Best Of

Before I start my work day... I just wanted to chip in very briefly on the IHT and farms issue.

When I was a fund manager, two of my older colleagues bought farms. Partly this was because they were obsessive fans of shooting small birds out of the sky ("the humane harvesting of organic free range produce" claimed one). But mostly it was to enable them to take advantage of the inheritance tax break. This will - of course - have pushed up the price of farmland, because people like my colleagues will have acquired farms solely for tax reasons.

I am not a fan of exemptions. Why should passing on a shoe shop to one's daughter be subject to inheritance tax, but not a a corn field? And why should a town house be subject to tax, but a farm house be not.

On the other hand, inheritance tax is easily dodged by the wealthy and the well prepared. The use of trusts, gifts, and ensuring assets are held by corporate bodies is such that if you don't want to pay IHT, you don't need to.

I would therefore abolish it, and replace it with a very small (say 0.1%) gross assets levy.

As we need family farms for our food.

Labour could have kept the exemption for 3 generations or more of family farmers but refused as it is a measure of socialist class war

I don't understand.

Is corn from a family owned farm different to corn from a farm owned by a company?

A family owned farm will produce more food than a field sold to build houses.

Oh, so farmers never sell land to developers.

Well, I'm glad we've cleared that up then.

It's about stewardship.

Would you prefer Farmer Tess or Monsanto in charge of the corporate.

Plus re your previous post, game is one of the most natural foods to eat. Nice, free range life then shot out of the sky. And delicious.

And of course your ex colleagues bought farms because as well as the tax there is the status. And I appreciate you can switch round the priority of those but many City boys want to be Country Gents. The tax is just the icing on the cake.

Interesting argument by the government that farmers want to benefit from good public services but let others pay for them.

At last they're getting their PR sorted out.

Except if you live in the country you would know we have never had good public services and probably never will. Paying high taxes to improve the public services of those living in cities is really not going to be a winning argument.

The interesting thing here is how much they seem to relish a fight with the farmers.

It's as if they believe their own propaganda about them being well-heeled landowning toffs.

See also fox hunting, VAT on private schools etc. It’s a religion for them.

Fox hunting... heh, we were discussing earlier the proclivity of oppositions to fail to reverse things they opposed in opposition once they get into government.

Although of course fox hunting still goes on all the time, its just its be 'accident' now rather than design.

We have a weird view of the natural world. I'd swear that some soft headed townies think that old wild animals end up in a care home or something to live out their days, rather than the real demise (disease, or ripped apart by a predator of some description).

We see the odd consequences of certain cuddly beasts being in favour. Who doesn't love a badger, with its lovely stripes etc. I'll tell you who - hedgehogs and anyone who wonders what became of the hedgehogs they used to see. Cuddly badger will quite happily feast on raw hedgehog, thanks very much.

The natural landscape we see is actually incredibly artificial. We cleared the great boreal forests in the UK before the Romans turned up. Britain would have been mainly covered in trees, an ancient Mirkwood. We've imported animals that weren't here (grey squirrels and rabbits) and got rid of ones that were (wolves, giant elk, beavers).

Ultimately things need balance. I'm not suggesting fox hunting is the only way to go, but is it worse than heading of to the halal slaughterhouse?

On hedgehogs:

We saw our first hedgehog in the garden on my son's birthday this summer (he didn't believe my claim that I had arranged it...). We have been in the house twelve years. My neighbour recently put up a security camera, and he has seen many hedgehogs scurry between his garden and ours.

Sometimes wildlife is more common than we imagine. Especially deer...

Deer are reaching plague proportions near use. Two were in our garden a month back (ok we live by fields, but even so). I looked out of the window and thought it was dog in the garden, then looked again.

Friend of a friend is licenced to hunt on the Longleat estate and sell the meat. Its bloody great.

And vegan, of course.

There’s an absolute shed tonne of venison to be had near us, if we only shot more of it. and yet you can only really buy it in farm and speciality shops. The Government and supermarkets should push it more.

