It seems to be almost an automatic sequence that whenever a promise is made to reduce red tape, things actually get worse or, in the case of Scottish farming,very much worse.
If fingers have to be pointed, there is no better target than immediate past EU Farm Commissioner Dacian Ciolos.
Right at the outset he promised a simplified Common Agricultural Policy, but the one he delivered before he demitted office in November is in fact hugely complex and has the potential to be a nightmare of sufficient magnitude to put some farmers out of business.
It is not all Ciolos’s fault. He has been continually lobbied by every member state to allow derogations or allowances for special circumstances.
Scotland not a member state, of course, but a devolved administration has been particularly active on this front, with a sort of slow-motion ping-pong match between NFU Scotland and the Scottish Government.
NFUS and other lobby groups have continually asked for tweaks to the policy and, as often as not, Cabinet Secretary Lochhead has acquiesced.
In a further twist he has sometimes had to “de-acquiesce” once his officials have been to Brussels and found out that what has been asked for is simply not possible.
I am pretty sure that in years to come both the NFUS and Scottish Government will wonder why they allowed themselves to be sucked in so deep.
An example is the complex process of staged transition from the old system to the new. It is exactly the process that undid the Rural Payments Agency in England from 2005 onwards. It saw RPA chief executives come and go at an alarming rate, and farmers driven to the verge of bankruptcy because of delays to their Single Farm Payments.
Would it not have been far simpler for Scotland to learn from the experience and go for a one-off transition from old to new? That was the proposal in the original Pack Report in 2010 and, if it had been stuck to, it would have led to a much simpler implementation.
Some would feel the pain initially, especially if they had not adapted their businesses, but for the majority the bonus of timely payment each December would have made the sudden shock worthwhile.
Anyhow, that is water under the bridge.
The new CAP is upon us, and the first step is for all farm businesses, existing or new, to register on-line for Rural Payments and Services.
I have tried twice to follow the links with no success, and others have told me they have had the same experience. There are barriers which are frustratingly denying access to what is believed to be a brave new world of interactive maps and field data.
No doubt everyone will get there eventually, but it will not be easy for those with slow internet connections or those with none at all.
The end result of a couple of hours of battling with the computer is, however, a depressing feeling that red tape has taken over what used to be the simple outdoor activity of farming.
Annoyingly, at one stage last summer it seemed that a simpler world beckoned. Brian Pack’s next task after producing his CAP report was to look at red tape.
The result of his independent review or, as it was rather lengthily entitled, the Doing Better Initiative to Reduce Red Tape for Farmers and Land Managers is a really useful piece of work.
It is not a light read but, on the other hand, it is not gobbledygook of any sort. It contains no fewer than 61 definite recommendations for reducing red tape. They are all quite detailed, thought through and practical. Why has this report been left on the shelf?
The first warnings should maybe have come at the document’s launch at Turriff Show in early August. The event attracted a ‘crowd’ of three including Mr Pack, Richard Lochhead and myself.
At the time it seemed just an unfortunate choice of venue and time, but unfortunately the sense of anti-climax hasn’t gone away. Almost six months on, nothing has happened apart from piecemeal, almost coincidental, adoption of some of the recommendations.
The report definitely proposed an overarching advisory board with executive and non-executive board members and its own chief executive. The idea was that this would be a powerful body able to provide an oversight over the various arms of rural government, and be in a position to communicate directly with the ministers.
It sounded then like a very good idea that might just offer the breakthrough everyone is looking for.
Why, then, no action?