THE top comrades, those who occupy the penthouse offices here at Morning Star towers, had an interesting idea last week.

They decided to organise a survey to ask you, the readers, what you really thought about regular contributors to the paper like yours truly.

At random they picked 359 loyal readers and asked them how they rated one contributor — that would be Frosty.

I’m sure you will agree with me that the results really clearly showed just how well-loved I am by you, the readers.

No less than an amazing 211 spoke up to say you loved me and my writings, while a tiny 148 said I should go. They added that I was in no way trustworthy enough to be allowed to appear every Friday.

Even though I say it myself, what an amazing and overwhelming victory — I might even say triumph, for me.

Just a measly 48 per cent want to show me the door while an amazing 52 per cent — a landslide, you might say — of readers believe me to be totally reliable.

I hope we can all say “Let’s let Frosty get the job done.”

While we are on the subject of judging my work, I hope you all noticed the letter from Rae Street in last Monday’s paper. She said how much she had enjoyed reading my piece on the dysfunctional royal family over breakfast.

I was glad to see the letter, but even gladder when I realised it was from a woman who, despite never meeting her face to face, has been a great hero of mine for 30 years or more.

I realised that the Rae Street who enjoyed my article with her breakfast was the same Rae Street I had read and admired as a peace activist, environmentalist and feminist over the last three decades.

Now a retired teacher, Mancunian Rae first became aware of the campaign against nuclear weapons when she watched the Aldermaston march.

Although she felt strongly about the issue, she didn’t think she belonged on the march because everyone seemed so posh.

Today Rae is well known as a leading figure in CND, both nationally and internationally. 

Early reading of books like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring introduced her to the environmental crisis and again activism followed. 

In the late ’70s she joined the Labour Party, and became active locally. In 1981 Rae joined her local peace group in Rochdale, which was affiliated to the national CND.

In 1981 the decision by the Tory government to site cruise missiles at Greenham Common in Berkshire led to the establishment of the Women’s Peace Camp at Greenham.  

In December 1982, 30,000 women joined hands around the base and Rae was one of them.

Her activity grew with the peace movement. She became involved in the European Campaign for Nuclear Disarnment and in 1986 she took part in a lecture tour of the US: “I spoke at many meetings, from large university halls to community and women’s groups,” Rae said. 

Rae has visited and spoken on peace in Japan, particularly around the commemoration of Hiroshima: “The peace movement there is amazing. There are many young activists, their peace bulletin has over one million subscribers,” she said.

Over the years Rae has held many posts in local and national CND, including vice-chair of the national organisation.

She also founded the Campaign Against Depleted Uranium Weapons and is on the steering committee of the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons.

What a woman! So you can just imagine how proud I was to hear the she reads and enjoys my Ramblings over her breakfast.

Not all letters are in support of my position on various issues. A few weeks ago a reader from Cornwall wrote me a fascinating letter telling me I was quite wrong in opposing the recent badger culls.

The fascinating letter, which was really a concise history of British farming from a socialist viewpoint, dealt with subjects as diverse as privatising the Milk Marketing Board to the decimation of our countryside by the Barley Barons.

I really enjoyed the letter because it brought back memories of my late brother Jack (the oldest son in most Frost families take the name Jack). 

Brother Jack decided to try his hand at farming when he left school nearly seven decades ago. This was despite the fact that we were a family of city folk living in Harlesden in what is now Brent.

There were few green fields or farm animals near our home. That didn’t stop brother Jack. He found a job on farm at Arborfield about five miles from Reading. He bought himself a Raleigh moped to make the once-a-week 40-mile, two-hour journey, come rain or shine.

I’ll break in now with today’s pub quiz question. Which two of Frosty’s greatest heroes not only rode mopeds but also built their own petrol-powered bicycle? Answers later on.

Brother Jack only lasted a year on the farm. They worked him very hard and because the farm specialised in salad crops, Jack’s diet on the farm consisted mainly of lettuce. 

On the few times I visited him the thing that fascinated me most was the small herd of a couple of dozen cows that provided Jack, the farmer, his family, employees and a few close neighbours with milk, cream and butter. I tried my hand milking by hand but the farm also had a small almost antique milking machine.

Two or three of the herd Jack looked after were Dexters. These are almost miniature house cows just about one-half to two-thirds the size of a normal cow. They were amazing and lovable. 

Today most of those herds with just one or two dozen cows are gone. They have been replaced by huge indoor herds of up to a thousand milking cows — or even more.

Robotic milking machines do the actual milking and to see one of these huge indoor herds virtually milking itself, as I have, is truly miraculous but I could not help wondering if we had the right to raise animals who would never see the sky or graze on fresh grass in a sunlit meadow. 

For breeding purposes we import gallons and gallons of US inbred semen — now there is an image I’m sorry to leave you with. 

This is used to fertilise the existing monstrous herds of indoor cattle.

My Cornish reader explained that the most common breeds of dairy cattle in Britain today are of the Holstein/Friesian variety, which are known for their black-and-white colouring and high milk yield. Most have their origins in intensive agriculture in the US.

Our traditional British milk cows like Ayrshire, dairy shorthorns, Friesian, Guernsey, Jersey, milking Devon, and many more, including my little favourite the Dexter, could all grow a thick winter coat and thus be left safely outside in winter. 

Today’s US breeds simply don’t grow a winter coat and have to be overwintered in huge barns and those huge barns are great places to spread diseases like TB, so instead of shooting badgers perhaps we should be shooting barns — or at least barn doors.        

Frosty’s two heroes who built and rode their own mopeds are:

Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Castro’s strongest support in the Cuban Revolution. Che was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, writer, guerilla leader, diplomat, military theorist and moped builder.

He fitted a tiny 34cc mosquito petrol engine to an ordinary pedal bicycle. Later he would use a larger motorcycle to visit much of Central and South America playing an unrivalled part in the battle for peace and freedom in the south of that continent.

The other hero on his home-built moped was no less an engineer, mathematician and the father of the modern computer Alan Turing.

He fixed a small cooling-fan petrol engine to a plain pedal-powered bicycle.

He would alternate commuting using his home-built moped with running up to 50 miles into work each day. Work was heading the code-breakers at Bletchley Park where he and his team built the first ever modern computer.

As a gay man, Turing was persecuted and harassed by the government, his employers and the police. Eventually this persecution along with enforced chemical castration drove him to suicide.

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