Mark Andrews: Falling foul of hidden cameras, school's out for autumn, and why farming is crucial to our economy

The farmers are revolting. A reported 20,000 turned out for Tuesday's demonstration, Jeremy Clarkson brought a bit of celebrity stardust to the proceedings, and the sight of scores of huge farm machines cruising around central Westminster certainly 'raised awareness', as it is fashionable to say these days.

And like all demonstrations, it will achieve the name of Clarkson's farm: Diddly Squat.

For a start, the Prime Minister was in Rio, staring at an impressive floral display with Russia's Sergei Lavrov, China's Xi Jinping, and the, ahem, colourful Argentinian leader Javier Milei. But also, I'm pretty sure the Government has already crunched the numbers, and concluded that screwing farmers is not a major vote loser.

According to YouGov, just 52 per cent think farming is 'very important' to the UK economy, and the figure falls to 30 per cent for the 18-24 age group, who presumably don't think anything's important unless it's on TikTok. But if almost half of the adult population think farming isn't vital to the economy, which are the sectors they consider more important?

In the run-up to the election, Rachel Reeves talked a lot about 'growing the economy'. But the only way you can generate real wealth is to produce something, be it digging stuff out of the ground, making things in factories, or growing things on farms. Service industries are all very well, but they only redistribute existing wealth. They don't create it. 

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