Could Bojo be tempted to cash in on current polling by going early? – politicalbetting.com

Aslan said:

Gardenwalker said:

Charles said:

williamglenn said:

The ex-Finnish PM seems to think the EU needs to organise a charity appeal for us.

https://twitter.com/alexstubb/status/1446347168290324481

If the EU would play its cards right, it would offer assistance to the UK now or later when the supply of basic goods and services takes a turn for the worse. This is what friends do, even if the pain has been self-inflicted, stupid an unnecessary.

Sorry, but the situation in the UK is going to go from bad to worse with no respit in sight. This is not a period of adaptation, it is a rather permanent reality and fact linked to voluntary isolation and myths of sovereignty in an interdependent world.

Remind me what Finlandization means again…? I guess she doesn’t understand the value of freedom

Classic Brexsplaining.

Of course the Finns are too daft to do democracy!

I don't know about daft in general, but the idea that a lack of HGV drivers is a permanent reality that won't be adapted to is ridiculous. As is the idea that a similar constitutional situation to Japan, Canada and Australia is a "myth".

Roger said:

geoffw said:

Roger said:

Leon said:

Roger said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

williamglenn said:

The ex-Finnish PM seems to think the EU needs to organise a charity appeal for us.

https://twitter.com/alexstubb/status/1446347168290324481

If the EU would play its cards right, it would offer assistance to the UK now or later when the supply of basic goods and services takes a turn for the worse. This is what friends do, even if the pain has been self-inflicted, stupid an unnecessary.

Sorry, but the situation in the UK is going to go from bad to worse with no respit in sight. This is not a period of adaptation, it is a rather permanent reality and fact linked to voluntary isolation and myths of sovereignty in an interdependent world.

That entire thread is hilariously insane. People from across the EU - and a couple of Americans - who honestly believe Britain is close to collapse. And famine.

Are they all reading the New York Times, and nothing else?!

It’s genuinely hard to fathom. One element must be Strasbourg Syndrome. Brexit is evil therefore it can only cause evil things to the evildoers responsible. It is a religious reflex at work

Yes, it sort of goes back to what I was talking about earlier today. The EU projects this image of perfection which causes people idealise it. We see it on here all the time. They have an almost religious zeal about the EU because in the back of their minds they know the EU is imperfect, the image it projects is false and they are overcompensating because they realise the moment they admit it isn't perfect those flaws and those minor imperfections add up, the doubt grows and suddenly the institution they place above all others a mess of undemocratic contradictions and the UK was right to leave.

Lots of people really believe the EU is the only game in town, their world is being shattered right now as the UK prospers completely outside of its structures. This is their worst nightmare come true.

A French minister has accused the British, today, of being ‘obsessed with France’, even as several other French ministers publicly announce plans to blockade Britain, ‘cut off all ties with Britain’, deprive Britain of electricity, ‘punish the British for Brexit’, ‘stop British exports’ - and this is just one day

Imagine if several British Cabinet ministers were making daily threats against France. That *would* be obsessive

You can watch French TV for days and the UK never features. Too much Telegraph can be misleading.

Mwanwhile I give you a rare Englishman who is actually admired.....Dr Rashford

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/oct/08/marcus-rashford-attacks-universal-credit-cut-at-degree-ceremony

But it’s the same on British TV. It looks much more to America (too much, for me) - but also increasingly to Asia, and China

Meanwhile a comparison between the home pages, right now, of Le Monde and the Guardian is quite instructive.

Both have about 50 stories. Just two of the stories in Le Monde are definitely about Britain: one is about Covid in the UK, the other about the Saudi-Newcastle takeover. Meanwhile in the Guardian there’s just one story ‘about France’ - but it is expressly about deteriorating Franco-Brit relations. So, about the same?

The UK-French-EU ‘obsession’ is mutual, but it is only happening in social media and only amongst politicians, Eurocrats, and geeks like us. It is a real thing, however. This is the pinned tweet of Finland’s ex prime minister, also mentioned below

‘Reading news about petrol shortages and other supply problems in the UK. Really sad to see what #Brexit is doing to a country that used to be great. Brexit is the biggest mistake a modern nation state has inflicted on itself in recent history. Hope to see an end to this mess.’

https://twitter.com/alexstubb/status/1441816802837901312?s=21

That’s his pinned tweet. That’s the opinion he has which he thinks is most important right now. Wtf. He’s Finnish. Lol

Hopefully in a few years when Brexit is accepted we can all go back to courteously ignoring each other, like normal neighbours

Finland's ex PM is on the money. There is a change in mood and it's not for the better. The Cote d'Azur doesn't feel part English anymore which is rather sad.

