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To all those people who make farming families out to be rich: I'd like to see them get up at dawn and work until dusk, in all sorts of weathers. To have a year where the weather means all your profits are wiped out, or where government legislation floods the market with cheap meat. Where tourists routinely stray off the paths, interfere with livestock and knock down walls and fences. Where you have to go out in the snow to find ewes that are lambing. If they want us to be rich, then they should fucking well pay more for British food. Until then, I'll go work in an office and they can ****ing well starve.

Said to me, in rather stronger terms, by a farming relative.

Ex-farming relative, presumably, and now working in an office? Or was that all piss and wind?

Why do you assume that? I'm from South Derbyshire originally, and have near and distant relatives involved with farming in South Derbyshire, East Staffs and touristy areas a little further north. One uncle in particular is quite elderly and infirm at the moment. A couple more relatives if you include farming-related activities.

A lot of my family were in farming and building, and quite a few remain. Thankfully we haven't descended so low as to become lawyers yet.

It seemed strongly implied from, "Until then, I'll go work in an office and they can ****ing well starve."

That kind of thing pisses me off when people are whining (not farmers specifically, academics like myself, too - although in our case it's the 'I could earn a lot more in industry' line). Well, do it then!

As you and others note, there's a draw to farming (for some) despite all the downsides. Much as there is with academia, or teaching or other 'vocations'. Government policy should deal with shortages - if this will actually displace farmers then it's a bad thing (and it may do, I'd assess it differently, make it not actually payable until sale for example and not index-linked, so generational farming families never pay and the real charge decreases the longer that land is held, assuming land values increase in notional terms).

Apols. I meant that if they want to screw farmers over, then he might as well go and work in an office and let them starve.

Good morning

In response to @NickPalmer questioning if the conservatives will cancel the farmers IHT, Kemi is to join Jeremy Clarkson on stage to address and support the farmer's demonstration outside no 10

Also Scottish Labour are announcing they will reinstate the WFP

She may well be appearing but I bet decent money that unless Labour backs down (and it won't) the policy won't be changed by 2032...

She has committed to reversing it and it's hardly a lot of money

Hmmm. I could write a very long list of things Oppositions commit to reverse and then never do. In fact they often extend them.

We had a similar discussion a few weeks ago where someone (@Luckyguy1983 I think) was referring to incoming governments reversing out previous Governments stuff and both myself and @Richard_Tyndall pointed out it rarely happened. Just a minority of stuff gets reversed. A new Government has its own agenda for moving forward. Reversing out the old Government stuff is low down on the list normally. It does seem like a good way of moving forward particularly with social changes.

This applies in spades to regulation.
It's boring, and politicians don't much care about it, as they're not the ones who have to wade through the thickets they and their predecessors planted

So just have less of it.

Great idea.
But we've just had a decade and a half of Conservative government, which in theory is ideologically opposed to unnecessary regulation. And it got worse, not better.

Which illustrates the problem.

I'm amazed you think the last 14 years were conservative government. They were centrist and they have failed, it was one of the reasons the Tories got their ass handed to them on a plate and why Farage is breathing down their necks.

Comments like that make you sound like BJO.
Except you probably voted for them.

The point is that excessive regulation isn't a party political issue (or shouldn't be).
There's no good ideological reason for any government to introduce costly and unnecessary regulation. Framing it as a question of "not being conservative enough" is part of the problem.

Imagine if, instead of raising employers' NI, Reeves had done as many are suggesting and broken their manifesto promise by raising income tax and/or employees' NI. What would businesses and other government critics now be saying?

At a guess: reducing people's disposable income will be hugely damaging to the economy - even lower growth due to less spending, and this will lead to redundancies and businesses having to close. The Chancellor must go!

To govern is to chose.

Starmer and Reeves chose to raise taxes on workers and business.

And then exempted the public sector.

They would have been better off spreading the tax increase and saying "we're all in this together".

The fuel duty increase should have been implemented as well.

“We’re all in this together” would have at least led to general groans but an accepting of the need to raise funds in the short term. With some skillful economic management, they could een have reversed an income tax increase before the next election, to say “thank you” to everyone.

Instead, they’ve picked on a few specific groups of people, who can organise against the government. Today it’s the turn of the farmers, and the news tonight is going to be of Jeremy Clarkson and hundreds of tractors on TV with opposition politicians.

Jeremy Clarkson wrote:

I’m becoming more and more convinced that Starmer and Reeves have a sinister plan.

They want to carpet bomb our farmland with new towns for immigrants and net zero windfarms.

