Best Of

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.

What a nasty person.

They should have the same tax treatment as the rest of us.

As I've previously said - they are collateral damage from the crackdown on tax avoidance. I've been subject to that for 25 years thanks to IR35 so my sympathy is very limited...

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.

This another strawman though. I don't think anyone thinks otherwise (particularly after Clarkson's farm). This is about a few very large and wealthy landowners, and also stopping the British countryside being bought up by billionaires as a tax dodge mechanism.

It's a relatively small amount of revenue for HMRC but a good example of them getting early before it becomes a big issue.

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.

Of course accepting all those freebies makes it harder for Starmer to claim "we're all in this together".

Its amazing how willing our political leaders are to damage themselves for a few thousand quid.

Has Starmer reversed his pension deal yet or is that another fatcat promise ?

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-65052706

Didn't Labour abandon that pledge because it would affect too many public sector fatcats ?

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.

Of course accepting all those freebies makes it harder for Starmer to claim "we're all in this together".

Its amazing how willing our political leaders are to damage themselves for a few thousand quid.

Has Starmer reversed his pension deal yet or is that another fatcat promise ?

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-65052706

Didn't Labour abandon that pledge because it would affect too many public sector fatcats ?

Our very own nomenklatura

Meanwhile the Budget continues to inspire: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp816jrnynyo

"High Street job losses are "inevitable", prices will rise, and shops will close as the result of the tax increases in the Budget and other rising costs, a group of the biggest retailers in the UK is warning.

Tesco, Amazon, Greggs, Next, and dozens of other chains are urging the Treasury to reconsider some of the measures."

About that growth thing....

The gov't would have been better off telling everyone their manifesto was a pack of lies (Everyone thinks they've broken their promise anyway) and just whacking a penny on income tax.

Instead they have gone down a route of raising small amounts of tax which upset a lot of people for little benefit, We are now heading in to month six of this government and they are all at sea. Since they havent had a break the charges of incompetence and sleaze will stick.

My casual discussions about politics are limited these days, but those I have had are people offering up inbidden how incredibly shite this new lot are at governing.

It is starting to look that way.
I was prepared to wait and see if they came up with significant reforms to improve our lot. We're nearly half a year in, well into the period where a new government spends its political capital, and so far... for what ?

They're banking everything on improving the NHS.

The cynics might cry that it's a black hole and the extra money will disappear without trace, but I don't think it's as bad as that. Extra money did improve the NHS 1997-2010, and there's a decent chance it will do so again. That might even be enough to win re-election.

But this seems to be pretty much the only thing of good that they're doing. And they've been so timid about tax reform, or providing political leadership, that the tax increases to support the increased NHS spending are towards the worst options for supporting the economy. And the British economy of 2024 is a lot weaker than in 1997.

It's tempting to compare Starmer's government with that of François Hollande, but the last French government of the centre-left started with a great deal more enthusiasm and optimism.

Even that is poorly thought out, with it all the front loaded over 2 years. That massively increases the chances of huge wastage as you get the use it or lose it mentality. It takes time to deploy capital and plan for it to be best usage.

My most recent experience of the NHS was extremely positive, thought something might be up so got on the phone. In amongst the normal GP message was a new smart triage online system https://www.larwoodhealthpartnership.co.uk/about/smart-triage/. Got cut off when I got through on the phone after about an hour so thought I'd try the new online triage option. Went through it all and staggeringly was given a choice of appointments at pretty much any time on the same day. Note - this is the first time I've ever seen a choice of times for seeing a GP. Booked in, left work drove back to the surgery (It's about 1/2 hr from my work) getting there a bit early. Was able to see doctor immediately, checked out and booked into hospital for a blood test. Drove to hospital (It's not far from the surgery) blood all done in about 15 minutes of getting there, back to work by lunch and results (All fine) available on the NHS app by the end of the day.
Phones to the GPs are definitely a bottleneck, the new online smart triage system seems to have completely smashed that for my surgery at least.

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...

If the policy is implemented we will see the actual effects.

If those are negative then the policy will be changed by someone at some point.

