Obedience to authority: most of us would follow orders to do terrible things

Alarming findings by Prof Stanley Milgram of Yale University have since been confirmed in many studies

Stanley Milgram’s results indicate that most of us would follow orders to do terrible things, just as the Nazis did; surely a poignant result for Milgram, a son of Jewish immigrants

In 1961, Stanley Milgram (1933-1984), professor of social psychology at Yale University, carried out a landmark study to measure ordinary peoples’ willingness to obey an authority who instructs them to take actions that conflict with their conscience. The results indicate that most of us would follow orders to do terrible things, just as the Nazis did; surely a poignant result for Milgram, a son of Jewish immigrants, to ponder.

Milgram recruited male participants for his study (20 to 50 years old) telling them the experiment would test the effects of punishment on learning behaviour and they would be paid $4.50 (€4) for one hour’s work. Unknown to these participants the experimenter had hired an accomplice who was an actor. When a participant arrived he would find the experimenter with another “participant” (the actor). The two participants were “randomly” allocated the roles of learner and teacher when the experimenter handed each a slip of paper. Unknown to the genuine participant, each slip said “teacher”. The actor accomplice always mentioned he had a weak heart.

The learner was strapped into a chair and an electrode taped to his wrist. He was told he was to learn a list of word pairs and that whenever he gave a wrong answer when quizzed, the teacher would give him an electric shock of increasing intensity with each wrong answer. The teacher watched this and then was taken to a separate room, from where he could hear but not see the learner, and seated before a shock generator, which had a line of shock switches ranging from 15 to 450 volts in 15-volt steps. Verbal signs describe the severity of each shock from “Slight” to “Danger – Severe Shock”.

The teacher read the list of word pairs to the learner and then read the first of each word pair and four possible answers. The learner made his choice by pressing a button. If the response was wrong, the teacher administered a shock, increasing the shock by 15 volts with each wrong answer. If the response was correct, the teacher went on to the next word pair.

The teacher believed he was delivering painful shocks, but no shocks were actually being delivered. A tape of pre-recorded responses to each shock level was connected to the shock-generator and started by the accomplice. After a few shock increases the actor started to bang on the wall and shout. He complained about his weak heart and beseeched the teacher to stop the experiment. As the voltage continued to increase, the shouting turned to screams until, finally, the highest voltage elicited no sound from the learner – just ominous silence.

At a shock level of 135 volts, many teachers asked the experimenter to stop and check on the learner. However, most teachers continued after the experimenter told them they would not be held responsible. Each time the teacher said he would like to stop, the experimenter gave successive verbal instructions – “please continue”, “the experiment requires you to continue”, “it is essential that you continue”, “continue, you have no choice”. The experiment was stopped if the teacher still wished to stop after receiving these four verbal instructions. Otherwise the experiment ended only after the top voltage of 450 volts was administered three times in succession. Sixty five per cent of teachers administered the 450-volt shock.

These results are very disturbing. Commenting on the experiment, Milgram said: “Stark authority was pitted against the subjects’ strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects’ ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.”

All attempts to replicate Milgram’s experiment have endorsed his results. The most recent experiment was carried out in Poland by Darious Dolinski and others from the faculty of psychology, SWPS University, Wraclaw. The motivation was to see how people who had lived under a Communist regime from the late 1940s until 1989, where strict obedience to authority was stressed, would perform in Milgram’s experiment. Basically, the Polish results confirmed Milligram’s results.

William Reville

19 positive thoughts for today

A man who views the world the same at 50 as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life. 

Muhammad Ali

Old age is fifteen years older than I am. 

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Normal is nothing more than a cycle on a washing machine. Whoopi Goldberg

The kindest thing you can do for the people you care about is to become a happy, joyous person 

Brian Tracy

Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music. 

George Carlin

I'd rather regret the things I've done than the things I haven't done 

Lucille Ball

Do something wonderful, people may imitate it 

Albert Schweitzer

You can only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough 

Mae West 

I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Live was meant to be lived.

Eleanor Roosevelt

It is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them. 

Agatha Christie

I want my children to have all the things I couldn't afford. Then I want to move in with them -Phyllis Diller

To carry a grudge is like being stung to death by one bee. 

William H Walton

Worry is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do, but doesn't get you anywhere 

Erma Bombeck

Those who boast about being "brutally honest" are usually more brutal than honest. 