But before they can do that, they have to ethnically cleanse the countryside of farmers.

That’s why they had a Budget which makes farming nigh on impossible.

That feels a teensy little bit over-the-top and possibly rather insulting to people who are being carpet bombed and ethnically cleansed. It's also kinda moving towards Great Replacement Theory nonsense when there is zero evidence that the new Labour government are going to increase immigration compared to the last administration.

Is Jeremy Clarkson going full MAGA going to be attractive to British voters?

There's also an issue that farmers have always faced: farms are not infinitely divisible. If a farmer has a large family (and they often do...) then splitting up the farm doesn't work, as one marginal farm becomes two unproductive ones. This means that some kids often get left with very little. This can cause their kids some (ahem) rivalry if the parents are not very careful. The wise ones ensure that only one or two of their kids like farming. The one who doesn't get the farm can just move onto another farm or marry a lass who has a farm... In theory...

Having to sell some parcels of land to pay IHT might cause a marginal farm to become unproductive, so the whole has to be sold. And as has been pointed out many times, the purchaser will be either a large agribusiness who does not pay IHT, or to people who will not farm the land.

Though it isn't always a problem. Many moons ago, I was walking in the unfashionable western side of the Peak District. I came across an elderly couple in a farmyard, and we chatted. They were working the land alone, with a bit of help from neighbouring farmers, as none of their kids wanted to go into farming. They seemed quite sad about that.

To all those people who make farming families out to be rich: I'd like to see them get up at dawn and work until dusk, in all sorts of weathers. To have a year where the weather means all your profits are wiped out, or where government legislation floods the market with cheap meat. Where tourists routinely stray off the paths, interfere with livestock and knock down walls and fences. Where you have to go out in the snow to find ewes that are lambing. If they want us to be rich, then they should fucking well pay more for British food. Until then, I'll go work in an office and they can ****ing well starve.

Said to me, in rather stronger terms, by a farming relative.

Ex-farming relative, presumably, and now working in an office? Or was that all piss and wind?

Why do you assume that? I'm from South Derbyshire originally, and have near and distant relatives involved with farming in South Derbyshire, East Staffs and touristy areas a little further north. One uncle in particular is quite elderly and infirm at the moment. A couple more relatives if you include farming-related activities.

A lot of my family were in farming and building, and quite a few remain. Thankfully we haven't descended so low as to become lawyers yet.

My family are from Willington, but they all worked in the mills, rather than farming. I grew up in Risley, and one of my best friends at the time farmed in the area. None of us became lawyers, to my knowledge.

One of the farms is a stones' throw from Willington. I still have family in the area.

I was actually born at Stenson; my dad built (extended?) the marina where the Stenson Bubble is. We were good friends with the owners and their family.

To all those people who make farming families out to be rich: I'd like to see them get up at dawn and work until dusk, in all sorts of weathers. To have a year where the weather means all your profits are wiped out, or where government legislation floods the market with cheap meat. Where tourists routinely stray off the paths, interfere with livestock and knock down walls and fences. Where you have to go out in the snow to find ewes that are lambing. If they want us to be rich, then they should fucking well pay more for British food. Until then, I'll go work in an office and they can ****ing well starve.

Said to me, in rather stronger terms, by a farming relative.

Ex-farming relative, presumably, and now working in an office? Or was that all piss and wind?

Why do you assume that? I'm from South Derbyshire originally, and have near and distant relatives involved with farming in South Derbyshire, East Staffs and touristy areas a little further north. One uncle in particular is quite elderly and infirm at the moment. A couple more relatives if you include farming-related activities.

A lot of my family were in farming and building, and quite a few remain. Thankfully we haven't descended so low as to become lawyers yet.

It seemed strongly implied from, "Until then, I'll go work in an office and they can ****ing well starve."

That kind of thing pisses me off when people are whining (not farmers specifically, academics like myself, too - although in our case it's the 'I could earn a lot more in industry' line). Well, do it then!

As you and others note, there's a draw to farming (for some) despite all the downsides. Much as there is with academia, or teaching or other 'vocations'. Government policy should deal with shortages - if this will actually displace farmers then it's a bad thing (and it may do, I'd assess it differently, make it not actually payable until sale for example and not index-linked, so generational farming families never pay and the real charge decreases the longer that land is held, assuming land values increase in notional terms).

Apols. I meant that if they want to screw farmers over, then he might as well go and work in an office and let them starve.

Nobody is forcing him to be a farmer, and there is no shortage of folk who'd be happy to buy his land.