You can no longer saunter down the Promenade des Anglais and pretend you belong. Quelle dommage!

Some people are depressingly soulless but I suppose they have the advantage of being oblivious to what's going on around them

Gardenwalker said:

Charles said:

williamglenn said:

The ex-Finnish PM seems to think the EU needs to organise a charity appeal for us.

https://twitter.com/alexstubb/status/1446347168290324481

If the EU would play its cards right, it would offer assistance to the UK now or later when the supply of basic goods and services takes a turn for the worse. This is what friends do, even if the pain has been self-inflicted, stupid an unnecessary.

Sorry, but the situation in the UK is going to go from bad to worse with no respit in sight. This is not a period of adaptation, it is a rather permanent reality and fact linked to voluntary isolation and myths of sovereignty in an interdependent world.

Remind me what Finlandization means again…? I guess she doesn’t understand the value of freedom

Classic Brexsplaining.

Of course the Finns are too daft to do democracy!

Charles said:

Gardenwalker said:

Charles said:

williamglenn said:

The ex-Finnish PM seems to think the EU needs to organise a charity appeal for us.

https://twitter.com/alexstubb/status/1446347168290324481

If the EU would play its cards right, it would offer assistance to the UK now or later when the supply of basic goods and services takes a turn for the worse. This is what friends do, even if the pain has been self-inflicted, stupid an unnecessary.

Sorry, but the situation in the UK is going to go from bad to worse with no respit in sight. This is not a period of adaptation, it is a rather permanent reality and fact linked to voluntary isolation and myths of sovereignty in an interdependent world.

Remind me what Finlandization means again…? I guess she doesn’t understand the value of freedom

Classic Brexsplaining.

Of course the Finns are too daft to do democracy!

I thought that calling him an arrogant patronising shit would be offensive

dixiedean said:

Philip_Thompson said:

dixiedean said:

Philip_Thompson said:

dixiedean said:

MaxPB said:

dixiedean said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

The question you should be asking is whether the UK should even be doing low margin, low grade agriculture work that requires scores of minimum wage imported labour.
...

Hmm.

The promise:

When Greenland left the EU in 1985, it secured a free trade deal with the EU that allowed it to sell its fish to the EU tariff-free. Britain is a much larger economy and far more important to the EU - we are certain to secure an even better deal. Last year, we exported £7.5 billion worth of food to the EU but we imported food worth £18 billion. We have an annual trade deficit with the EU in food alone of £10 billion.

The reality:

Dominic Goudie, head of international trade at the FDF, said: “The return to growth in exports to non-EU markets is welcome news, but it doesn’t make up for the disastrous loss of £2bn in sales to the EU. It clearly demonstrates the serious difficulties manufacturers in our industry continue to face and the urgent need for additional specialist support.”

He said the difficulties now facing British food and drinks manufacturers and farmers were compounded by the lorry driver and warehouse workers shortages, which were choking the supply chain.

“At the same time, we are seeing labour shortages across the UK’s farm-to-fork food and drink supply chain, resulting in empty spaces on UK shop shelves, disruptions to deliveries and decreased production,” Goudie said. “Unless steps are taken to address these issues, the ability of businesses to fulfil vital export orders will be impacted.”

http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/briefing_food.html

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/02/brexit-uk-food-drink-exports-eu-disastrous-decline

As for the specific point about whether we should be using imported labour for agriculture, yes of course we should. Those jobs are never going to be high skilled, and high paying. That's partly why the Brits won't do them (not the only reason, of course). There's lots of reasons why we want agriculture to continue, and without imported labour we'll simply be exporting those jobs (even more of them) to continental Europe, and importing food which will be of lower quality because of the food miles, at higher prices.

Even in the new Brexit orthodoxy that has suddenly decided to fuck both business and agriculture, it makes no sense to try to push Brits into what will always be low-paying jobs.

I've got the research coming on Monday and I'm open to the idea that the UK should continue to subsidise low margin agriculture on the basis of needing a strategic reserve of agricultural capacity for situations such as a pandemic or another black swan event that causes global shipping to seize. However, other nations have shown a path that walks the line of having that reserve capacity and also not needing heavily subsidised agriculture either with direct cash grants like the CAP or indirect grants like tax credits to make up for low wages. The state's job is to find where that line is, clearly we shouldn't be a nation that farms battery chickens, other countries do it better and imports are all of similar enough quality. The whole industry relies on imported low wage labour and the end product has got razor thin margins and is constantly undercut by imports from Eastern Europe.

