Crosswords2 mins ago
So Lets Shaft Our Farmers.....
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....at the same time give £500m to foriegn farmers! I think the 5th column are running the country.
Answers
i agree with nicebloke. a relatively small sum of money that can pay dividends.
the government's muddled policy toward uk farming is a serious problem and quite concerning. 5 billion to uk farmers sounds like an excellent idea until you recall that the inheritance tax changed put many of the uk's largest and most productive farming estates at risk of dissolution so how many farms are actually going to benefit from that investment? i would like more clarity on that.
//More than £536 million is being spent overseas on ten programmes including grants to promote low-carbon agriculture practices in Brazil, the world’s 11th richest country.//
£53 million per project - including at least one to promote low carbon agricultural practices - and there I think you have it. This venture will be of no benefit to this country and the outlay will be unrecoverable - and that equates to exceedingly poor business practice - but Mr Milliband will be delighted.
untitled: "what's wrong with low carbon agricultural practices? that sounds like a worthwhile thing to invest in." - nothing except it's a futile gesture while India/China/USA etc are not joining in. They are about to impose IHT on farmers which is estimated to bring in £20m in the first year and will probably bankrupt many of them. At the same time we are giving 25 times that to some airy fairy foreign "farming initiatives" - does that not strike you as perverse? ....and yes I have, would and did say the same about the tories.
13:27 you are correct JC is not a farmer really but he is a useful front man for them.
I saw an interview with a chap that said that if his dad died tomorrow he and his brother would get a bill for £800k. They earn about £100k a year profit on the farm and that has to support 3 families. They'll have to sell and iroinically it will be someone like Clarkson that buys it, precisely what Labour claim to be targetting.
“what's wrong with low carbon agricultural practices? that sounds like a worthwhile thing to invest in.”
I’ll leave aside the argument that such practices are likely to have absolutely zero effect on the climate and simply say there’s nothing at all wrong with it - if that’s what gives you a kick. It’s when you start doing it with other people’s money that questions need to be asked.
This is especially so when you try to promote the idea that in order to raise more of other people’s money to splash out across the globe, it is justified to impose a levy on a farming family simply because one of them has died, when all they want to do is to continue farming in the same place with the same equipment. They are making no money out of that death; they will not receive any additional income; no money will change hands as a result of it. But the family will have to pay a percentage of the value of their business simply to carry on farming. This may involve selling some of the very assets they need to continue in business.
There is plainly no justification for it. And I would extend that principle to inheritance tax in its entirety and especially where assets are passed on but not sold. Capital Gains Tax can recoup any increase in value of those assets but only if and when they are sold.
If a rich uncle leaves me a valuable painting (say worth £1m) in his will and I simply want to hang it on my wall to remind me of him, unless he has “gifted” it to me more than seven years previously, it must be valued and £400,000 paid to the Treasury. Can anybody seriously justify this, regardless of however noble the cause may be that the government intends spending the money on?
In time we will all lose out. It is the small and medium sized farmers who do so much to look after the hedgerows, dykes and water courses which are so important for wildlife.
Round here the Council do not do anything in terms of keeping the verges safe (overgrown verges and overhanging trees make narrow country lanes more hazardous) - the farmers do it. When we have heavy snow, it is the farmers who get us out of trouble. When a tree falls and blocks the road, it's generally a local farmer who sorts it out. This is stuff they just do which will probably go unnoticed until they have gone.
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