THE TWO emails from Rali Ceredigion press officer Glenn Patterson have been odd, to say the least.

In the first, he complains that I quoted - in a Frankly Speaking piece - from a reply he sent to inquiries I made about the financing of the rally, which took place over three days at the beginning of September.

That was strange, because press officers exist to answer questions and normally take it for granted they may be quoted. Also, he hadn’t asked me not to.

He makes clear he didn’t like what I wrote, to the extent that he doesn’t want a single word of his email explaining why he dislikes it to be used either.

Puzzled, I later try another approach, asking Glenn to let me know who would answer questions about the rally and expect to be quoted in print. His reply again takes aim at the column and goes on to say that I must not reveal what this latest email says.

These exchanges beginning to feel vaguely surreal, I try a different tack, messaging Charlie Jukes, a rally-driver from Llandysul and Rali Ceredigion’s event director and commercial manager. He runs Podium Promotions Ltd, a company set up last October to organise this year’s Rali.

Perhaps here would be someone prepared to communicate over a three-day event costing an estimated £984.500, up to £500,000 of which is coming from a combination of Ceredigion council tax and UK government levelling-up funding.

I remind Jukes that, before the event, Rali forecast that, excluding the heavy input of public money, it itself would raise £500,000. So how much did it in fact manage to generate?

Since Rali Ceredigion has entered into a three-year contract to host the UK round of the European Rally Championship (ERC), and that the council is an official Rali partner, would Jukes confirm that the authority will again be approached for funding over each of the next three years?

Events, including Ceredigion’s, in the championship calendar must pay a fee, understood to be tens of thousands of pounds, to ERC’s commercial arm, Munich-based WRC Promoter GmbH, which is part-owned by Red Bull.

Consequently, Ceredigion council-tax payers will very probably find that scarce funding they would no doubt prefer to see being used to save village schools threatened with closure has been funnelled into the coffers of a rather rich Austrian energy drink multinational.

How much, I ask Mr Jukes, was WRC Promoter paid, and was it, as believed, of the order of £150,000? Is Podium Promotions Ltd getting a fee for this year's Rali and, if it is, how much will that be?

In addition to £250,000 already paid to Rali, Ceredigion council has said it will fork out up to an additional £250,000 if there is a "financial shortfall". Has there been such a shortfall and, if there has been, what did it amount to?

The council claims it is still waiting for Rali to provide information on costs of the event and the final level of contribution to be requested from the council. A full three months after the event, why is it still waiting?

(And why, for that matter, has the council fairly obviously failed to adequately pressure Rali to come up with the goods?)

As of late last week, Mr Jukes had not replied.

LABOUR’s blatant breach of faith should by itself settle the argument.

Pre-general election, Steve Reed, now UK environment, food and rural affairs secretary, emphatically rubbished a suggestion that agricultural property relief, which exempts farmers from inheritance tax, would be abolished.

Starmer/Reeves have now of course done exactly that, in the process casting the government in a toe-curlingly disreputable light which in turn hobbles reasoned discussion.

It is this scrapping of a solemn assurance which alone should be enough to, belatedly, persuade the chancellor that she must abandon her unprincipled budget proposal to subject farmers with a business worth more than £1m to 20 per cent inheritance tax.

Political intransigence being almost always a sign not of strength but of inner timidity, the reality may be that she’ll wave aside honour and surge on. More fool her. Farmers will then entirely justifiably continue to hammer with mounting decibels on the drum of protest.

If there is no resolution, some may end up quitting the industry, imperilling continuity of supply of home-produced foods - a most important side-effect - and resulting in an emboldening of rich investors who buy land to avoid inheritance tax - and by doing so increase land prices.

Since it is precisely this group that Labour would like to disempower, the Starmer government would then end up looking very stupid indeed, as opposed to, at the moment, merely stupid - but, above all, dishonourable.

It emerged last week that the Treasury was assessing a softening of the inheritance tax policy to take into account the fact that farm-owners aged over 80 who die in the next seven years - but after the new regime takes effect in April 2026 - will not have had the chance to avoid the tax by making lifetime gifts.

Such a change to the policy would at least recognise this gross unfairness and ensure that farmers in this age-group would be able then to pass on their holding - free of inheritance tax - to one or more members of their families without having to live for at least seven years after making the gift.

The official stony-faced Treasury response: “We remain committed to fully implementing the policy and are not considering mitigations.”

To that should be added: “So far…”