It's possible that by shutting down that industry the UK will see a net gain in GDP per capita and a net gain in the government's fiscal position, at least that's what the initial research showed which is why I asked the team to look at the whole sector.

Shut an entire industry down in areas which elect government MP's?
To transfer employment from rural to urban? Levelling up?
You do see the issue here?

Shut down entire industries that have no voters. The whole labour force is imported from end to end, the whining is only ever going to be from agribusiness.

I don't know where you are speaking from. But agribusiness votes Tory.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of jobs round here are in, or dependent on, agriculture. Nary an imported worker, nor much of a subsidy to be seen.
Nor much of a profit. Take away UC and the whole place would go tits up.
You're talking early 80's industrial North.
Votes Tory too.

You are HYUFD and I claim my £5

The right thing to do is still the right thing to do, even if it affects Tory voters.

Been accused of many things in my time....
Meanwhile.
Quite apart from owt else. You think this PM will do what's right above Tory voters? Bless.

Yes I do actually.

It depends which Tory voters you're talking about afterall. "Business" tends to be pro-Tory traditionally but when it came push to shove this PM had the cojones to say "fuck business" when some chose to stand in the way of what needed to be done.

So that's business. And agriculture. And with it the rural communities.
Any other Tory voters who actually do a day's work to be sacrificed for the pensioners?

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

dixiedean said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

The question you should be asking is whether the UK should even be doing low margin, low grade agriculture work that requires scores of minimum wage imported labour.
...

Hmm.

The promise:

When Greenland left the EU in 1985, it secured a free trade deal with the EU that allowed it to sell its fish to the EU tariff-free. Britain is a much larger economy and far more important to the EU - we are certain to secure an even better deal. Last year, we exported £7.5 billion worth of food to the EU but we imported food worth £18 billion. We have an annual trade deficit with the EU in food alone of £10 billion.

The reality:

Dominic Goudie, head of international trade at the FDF, said: “The return to growth in exports to non-EU markets is welcome news, but it doesn’t make up for the disastrous loss of £2bn in sales to the EU. It clearly demonstrates the serious difficulties manufacturers in our industry continue to face and the urgent need for additional specialist support.”

He said the difficulties now facing British food and drinks manufacturers and farmers were compounded by the lorry driver and warehouse workers shortages, which were choking the supply chain.

“At the same time, we are seeing labour shortages across the UK’s farm-to-fork food and drink supply chain, resulting in empty spaces on UK shop shelves, disruptions to deliveries and decreased production,” Goudie said. “Unless steps are taken to address these issues, the ability of businesses to fulfil vital export orders will be impacted.”

http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/briefing_food.html

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/02/brexit-uk-food-drink-exports-eu-disastrous-decline

As for the specific point about whether we should be using imported labour for agriculture, yes of course we should. Those jobs are never going to be high skilled, and high paying. That's partly why the Brits won't do them (not the only reason, of course). There's lots of reasons why we want agriculture to continue, and without imported labour we'll simply be exporting those jobs (even more of them) to continental Europe, and importing food which will be of lower quality because of the food miles, at higher prices.

Even in the new Brexit orthodoxy that has suddenly decided to fuck both business and agriculture, it makes no sense to try to push Brits into what will always be low-paying jobs.

I've got the research coming on Monday and I'm open to the idea that the UK should continue to subsidise low margin agriculture on the basis of needing a strategic reserve of agricultural capacity for situations such as a pandemic or another black swan event that causes global shipping to seize. However, other nations have shown a path that walks the line of having that reserve capacity and also not needing heavily subsidised agriculture either with direct cash grants like the CAP or indirect grants like tax credits to make up for low wages. The state's job is to find where that line is, clearly we shouldn't be a nation that farms battery chickens, other countries do it better and imports are all of similar enough quality. The whole industry relies on imported low wage labour and the end product has got razor thin margins and is constantly undercut by imports from Eastern Europe.

It's possible that by shutting down that industry the UK will see a net gain in GDP per capita and a net gain in the government's fiscal position, at least that's what the initial research showed which is why I asked the team to look at the whole sector.

Shut an entire industry down in areas which elect government MP's?
To transfer employment from rural to urban? Levelling up?
You do see the issue here?