Lori Palatnik 

No one can make you feel inferior without you consent 

Eleanor Roosevelt

As a child my family's menu consisted of two choices: take it or leave it -Buddy Hackett

Trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over your body 

George Carlin

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness. Mark Twain

Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers 

Socrates

Interaction between journalist and press officer under the spotlight

Detective Superintendent John O'Reilly after giving evidence on day 10 of the Disclosures Tribunal. Pic: Leah Farrell/RollingNews.ie

The treatment of Maurice McCabe by some elements of the media came under the spotlight yesterday, and it did not make for a pretty picture.

One of the country’s most successful journalists, Paul Williams, was in the witness box, explaining how he came to write unflattering articles about Sgt McCabe.

The garda sergeant was not identified in the pieces. The articles were based on interviews with Ms D in 2014, at the height of the garda whistleblower scandal in which Sgt McCabe had highlighted malpractice within the force.

Ms D had made an allegation against Sgt McCabe in 2006 that, eight years previously, when she was six years old, he had rubbed up against her inappropriately. The lawyer for the tribunal has described the nature of the incident as “horseplay” but Sgt McCabe denies it ever happened.

Ms D’s father was a colleague of his who had been demoted after Sgt McCabe reported him on a disciplinary matter.

In 2014, Ms D was angry that Sgt McCabe was in the headlines. She wanted her story out there, to show the world who he really was. Via a friend, she was put in touch with Mr Williams.

He interviewed her at her home and wrote an article. In a second article, he quoted her as saying that the incident occurred when “he shut the door and sexually assaulted me for what seemed like a long time”.

This is in complete variance with her original allegation, transforming “horseplay” into serious and sustained abuse of a sexual nature behind a closed door.

The article also quoted her as saying that the incident “sent her into a downward spiral” once she became aware of it some years later.

The DPP ruled that, even if the incident had occurred as she had alleged, it wouldn’t have constituted a criminal act. Yet now Ms D was claiming it had — as Mr Williams said in the witness box — “ruined her life”.

This is a narrative that would suit anybody ill disposed towards an individual who was highlighting malpractice in An Garda Siochána. Who, after all, would trust somebody portrayed as a child abuser?

During a forensic cross-examination by Sgt McCabe’s counsel, Michael McDowell, Mr Williams accepted that he never checked out the story.

“Did it ever strike you that you should make some effort to validate the truth of those charges,” asked the lawyer.

Journalist Paul Williams at the The Disclosures Tribunal in Dublin Castle today. Pic: Collins

Mr Williams replied that he didn’t feel it necessary as Sgt McCabe had not been identified in the story.

“Many, many people must have known whom you were referring to, not least Maurice and Lorraine McCabe; the D family; gardaí in the area would have known; the members of government who were aware of this would have known; the station party in Bailieborough would have known,” said Mr McDowell.

“Did you care for one minute about getting the other side of the story?”

Mr Williams repeated that he wasn’t identifying Sgt McCabe in the piece.

He also helped out Ms D in her quest to get somebody to listen to her. She had claimed the investigation into her allegation was flawed. Mr Williams put her in touch with Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin, picked her up from the train, dropped her to Leinster House, and brought her back afterwards.

Then he wrote about the meeting in a speculative piece suggesting that Enda Kenny, the then taoiseach, was going to open an investigation into Ms D’s case.

“It was deceiving the reader into believing that you were reporting events when in fact you were orchestrating events,” said Mr McDowell.

Mr Williams denied this.

He also organised for Ms D to meet Alan Shatter after he resigned as minister for justice that year. Mr Williams told the tribunal he had performed services like this for other people about whom he has written stories.

His contacts with the garda press office on the matter were unorthodox. He says he contacted the head of the office, Superintendent Dave Taylor, some days after the initial interview. He says Supt Taylor filled him in on the background to the case, including that the DPP had ruled that it did not warrant prosecution.

Nobody filled him in on the exact detail of the case.

In any event, the tribunal was told that Supt Taylor disputes Mr Williams’ version of their contact. He claims that Mr Williams rang him from the home of Ms D on the day he conducted the interview.

Supt Taylor says Mr Williams told him that Sgt McCabe had destroyed this woman’s life and he, Mr Williams, was going to write a piece that would be very damaging to Sgt McCabe.

Mr Williams denies this.

Whichever version represents the actual facts, the interaction between the journalist and garda press office about the confidential details of a member of the force raises a major question.

