbalance.

The gain is Manchester's but the pain is Cheshire's.

MY grandson Max spent last week as a sort of mini-delegate to the Labour Party conference.

Not that he had much choice in the matter.

He was taken to Bournemouth by his parents, my daughter Melissa and her husband Peter.

The Party even issued Max with a badge of identification, complete with baby photograph, to wear around his neck.

Of course, he tried to eat it.

He was mercifully oblivious to what was going on around him.

To outside observers it seemed to be more of a trade fair than a political conference - dominated by the need to raise £20 million to fight the next election.

Contributors of more than £25,000 to party funds were invited to lunch with a cabinet minister before the Prime Minister's speech, and to tea with Tony Blair himself after it.

That sounded suspiciously like cash for access.

FIVE years ago I wrote a book about the Bosnian war, I was about to describe it in the introduction as my one and only book, when my publisher persuaded me to enter a saving reservation, and call it probably my one and only book.

She thus prevented me from making one of those unbreakable promises, like serving in Parliament for one term only, which I would later have cause to regret.

Such extraordinary things have happened since, that I started to write them down on Sunday afternoons - the only real 'down time' I allow myself - to keep a record of them.

It was then that I decided that the second and improbably book would have to be written.

(My father wrote 20, so in family terms I am seriously under-achieving.)

The book will be called An Accidental MP, and is already more than three quarters written.

The chapters will range from Planet Tatton, an account of the election campaign, to New Labour, New Sleaze? - my view of the changes in the public perception of politics (if any) that have occurred between then and now.

Penguin confirmed last week that they plan to publish the book a year from now, before the next election, and in time to make the case for more independence in our politics.

When I spoke to a group of sixth-formers the other day, I started with the phrase Trust me, I'm an MP.

That got their attention.

But does anyone trust MPs any more?

I hope that they do, and with that in mind I shall make certain promises about the forthcoming volume.

First, although it will coincide with the newly-launched Knutsford Literary Festival, it will be kept entirely separate.

The festival, the idea of our renowned local historian, Joan Leach, will be concerned with more substantial and enduring authors like Elizabeth Gaskell.

Second, the book will differ from the recent memoirs of such MPs as Gyles Brandreth and Alan Clark (whose death I mourn, for he was truly one of a kind,) in that I shall not speak ill of my constituency.

I found their disdain for the people they represented in Chester and Plymouth quite extraordinary.

If either of those honourable gentlemen had represented Tatton, I am sure he would have written quite differently.

He would have had constituents like the unknown lady who came up and hugged me in the Royal George last Saturday.

Nothing as touching as that ever happened to me in TV news.

My third pledge is that I shall not use the book to settle old scores - not that I have that many to settle.

But I may make an exception in the case of the sad and solitary MP who persists in sending me discourteous letters.

If he writes one more, he will be named and shamed.

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.