Shut down entire industries that have no voters. The whole labour force is imported from end to end, the whining is only ever going to be from agribusiness.

It's also not state mandated shutting down, it's just inevitably going to become unviable vs imports of battery chickens without cheap immigrant labour or absolutely huge investment in automation. The latter strikes me as unlikely, instead the business owners will whine about lack of cheap labour and continue to do so until the companies fail and then whine about the companies failing but completely ignore that they just sat there and took profits in the good times and didn't put any investment in.

Farming-wise we could do whatever New Zealand does. They have lots of fertile land, yet hardly any workers, they can’t import cheap labour because they are a billion miles from anywhere, yet they manage to be an agricultural superpower - eg one of the top 2 or 3 dairy exporters in the whole world.

https://www.gtreview.com/magazine/volume-15issue-5/milk-new-zealands-dairy-exports-conquered-world

Surely number 1 dairy exporter.
But it worked because we have a comparative advantage in dairy, and we made the most of it.

Britain doesn’t really have that option.

For sure. But NZ is still an example of an agricultural sector that lost a huge market (in their case the UK, as we joined the EEC), which then had to go through a painful transition, but has now adapted, and is now thriving.

And I’m guessing they did it without 100,000s of cheap foreign workers

Malmesbury said:

Leon said:

Malmesbury said:

IanB2 said:

Has SeanLeon noticed today’s German case numbers yet, and spotted that yesterday’s published number of deaths has been reduced dramatically downwards?

You'd think by this point people would have learnt about

1) reporting delays
2) weekly cyclic effects created by the.
3) Reported on vs day of

Even Pesto is catching up with this, I believe.

If you go back to the actual comment I made, yesterday, on the odd German numbers, I explicitly asked ‘is this a statistical glitch?’ - because the figures were so out of whack

Before you Scott&Paste things, trying doing a little bit of research.

Gardenwalker said:

Charles said:

Gardenwalker said:

Charles said:

williamglenn said:

The ex-Finnish PM seems to think the EU needs to organise a charity appeal for us.

https://twitter.com/alexstubb/status/1446347168290324481

If the EU would play its cards right, it would offer assistance to the UK now or later when the supply of basic goods and services takes a turn for the worse. This is what friends do, even if the pain has been self-inflicted, stupid an unnecessary.

Sorry, but the situation in the UK is going to go from bad to worse with no respit in sight. This is not a period of adaptation, it is a rather permanent reality and fact linked to voluntary isolation and myths of sovereignty in an interdependent world.

Remind me what Finlandization means again…? I guess she doesn’t understand the value of freedom

Classic Brexsplaining.

Of course the Finns are too daft to do democracy!

I thought that calling him an arrogant patronising shit would be offensive

It came across as deluded more than anything else.

Charles said:

Gardenwalker said:

Charles said:

Gardenwalker said:

Charles said:

williamglenn said:

The ex-Finnish PM seems to think the EU needs to organise a charity appeal for us.

https://twitter.com/alexstubb/status/1446347168290324481

If the EU would play its cards right, it would offer assistance to the UK now or later when the supply of basic goods and services takes a turn for the worse. This is what friends do, even if the pain has been self-inflicted, stupid an unnecessary.

Sorry, but the situation in the UK is going to go from bad to worse with no respit in sight. This is not a period of adaptation, it is a rather permanent reality and fact linked to voluntary isolation and myths of sovereignty in an interdependent world.

Remind me what Finlandization means again…? I guess she doesn’t understand the value of freedom

Classic Brexsplaining.

Of course the Finns are too daft to do democracy!

I thought that calling him an arrogant patronising shit would be offensive

It came across as deluded more than anything else.

Well it comes down to the basic point: I value intangibles that you don’t value. So we have a different calculation as to the merits of Brexit.

geoffw said:

Foxy said:

geoffw said:

Gardenwalker said:

Charles said:

williamglenn said:

The ex-Finnish PM seems to think the EU needs to organise a charity appeal for us.

https://twitter.com/alexstubb/status/1446347168290324481

If the EU would play its cards right, it would offer assistance to the UK now or later when the supply of basic goods and services takes a turn for the worse. This is what friends do, even if the pain has been self-inflicted, stupid an unnecessary.

Sorry, but the situation in the UK is going to go from bad to worse with no respit in sight. This is not a period of adaptation, it is a rather permanent reality and fact linked to voluntary isolation and myths of sovereignty in an interdependent world.

Remind me what Finlandization means again…? I guess she doesn’t understand the value of freedom

Classic Brexsplaining.