Are you sure......governments have a habit of sticking to their guns for both ideological and political reasons. They aren't run like a business...the cliff edge at £50-60k and £100-120k make no sense on a number of fronts if you want to maximise growth / productivity and not clear they maximise tax take either, yet here we are still with them 15 years later. We also have cliff edges in how many hours people can work per week.

If we see the whole farming sector steadily shutting down then that will lead to higher prices and outbreaks of panic buying.

Not a good image for governments.

It ill behoves the Tories to whine about farmers (as opposed to landowners, which is what IHT actually applies to) given how little they've done to promote fiid security and stop the supermarkets grinding the farmers down, as opposed to demanding more cheap food imports from Australia etc.

Putting farmers on a sounder economic footing would have been a better way toi approach the whole issue, including a rebalancing of agricultural land from its currently bloated values. But I have yet to read about Labour dealing with things like supermarket milk wholesale prices.

It's just another thing to be outraged about, see 20mph limits and all things Ed Miliband.

The IFS, Dan Neidle have done the work on this and it's going to affect very few farmers. The tax-free allowance for a couple is £2.65 million and there are only 462 inherited farms worth more than £1 million (out of around 200,000). And it's only the value above the allowance that is affected by IHT.

Much that I like Dan Neidle - I think he's wrong.

Our Uni friend has just inherited part of a farm and it's gone up for sale for £5m - now I don't know how much land there is but as an anecdote it means I question Dan's figures...

Hmm. If we are going for land values alone, then that *part* of a farm must be more than 500 acres alone at current average values. That part of a farm is more than 2x the size of an entire average farm in the UK.

https://www.savills.co.uk/landing-pages/rural-land-values.aspx

Or does it have planning permission for building?

232 acres on the Ards Peninsula in Northern Ireland - its a faff to get to from Belfast - to the extent that we usually got the ferry back to Strangford in the hope to see dolphins...

Mr. HYUFD, Starmer should give the green light for missiles to be used in Russia. Failure to do so would be pathetic.

He won't, he is too wary of Putin's response.

Macron has more balls and probably will follow Biden's lead and allow Ukraine to send French as well as US missiles to Russian territory. Though even then I suspect Trump will cancel that permission after his inaugration in January (albeit if the Russians do anything against US bases in Europe Trump would be aggressive in his response)

Reportedly Starmer has been pushing for US approval to allow Storm Shadow strikes into Russia, and it is also being suggested that supplies of the missiles were being held back so that they would be available when that approval was granted.

I don't think the preemptive criticism of Starmer on this point is warranted. I hope to see Storm Shadow strikes in Kursk within the week.

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...

If the policy is implemented we will see the actual effects.

If those are negative then the policy will be changed by someone at some point.

Are you sure......governments have a habit of sticking to their guns for both ideological and political reasons. They aren't run like a business...the cliff edge at £50-60k and £100-120k make no sense on a number of fronts if you want to maximise growth / productivity and not clear they maximise tax take either, yet here we are still with them 15 years later. We also have cliff edges in how many hours people can work per week.

If we see the whole farming sector steadily shutting down then that will lead to higher prices and outbreaks of panic buying.

Not a good image for governments.

It ill behoves the Tories to whine about farmers (as opposed to landowners, which is what IHT actually applies to) given how little they've done to promote fiid security and stop the supermarkets grinding the farmers down, as opposed to demanding more cheap food imports from Australia etc.

Putting farmers on a sounder economic footing would have been a better way toi approach the whole issue, including a rebalancing of agricultural land from its currently bloated values. But I have yet to read about Labour dealing with things like supermarket milk wholesale prices.

It's just another thing to be outraged about, see 20mph limits and all things Ed Miliband.

The IFS, Dan Neidle have done the work on this and it's going to affect very few farmers. The tax-free allowance for a couple is £2.65 million and there are only 462 inherited farms worth more than £1 million (out of around 200,000). And it's only the value above the allowance that is affected by IHT.

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.

I would just reiterate it is not a lot of money [ circa 700 million ] and lots of rural seats with Labour mps will be vulnerable and maybe it is why they Lib Dems are also very opposed to the policy

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 are all in it together, as long as we are public sector workers who vote Labour and live in urban areas and are woke or a few big city firms and corporates Starmer and Reeves still want to milk for cash