FOR years successive British Prime Ministers in need of exercise and fresh air have climbed the hills around their country retreat at Chequers in the Chilterns.
One of the nearest, Coombe Hill, is a spot where English history and the beauty of the English countryside meet.
Up there, a prime minister can study a monument erected to the Buckinghamshire men who died in the Boer War while taking in the gentle rolling fields of Aylesbury Vale laid out below.
Now an unelected, undemocratic, English-hating, half-blind Scottish fool may be about to spoil all that for his successors.
Because of his disgusting, politically inspired move to build millions of identikit homes over what remains of England's best countryside, local councillors may be forced to cover those gentle rolling fields with almost 10,000 new houses.
While Gordon Brown is constantly pontificating about us all going 'green', being 'eco-friendly' and 'saving the planet' , his policies are slyly dedicated to achieving something entirely different.
It is increasingly obvious that his main aim is to keep Labour in power by stuffing English areas with thousands of State-dependent, Labour-voting saps - sorry, 'key workers' - many of them drawn from outside a UK which he claims to love.
My mother was Scottish.
As she grew up, she lost her old accent and became a naturalised Lancastrian.
One of the things she loved most in life was the English countryside and we enjoyed many picnics in the hills near our village home.
I can imagine her reaction to Brown's plans for Aylesbury Vale.
She would have battered him to death with a haggis stuffed inside a sweaty sock.