It’s the season for game, to which I’m partial.

Had 9 brace of pheasant dropped off on Saturday evening. All processed and in the freezer (or in us) by Sunday lunchtime.

I don't think pheasant counts as vegan because, unlike deer, the population needs a lot of support to attain the numbers they have at the moment..

Otoh, they have less intelligence than most vegetables.

Plenty of pheasants run wild now. I sometimes get them in my garden, along with deer, badger, fox, owls etc.

Oh they certainly fly wild, but you'll often find they've been reared by a gamekeeper. Around 15 million a year.

I'm wrong. Estimates vary wildly. RSPB: 30 million. GWCT: up to 50 million.

Order-Order thinks there's an Opinium/Senedd poll that puts Reform ahead. Anyone got a link to the tables?

*Reform 28%
Labour 26%
Conservative 13%
Lib Dems 13%

Mind you here in North Wales conservatives have won 4 locals from Labour recently

On the wider issue it would be excellent for Wales to see Labour lose the Senedd in 2026

* I have no tables and do not know if these are subsamples or an actual Welsh poll

Since 1999, the Welsh Labour administration has been diabolically bad. Fortunately, it looks as if they’ll be booted out in 2026.

Prediction: In this Parliament Labour will lose power in Wales, Scotland and the London mayoralty...

And will then be voted out of Westminster in 2029.

It would be truly astonishing if all that happened.

Next up, after Jeremy “I bought my farm in order to avoid inheritance tax“ Clarkson; that well known farmer Andrew Lloyd Webber, who definitely hasn’t bought 5,000 acres in order to avoid inheritance tax: https://x.com/Otto_English/status/1858860636609876027

Really not sure leading with these guys is doing the farming lobby any favours with the wider public? But maybe that’s just my left-liberal bubble speaking.

I'm not remotely left-liberal, but I don't get the sentimental drivel people spout about farming, any more than I did about coal mines in the 90s. Like any other marginal industry, if farmers can't survive without their epic tax breaks and subsidies they should go under, to allow the labour, land and capital to be used more efficiently by others. And small farms that benefit from the IHT break are exactly the least efficient ones that should go under first. Property doesn't suddenly become a national treasure because you plant crops or whatever on it. The world isn't short of food.

Having lower IHT is a good idea, but we should lower the overall rate rather than give out undeserved bungs to special interest groups, many of whom just use it as a tax dodge anyway.

If you want to know what life would be like in the country without the smaller farms, visit some bits of America. Retaining smaller family farms is a shrewd policy choice. Ask the French.

Before I start my work day... I just wanted to chip in very briefly on the IHT and farms issue.

When I was a fund manager, two of my older colleagues bought farms. Partly this was because they were obsessive fans of shooting small birds out of the sky ("the humane harvesting of organic free range produce" claimed one). But mostly it was to enable them to take advantage of the inheritance tax break. This will - of course - have pushed up the price of farmland, because people like my colleagues will have acquired farms solely for tax reasons.

I am not a fan of exemptions. Why should passing on a shoe shop to one's daughter be subject to inheritance tax, but not a a corn field? And why should a town house be subject to tax, but a farm house be not.

On the other hand, inheritance tax is easily dodged by the wealthy and the well prepared. The use of trusts, gifts, and ensuring assets are held by corporate bodies is such that if you don't want to pay IHT, you don't need to.

I would therefore abolish it, and replace it with a very small (say 0.1%) gross assets levy.

As we need family farms for our food.

Labour could have kept the exemption for 3 generations or more of family farmers but refused as it is a measure of socialist class war

I don't understand.

Is corn from a family owned farm different to corn from a farm owned by a company?

A family owned farm will produce more food than a field sold to build houses.

Oh, so farmers never sell land to developers.

Well, I'm glad we've cleared that up then.

It's about stewardship.

Would you prefer Farmer Tess or Monsanto in charge of the corporate.