Of course the Finns are too daft to do democracy!

They vie with NZ for the first democratic franchise.

Really? They were part of czarist Russia until 1918.

1917

dixiedean said:

another_richard said:

dixiedean said:

Philip_Thompson said:

dixiedean said:

Philip_Thompson said:

dixiedean said:

MaxPB said:

dixiedean said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

The question you should be asking is whether the UK should even be doing low margin, low grade agriculture work that requires scores of minimum wage imported labour.
...

Hmm.

The promise:

When Greenland left the EU in 1985, it secured a free trade deal with the EU that allowed it to sell its fish to the EU tariff-free. Britain is a much larger economy and far more important to the EU - we are certain to secure an even better deal. Last year, we exported £7.5 billion worth of food to the EU but we imported food worth £18 billion. We have an annual trade deficit with the EU in food alone of £10 billion.

The reality:

Dominic Goudie, head of international trade at the FDF, said: “The return to growth in exports to non-EU markets is welcome news, but it doesn’t make up for the disastrous loss of £2bn in sales to the EU. It clearly demonstrates the serious difficulties manufacturers in our industry continue to face and the urgent need for additional specialist support.”

He said the difficulties now facing British food and drinks manufacturers and farmers were compounded by the lorry driver and warehouse workers shortages, which were choking the supply chain.

“At the same time, we are seeing labour shortages across the UK’s farm-to-fork food and drink supply chain, resulting in empty spaces on UK shop shelves, disruptions to deliveries and decreased production,” Goudie said. “Unless steps are taken to address these issues, the ability of businesses to fulfil vital export orders will be impacted.”

http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/briefing_food.html

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/02/brexit-uk-food-drink-exports-eu-disastrous-decline

As for the specific point about whether we should be using imported labour for agriculture, yes of course we should. Those jobs are never going to be high skilled, and high paying. That's partly why the Brits won't do them (not the only reason, of course). There's lots of reasons why we want agriculture to continue, and without imported labour we'll simply be exporting those jobs (even more of them) to continental Europe, and importing food which will be of lower quality because of the food miles, at higher prices.

Even in the new Brexit orthodoxy that has suddenly decided to fuck both business and agriculture, it makes no sense to try to push Brits into what will always be low-paying jobs.

I've got the research coming on Monday and I'm open to the idea that the UK should continue to subsidise low margin agriculture on the basis of needing a strategic reserve of agricultural capacity for situations such as a pandemic or another black swan event that causes global shipping to seize. However, other nations have shown a path that walks the line of having that reserve capacity and also not needing heavily subsidised agriculture either with direct cash grants like the CAP or indirect grants like tax credits to make up for low wages. The state's job is to find where that line is, clearly we shouldn't be a nation that farms battery chickens, other countries do it better and imports are all of similar enough quality. The whole industry relies on imported low wage labour and the end product has got razor thin margins and is constantly undercut by imports from Eastern Europe.

It's possible that by shutting down that industry the UK will see a net gain in GDP per capita and a net gain in the government's fiscal position, at least that's what the initial research showed which is why I asked the team to look at the whole sector.

Shut an entire industry down in areas which elect government MP's?
To transfer employment from rural to urban? Levelling up?
You do see the issue here?

Shut down entire industries that have no voters. The whole labour force is imported from end to end, the whining is only ever going to be from agribusiness.

I don't know where you are speaking from. But agribusiness votes Tory.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of jobs round here are in, or dependent on, agriculture. Nary an imported worker, nor much of a subsidy to be seen.
Nor much of a profit. Take away UC and the whole place would go tits up.
You're talking early 80's industrial North.
Votes Tory too.

You are HYUFD and I claim my £5

The right thing to do is still the right thing to do, even if it affects Tory voters.

Been accused of many things in my time....
Meanwhile.
Quite apart from owt else. You think this PM will do what's right above Tory voters? Bless.

Yes I do actually.

It depends which Tory voters you're talking about afterall. "Business" tends to be pro-Tory traditionally but when it came push to shove this PM had the cojones to say "fuck business" when some chose to stand in the way of what needed to be done.

So that's business. And agriculture. And with it the rural communities.
Any other Tory voters who actually do a day's work to be sacrificed for the pensioners?

I doubt many rural communities would be overly bothered to see the back of intensively reared pig farming and the imported workforce which goes with it.

As long as the grain fields and meadows with sheep baaing / cattle mooing remain people will be happy with what the British countryside looks like.

