He added that he and local farmers would "talk it through and decide what we need to do."We don't have anything that abuts there," he said, "but we will have a look and see what Maff and the local farmers say."The foot-and-mouth case at Duggan's farm near Hay-on-Wye, where 400 sheep are due to be slaughtered was the first in Wales for a week.Last night the industry was urging a tightening of the guard. "Unless we have not had a case for months we cannot be sure we have the disease under control and any optimism is premature," said Leigh Roberts, a spokeswoman for the National Farmers' Union of Wales.The extent of foot-and-mouth became a matter of political contention as the Conservatives used its re-emergence in the Dales to accuse the Government of "massaging" foot-and-mouth figures to minimise the electoral damage of the epidemic.The shadow Agriculture Minister, Tim Yeo, told Welsh farmers that the true scale of the crisis may have been suppressed to convince voters the disease was being defeated an accusation bearing out the fears of farmers in North Yorkshire and Lancashire, where animal movement restrictions have been imposed on 1,000 farms although only 17 have been officially confirmed as the sources of new cases.Mr Yeo was speaking to a small group of farmers and party supporters at a pub in Pandy, south Wales, an area named the "Valley of Death" by local farmers because of the impact of foot-and-mouth disease.Steve Hunter, the Maff director of operations for Yorkshire and the Humber, said his aim was to "make sure we do not have another Cumbria on our hands. We still don't know how it got into this area in the first place and a lot of tracing is going on in the hope of doing this, although there are clear links between the different farms which explains how it has been able to spread," he said.Tony Blair warned people not to drop their guard following the emergence of the new cluster in the Dales, where some sheep may have been infected for up to three weeks."What we said was that the number of cases were coming down very considerably, as they obviously have done," Mr Blair said. "But we also warned at the time that there would carry on being some cases of foot-and-mouth disease and that it was vitally important that people carry on taking the measures of security and safety to make sure the disease does not spread."No new cases were detected in the Settle area for a second successive day yesterday, but a Maff spokesman said that it was "too early to glean too much relief".He said: "You can get a couple of days free of new cases and then get four or five flaring up at once."Maff announced yesterday that an automatic cull of animals within overlapping 3km zones of premises infected by foot-and-mouth disease in North Cumbria had ended.
The move follows a "significant slow-down" in the number of new cases of the disease in the area, said the Maff spokesman last night.. Public confidence in the police has plummeted in the past 20 years, according to research by one of Britain's leading criminologists. Public confidence in the police has plummeted in the past 20 years, according to research by one of Britain's leading criminologists.The findings, presented yesterday to the Association of Chief Police Officers' annual conference in Birmingham, showed that only 20 per cent of people think the police do a good job, compared with 40 per cent in 1982.The research was conducted by Professor Mike Hough, of the South Bank University in London, who pointed out the paradox between the falling crime-rate and the decline in public confidence in the police. He highlighted the danger of police alienating young men and people who were socially excluded the groups most at risk of committing crime.He was also critical of the government Audit Commission's targets for measuring the time it takes for police officers to reach priority calls."I am questioning whether that is a sensible measure of police performance," he said.
"You end up with a police force that is always dashing about getting good response times, rather than a police force that is trying to manage the most efficient way of going about its business."He also told the conference in Birmingham that as senior officers have taken on the language of performance management, their workforce has become increasingly sceptical. "I think the workforce see their managers as playing the numbers game and not actually engaging with the real issues of policing," he said.The criminologist said that while the public were making increasing demands on the police service, repeatedly calling for more "bobbies on the beat", patrolling officers were being burdened by red tape, which meant they might have to spend five hours off the street if they made an arrest.. In a small Sussex seaside town, at 20 past four in the morning, James Ashley was sleeping naked in his bed. Seconds later, he was on the floor, shot dead at a range of 18ins, by a police officer using a powerful Heckler & Koch carbine. In a small Sussex seaside town, at 20 past four in the morning, James Ashley was sleeping naked in his bed. Seconds later, he was on the floor, shot dead at a range of 18ins, by a police officer using a powerful Heckler & Koch carbine.But the police operation which caused the death of this 39-year-old smalltime crook is a staggering tale of ineptitude and cavalier disregard for human life which brings shame on Sussex Police.