Were things done this way in order to further an agenda to blacken Sgt McCabe’s character? Mr Williams says he wasn’t part of any campaign. He also denies he was “a puppet for the guards”.

The articles written did not identify Sgt McCabe to the general public, but for those in the know it was obvious who was the subject.

Michael Clifford

Seaweed shown to reduce 99% methane from cattle

Welcome for Canadian and Australian studies that also show healthier, more fertile cattle

News that a slight dietary change could dramatically reduce the amount of environmentally harmful methane gas released by cattle has been given an enthusiastic welcome by Irish farmers.

Researchers at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia, found the addition of less than 2 per cent dried seaweed to a cow’s diet could reduce their methane emissions by as much as 99 per cent.

The study builds on the experience of a Canadian farmer who discovered in 2012 that cattle eating wind-blown seaweed were not just more healthy than others, but enjoyed a longer mating cycle. Researchers Rob Kinley and Alan Fredeen subsequently confirmed the results as well as finding seaweeds and similar plants reduced methane emissions.

This was further substantiated by the Australian study, which was led by Prof of Aquaculture Rocky De Nys in collaboration with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.

Agriculture and transport are the largest contributors to Ireland’s climate change emissions and there have long been suggestions that the population should eat fewer burgers and steaks in an effort to reduce cattle numbers and protect the environment.

The gas is released via burps and flatulence by the estimated 1.5 billion cows as a byproduct of their biology. Cows, with the help of stomach bacteria, digest their food through a process called enteric fermentation, which allows them to live on a cellulose-heavy diet of grass.

Harmful

The end result of their digestive habits is the daily leakage of some 200 to 500 litres of methane, which is about 25-times more harmful to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over a 100-year time span.

The Irish Farmers’ Association gave a broad welcome to the study saying the research provides the opportunity to continue to build on Ireland’s “sustainable grass-based model of food production”.

The association’s environment chairman, Thomas Cooney, called on Irish researchers “to immediately investigate the potential for this research in an Irish agriculture context, and in the context of the opportunity that may exist for indigenous seaweed production”.

Ireland has a long tradition of harvesting seaweed, much of it by hand to help fertilise small holdings where the land is poor in nutrients. Frequently known as dulse or dillisk along the west coast, seaweed has long been regarded for its health-giving properties.

By Tim O’ Brien

A broken engagement and murderous revenge on Eyre Square

When Alice Burns returned her engagement ring to Thomas Parry in the post in 1884, he boarded a train to Galway

The Royal Hotel in Eyre Square, Galway, circa 1936. Photograph: Kennys Bookshop Galway

On a Monday evening in late July, ThomasParry boarded a train to Galway. Arriving shortly before midnight, he checked into the Imperial Hotel on Eyre Square, ordering supper alongside two and a half glasses of whiskey.

He tipped the waiter and bought more drinks - two bottles of porter. At some point in the night, he penned a letter to his father before going to bed.

At 6am, he called for another whiskey, and another two hours later. He left the hotel shortly after without taking breakfast and with a loaded revolver concealed in his pocket.

For about eight months leading up to July 29th, 1884, Parry had been engaged to a young woman named Alice Burns. Ms Burns’s stepfather, Mr Mack, ran Mack’s Royal Hotel at the time; a popular Eyre Square accommodation which stood on the site that is now Supermac’s flagship store.

She had recently been visiting family in Galway city while Parry continued to work in his native Edenderry.

In the days before he boarded the train, Parry unexpectedly received his fiancée’s engagement ring in the post, along with a letter which Ms Burns intended to be their final correspondence.

According to a report in The Irish Times, while she was in Galway, “she accepted the offer of another respectable young man, and forthwith communicated with Parry, who was then residing at Edenderry, returning him the engagement ring which he had purchased for her, and informing him that that letter was to end all communication between them”.

Parry did not respond to the letter, instead promptly travelling west. He selected the Imperial for a reason - it was next-door to the Royal.

Having visited the family hotel earlier that month himself, he was familiar with Alice’s routine. He knew she would go to Salthill for a swim with her sister and niece each morning, returning at about 8am for breakfast.

Mr Mack would then typically set out for a swim at about 9am. We know from a report in The Irish Times on December 12th, 1884, that Mr Mack didn’t care for Parry: “Whether it was that Mr Mack considered that Parry had not had sufficient means to marry, or that he anticipated a better marriage for Miss Burns, he disapproved of her marriage with Parry.”