Plus re your previous post, game is one of the most natural foods to eat. Nice, free range life then shot out of the sky. And delicious.

And of course your ex colleagues bought farms because as well as the tax there is the status. And I appreciate you can switch round the priority of those but many City boys want to be Country Gents. The tax is just the icing on the cake.

OK.

By why should the stewardship of a farm be any different from the stewardship of any other business?

Look: I don't think IHT should force people out of family farms, and that's why propose something different. But we should - as much as possible - choose to make the tax system prioritize people making economically rational decisions.

And the IHT loophole on farmland encourages family farmers to sell their land! It doesn't encourage it them to steward it, it encourages them to take the big bucks from City Boys.

So, is it really achieving what it set out to do? Or is it resulting in farmers taking large retirement cheques?

Can we agree that farming is different from most other businesses in that the most you can ever get out of it depends on the max yield of your land, whereas if you are successful with a “normal” business you can expand well beyond whatever footprint you started with? At least, that’s true of family farms as opposed to industrialised ones.

They are effectively cottage industries that we decide to retain, as a policy decision, to not just make food but to preserve the countryside the way we like it as a public good. We can change that policy if you like, but you have to recognise that you’re changing something many of us like.

And as I said earlier, farms are a massive part of our environment. The smaller farmers are much more likely to look after that environment sanely than large agribusinesses.

Before I start my work day... I just wanted to chip in very briefly on the IHT and farms issue.

When I was a fund manager, two of my older colleagues bought farms. Partly this was because they were obsessive fans of shooting small birds out of the sky ("the humane harvesting of organic free range produce" claimed one). But mostly it was to enable them to take advantage of the inheritance tax break. This will - of course - have pushed up the price of farmland, because people like my colleagues will have acquired farms solely for tax reasons.

I am not a fan of exemptions. Why should passing on a shoe shop to one's daughter be subject to inheritance tax, but not a a corn field? And why should a town house be subject to tax, but a farm house be not.

On the other hand, inheritance tax is easily dodged by the wealthy and the well prepared. The use of trusts, gifts, and ensuring assets are held by corporate bodies is such that if you don't want to pay IHT, you don't need to.

I would therefore abolish it, and replace it with a very small (say 0.1%) gross assets levy.

As we need family farms for our food.

Labour could have kept the exemption for 3 generations or more of family farmers but refused as it is a measure of socialist class war

I don't understand.

Is corn from a family owned farm different to corn from a farm owned by a company?

A family owned farm will produce more food than a field sold to build houses.

Oh, so farmers never sell land to developers.

Well, I'm glad we've cleared that up then.

It's about stewardship.

Would you prefer Farmer Tess or Monsanto in charge of the corporate.

Plus re your previous post, game is one of the most natural foods to eat. Nice, free range life then shot out of the sky. And delicious.

And of course your ex colleagues bought farms because as well as the tax there is the status. And I appreciate you can switch round the priority of those but many City boys want to be Country Gents. The tax is just the icing on the cake.

OK.

By why should the stewardship of a farm be any different from the stewardship of any other business?

Look: I don't think IHT should force people out of family farms, and that's why propose something different. But we should - as much as possible - choose to make the tax system prioritize people making economically rational decisions.

And the IHT loophole on farmland encourages family farmers to sell their land! It doesn't encourage it them to steward it, it encourages them to take the big bucks from City Boys.

So, is it really achieving what it set out to do? Or is it resulting in farmers taking large retirement cheques?

Can we agree that farming is different from most other businesses in that the most you can ever get out of it depends on the max yield of your land, whereas if you are successful with a “normal” business you can expand well beyond whatever footprint you started with? At least, that’s true of family farms as opposed to industrialised ones.

They are effectively cottage industries that we decide to retain, as a policy decision, to not just make food but to preserve the countryside the way we like it as a public good. We can change that policy if you like, but you have to recognise that you’re changing something many of us like.