Where are the gay and black Euro-subsidies?

Who leaked the letter from the Prince of Wales to Tony Blair, suggesting that farmers are victimised "more than blacks or gays"? At first I assumed it was some innocent hunt-enthusiast who believed that if it were known how strongly the Prince felt, this would lend weight to their cause.

Then I realised it was more likely to have been someone in Number 10, who was anxious to discredit the Royal Family and the rural lobby. Many who have read about this ill-judged letter in the newspapers, especially if black or gay, or both, will have been wondering when the next enormous subsidy from the European Common Agricultural Policy is coming their way, merely by virtue of being who they are? Foot-and-mouth was a terrible disease, which devastated many farms; but all who suffered from it were compensated.

Comparable sums are not offered to gay people whose partners died of AIDS, nor to black people whose livelihoods might have been affected by some comparable unfairness of the fates.

The keen Conservatives who support the Countryside Alliance deplore state subsidy if offered to improve the lot of inner cities, where the majority of blacks live: but the march in effect was asking for a very unconservative thing: to be bailed out by the state.

This summer I have seen two excellent RSC productions - the Pericles at the Round House and the Antony and Cleopatra now showing at the Haymarket Theatre.

Director Michael Attenborough has taken some strange liberties: the figure of Pompey is removed from the play altogether, making nonsense of the claim that Antony is the "triple-pillar of the world" (where's the third member of the triumvirate?)

The opening lines are placed by Attenborough in the middle of scene one and he thinks it would be helpful if he changes difficult words. "Weet" means "know". It isn't a very familiar word, but we paid to hear Shakespeare's words, not Attenborough's.

A further defect is Antony who is meant to be a great general gone to seed not a silly old lovey with an annoying laugh and a silly walk.

But in spite of all these defects, the production has tightness, flair and brio and Sinead Cusack is an electrifying Cleopatra who had our whole row blubbing as she put on her robe and crown and thrust the asp to her bosom.

My rather pathetic middleaged disappointment was that we did not see the bosom, but one can't have everything.