‘Sorry to intrude’

With the knowledge that Alice would be back at the Royal, Parry left his hotel and walked next-door. After speaking to a servant, he made his way to the dining area, where - as planned - he found Ms Burns.

“When he entered the room he said he was sorry to intrude,” reads the report. “He shook hands with Miss Burns and with her sister and niece. He asked Alice why she had thrown him over.

“The witnesses who would be examined could not say what was her reply. He said ‘We will see,’ and as soon as he had said that he drew back about a yard, drew a revolver out of his pocket and fired at the back of Alice, who was sitting at the table.”

Alice screamed and ran to the door. Parry followed and shot her again in the back. After she fell, he discharged twice more, and “one of those four pellets passed through her heart and killed her on the moment.”

Alice was carried into another room, but was already dead. In the aftermath, Parry turned the revolver on himself, but the bullet only grazed his left flank.

He walked out of the hotel and down the steps to the street, where a man named O’Halloran, employed at the saddlery next door, snatched the revolver from his hand. He and another passerby named Donnellan held Parry down until the police arrived.

I will be sure no other fellow will have the chance of having her when she does not want me

Thomas F Brady - then the Irish inspector of fisheries - was at the scene, too. “You ruffian, you have killed this woman, she is dead,” he said to Parry.

“I am damned glad of it: I came to do it,” was his reply.

His trial the following December, as reported on the 12th in The Irish Times, heard Parry remained unrepentant in the police barrack a short time after the shooting, saying: “I have come 112 miles to do it. I have shot her. I would not let any girl play on me. She was engaged to me for some months. She returned my letters and my engagement ring.”

In court, Parry pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, supposed evidence of which included a “hereditary madness” in his family; the defence pointed to a cousin of his in an asylum and an “imbecile” uncle on his mother’s side.

His father, too, was used to illustrate familial mental illness. Though his father had never been convicted of anything, the defence said he would have been if any of the cases went to court. In one example, a witness said: “. . . twenty years ago the prisoner’s father took of his coat and waistcoat when going along a road, and jumped up on a wall, and that on the same day the police arrested him in consequence of his extraordinary behaviour.”

The Royal Hotel in Eyre Square was knocked down and replaced with Woolworths in 1956. Photograph: Kennys Bookshop Galway

Other evidence was rolled out to paint Parry as being insane. Once, he apparently threatened to shoot his mother after an argument. Another time, he was said to have been caught “violently thrashing a shepherd’s dog”. The defence intended to detail cases to do with his uncle, but that was disallowed.

Dr Kincaid, lecturer of Medical Jurisprudence in Galway College and Medical officer to the jail in Galway, said Parry was cool and collected on the day he killed Alice. He answered questions rationally, he thought. However, the doctor “came to the conclusion that the prisoner did not know what he was doing was wrong, though he knew what the legal consequences of the act would be.”

Contradicted

Dr Kincaid was cross-examined by the prosecution; it emerged that nowhere in his patient notes up until the trial date did he mention he thought the man was insane.

Three other doctors - Dr Browne, Dr Rice and Dr Bradshaw - contradicted Dr Kincaid and said Parry was of sound mind.

Of vital importance was the handwritten letter discovered on Parry when he was arrested - the one addressed to his father, written after he arrived in Galway. Crucially, it contained an insight into his motive, clear of any confusion. It included the line: “I will be sure no other fellow will have the chance of having her when she does not want me.”

The jury found Parry guilty of murder, recommending mercy due to his exasperation on July 29th “by reason of the letters he had received from Alice Burns”.

The judge didn’t have the same sympathy. Instead, he said the “law had given him time to prepare his defence. He should now have time to prepare to meet his God”.

Parry was asked if he had anything else to say as to why he shouldn’t be put to death.

“I have nothing to say only that I am sorry for it, but my mind was not in a sound state when I did it,” he offered.

“I am very glad to hear you express that,” replied the judge, “and I trust that the short period that will be allowed to you in this world, you will make your peace and endeavour to obtain forgiveness from your Maker.”

At Galway jail some time before 8am on Tuesday, January 13th 1885, Parry was handed over to executioner James Berry and his assistant, named as Chester in an Irish Times report on the 24th.

He refrained from eating that morning, drinking only a glass of wine given to him by Dr Kincaid. He was escorted to the scaffold and “walked firmly, looking at times vaguely and wistfully around him.”

Once the prisoner was in position, “Berry stood aside, cast a hurried glance at the preparations, drew the lever, and the body of Thomas Parry disappeared into the pit below.”

