Having paid subsidies to farmers to raise sheep, we then paid out huge sums for many of those animals to be slaughtered to control foot-and-mouth.

Now the Meat and Livestock Commission is demanding £25 million of our money to fund an advertising campaign to encourage shoppers to buy the lambs which survived.

The depressing probability is that the Agriculture Ministry will bow to this request. What mugs we are.

-Peter Allen, Chute Avenue, Worthing