“A cold thud followed, the rope oscillated gently, and all was silent.”

Dean Ruxton

Irish ‘tolerance’ of lying for cash must end, says business group

Isme calls for introduction of a perjury law to help prosecute white collar crime

As matters stand perjury is a common law offence in Ireland but is not on the statute books. Prosecutions are very rare.

There is a “cultural tolerance” in the judiciary and among certain elements of the citizenry in relation to telling lies for cash, a press conference calling for the introduction of a perjury law has been told.

The introduction of a law against perjury would help reduce insurance premiums but would also have widespread application in the prosecution of white collar crimes, according to Isme, the organisation representing small and medium sized enterprises. As matters stand perjury is a common law offence but is not on the statute books. Prosecutions are very rare.

“We have to have the bottle to call a lie a lie,” the chief executive of the organisation, Neil McDonnell said. “It is completely unacceptable that Irish law facilitates the rip-off of Irish businesses and Irish motorists through false and exaggerated claims. We call on Minister Charlie Flanagan to introduce this law this Autumn.”

False affidavits

Mr McDonnell agreed that many claims are exaggerated rather than false but said that Isme wanted changes to how claims are processed so there would be an earlier affidavit of verification in relation to what was being asserted by claimants. “We want to flag to judges that it is not acceptable to tell lies to extract money,” Mr McDonell said.

People who steal money from Supermacs get treated differently from people who try extract money by way of false affidavits, said Pat McDonagh owner of Supermacs. “It is a cultural thing that just has to change.” Mr McDonaghsaid that by 2004 his company was close to being put out of business by the level of false claims – 121 that year – it was subjected to.

However the business spent a lot of money introducing surveillance cameras and word got out that Supermacs was not an easy target. That was the main reason the level of claims reduced, he said.

He said it was unfair that businesses with CCTV footage that would show a claim to be false were expected to share the evidence with the claimant’s legal team prior to the matter going to court. He said Supermacs was currently resisting this and expecting a fight in the courts.

“We will fight this to the European Court if we have to. If we give out the evidence [we have], in some cases the [claim] can be adjusted. So why would you? It’s just common sense,” he said.

Data protection laws

He said at one stage it was possible to get information on the claimant as to previous claims, but this was no longer possible because of data protection laws.

In 2004 one claim against the business was from a 16 year old who claimed damages arising from a slip on the floor. Despite her young age, it was her sixth claim. These days it was much harder to get such information because of the data protection laws, said Mr McDonagh.

Mr McDonell said the courts “don’t seem to recognise your right to protect your business.” He said that when people know they can make false claims without any fear of penalty it encourages them. “The claims situation is running out of control and needs to be addressed.”

Isme, in a paper published on the topic, said it is clear that in the rare cases where perjury is prosecuted, the courts apply terms of imprisonment that are at the lower end of the scale, if at all.

The situation in the UK, “where they take perjury seriously”, is different, the paper said, referring to the imprisonment of Jonathan Aitken and Jeffrey Archer for perjury in libel cases.

Meanwhile, the president of the Law Society has challenged insurance companies to “put their money where their mouth is” and bring more claims through the courts.

Stuart Gilhooly accused the industry of running “the most incredible propaganda campaign” with regard to the extent of fraudulent claims and appealed for more focus on genuine victims of accidents.

As a result of the message being pushed by the insurance sector, he said, such victims were afraid to speak out because they were stigmatised and often had no voice.

“They keep on producing stories of fraudulent claims, of huge rewards, but nobody ever hears about the person whose life is ruined by an injury,” Mr Gilhooly said during the Law Society’s annual Justice Media Awards on Thursday.

“Nobody ever hears about the innocent person who is sitting out at the traffic lights and who [SUFFERS]a whiplash injury and who has had their life change,” he said.

“I have seen so many of them and they are genuine, believe me they are genuine. I see them every single day. But the point is they don’t want to talk because of the propaganda.”

While fraudulent claims do occur, he said, they should not rule the debate. Insurance companies, he continued, should “put their money where their mouth is” and bring more contested cases to court.

“That’s the way to prove it. Stop talking, stop whinging. Put up or shut up,” he said.

According to Insurance Ireland, most claims are genuine although a minority are either fraudulent or exaggerated claims, costing the sector about €200 million a year.

Colm Keena and Mark Hilliard

Farmers’ weapons of mass destruction carry cancer fears

Bracken: a single plant can eventually spread to fill a whole field – and it is very hard to get rid of. Illustration: Michael Viney

Clasping the stem firmly with both hands, I tug up fronds of bracken shoot by shoot. The last, buried inches leave the ground so sweetly that it should be quite a satisfying task.

What spoils it is knowing how little it achieves. The stem parts without protest from an underground cabling of tough, black roots – a single plant of bracken can eventually spread to fill a whole field. Only cutting it year after year will eventually wither its vigour.

My token tugging of the fern as it creeps in from the hedge is the reflex of a gardener, now rather less vigorous than it was. But for many hill farmers, watching green waves of bracken roll down the higher slopes of land, its invasion can seem a last discouragement.

Bracken hides sheep that burrow after the last strands of grass. It holds ticks that can carry diseases, for both sheep and humans. It sheds toxic spores that can pollute hill streams and piped water with carcinogens. And where it finally shades out the grass a farmer must deduct the area from the grazable land that earns the European Union’s basic farm payment.

Roundup has been the farmers’ regular weapon of mass destruction on everything from hillside bracken to weeds in fields of grain due for harvesting

Ironically, fear of a cancer hazard has also been holding back final EU approval of asulam, the one selective herbicide that kills bracken, roots and all. It was banned originally through concern about the chemical’s safety when used on edible crops.

This year, following “emergency” authorisation of its sale by the Department of Agriculture, it can be used on bracken from July to September. Much of the invaded land is too steep for spraying from tractors or even manually from knapsacks, and aerial spraying is long banned by the EU. That is, in any case, a costly operation. Even without it, a 5l can of concentrated Asulox (the brand name) costs €100.86.

Some blankets of bracken on our hillside seem to have trebled in size. That goes, too, for dark thickets of rushes, flourishing ever more densely on damp land as climate grows milder and wetter.

Left undisturbed, a clump of rushes can grow more than a metre high. They flower this month in tufts that can produce more than 8,000 seeds per shoot. And now the herbicide MCPA, commonly used for rush control, is toxically contaminating water supplies and may invite an EU ban in its turn.

Along with rushes, MCPA can be used on ragwort, docks, thistles and nettles. A map published in the Irish Farmers’ Journal last month showed pesticide contamination of water schemes county by county in 2015.

These pesticides are now shown definitively to damage honeybees and bumblebees at every stage of their lives

Sampled for Irish Water by the Environmental Protection Agency polluted schemes had more than doubled from the previous year, with the highest rate in Co Mayo. Two-thirds of 61 schemes held MCPA. As Irish Water has been telling farmers, just one drop can contaminate an Olympic-size pool.

All this coincides with the row about glyphosate, key ingredient of Roundup, Monsanto’s all-purpose herbicide. A million or more EU citizens, it is claimed, have signed online petitions against further approval.

Roundup has been the farmers’ regular weapon of mass destruction on everything from hillside bracken to weeds in fields of grain due for harvesting. World Health Organisation researchers have termed it “probably carcinogenic”, generating fierce argument between environmentalists and Monsanto chemists.

Residues of the weedkiller are commonly found in bread and human urine, and a final judgment on its use in food crops is soon expected from the European Food Safety Authority.

And then there are neonicotinoids – “neonics” to the trade. These pesticides are now shown definitively to damage honeybees and bumblebees at every stage of their lives. An exception, it seems, may be where farmers grow enough pristine wild flowers, to give the bees an alternative, around their flowering but toxic oilseed rape.

This appears to be so in Germany, whose bees, in recent field trials, were spared the harm of those on farmland across the UK and Hungary. This major research was mostly funded by the pesticide manufacturers themselves, having rejected evidence of harm gained through laboratory tests.

The target pests of neonics are aphids, suckers of plant sap and sometimes with toxic saliva. A new Bayer insecticide, acting on aphids in much the same way as neonicotinoids do, is flupyradifurone, a chemical that also permeates the plant and its pollen and takes months to disappear in the field.

Claims that this is “safer for bees” are challenged by environmental groups, and although the chemical has been authorised by the European Commission, online petitions were launched last year against its approval by the Department of Agriculture’s pesticide-control service.

The rules around using pesticides grow ever more substantial, at least on paper (and online). An EU sustainable-directive now requires every farmer or contractor using a sprayer to register with the Department of Agriculture as a professional user and sign up for proper training. Especially, one hopes, in leaving adequate “no spray zones” around rural waterways and wells.

By Michael Viney