Precisely as I explained. Remove UC and you won't have much upland farming. It's aĺl agriculture round here. None of it intensive, barely any subsidised, barely any profitable. And not a foreign worker to be seen. Nor anyone above minimum wage.

Fishing said:

rcs1000 said:

Fishing said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Omnium said:

Re header and @MikeSmithson. Endless header posts will not assuage your conscience. The Tories are currently the best placed to be in government. The other parties are simply hopeless, and that's especially the LDs.

Beyond the Tory party the next best placed person to be PM in my opinion is Farage. Fertile ground for the Greens, but WTF are the usual parties of opposition doing!?

I would just comment that there is agreement that we face an extraordinary cost of living crisis with worldwide energy prices rocketing, shortages across the planet with container ships held at anchor in many places, indeed 14 were held at anchor of Anglesey last week due to adverse weather conditions for docking in Liverpool

HMG is facing the bleakest outlook I can remember, not least as covid continues and the economic shocks are extreme.

Taxes are rising and it is fair enough to complain about the loss of the £20 UC uplift but that would add £6billion or 1% on income tax year year on year and Starmer has still not said how he would cover the deficit other than muttering 'tory donors'.

I would be very surprised to see the conservatives retain their poll lead but does anyone know how labour would fund their 170 billion of spending and address the present energy and shortages issues

HMG is having to make extraordinarily unpopular decisions, but in truth governments across Europe and elsewhere are facing the same tsunami of a crisis

We must also remember that on top of this, COP26 is going to involve very expensive commitments (Insulate Britain said they want a trillion to insulate UK homes) and sooner or later the costs are going to collide with policy makers and why has nobody had the courage to say we have to transition to carbon neutral in a manner that does not create massive poverty and societal disruption and if that includes in the UK case giving the go ahead to the Shetland oil fields then so be it

True, but just about all of the wounds you list are self-inflicted. Energy shortages, but shale gas just left in the ground. Public finances in crisis, but lots of hugely wasteful spending. House prices too high, but absurd planning laws. COP26 commitments because of green crap.

It's the consequence of the soft socialism and politically correct pandering we've subjected the economy to over the last 20 years.

(I could have added lockdown, which was designed to inflict maximum economic damage).

Shale gas has been left in the ground (globally), because we had a pandemic and prices crashed.

Remember that the production profile of a shale gas well is very different to that of a traditional oil or gas project. With shale, if you stop drilling, production drops very rapidly.

What we've seen is that demand fell during the pandemic, drilling stopped, and shale gas production dropped sharply. Rig counts are now rising (although they still need to increase further), and production will rapidly follow.

There are still essentially no spot exports of LNG from the US, but that will change in the next few months. By April/May next year, US natural gas production should have increased more than 10 billion cubic feet a day, and be hitting new highs. (For reference, UK natural gas demand is only 7 billion feet/day)

Shale gas was left in the ground in the UK because the government messed around for years about issuing then suspending licences, and had absurdly and unrealistically tight seismic requirements. That's one important reason why our wholesale gas prices are several times America's, and we're desperately dependent on Russia.

Yet another example of the government shooting the country in the foot.

gealbhan said:

Malmesbury said:

Leon said:

Malmesbury said:

IanB2 said:

Has SeanLeon noticed today’s German case numbers yet, and spotted that yesterday’s published number of deaths has been reduced dramatically downwards?

You'd think by this point people would have learnt about

1) reporting delays
2) weekly cyclic effects created by the.
3) Reported on vs day of

Even Pesto is catching up with this, I believe.

If you go back to the actual comment I made, yesterday, on the odd German numbers, I explicitly asked ‘is this a statistical glitch?’ - because the figures were so out of whack

Before you Scott&Paste things, trying doing a little bit of research.

What do you make of this one test says yeah, second says no I first mentioned yesterday, Mal, a bad batch of testing, or new variant or an known unknown?

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-news-live-uk-latest-coronavirus-daily-cases-rules-travel-updates-12425651?postid=2818806#liveblog-body

The much vaunted lab for spotting variants have been up to six weeks behind haven’t they?

rcs1000 said:

Fishing said:

rcs1000 said:

Fishing said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Omnium said:

Re header and @MikeSmithson. Endless header posts will not assuage your conscience. The Tories are currently the best placed to be in government. The other parties are simply hopeless, and that's especially the LDs.

Beyond the Tory party the next best placed person to be PM in my opinion is Farage. Fertile ground for the Greens, but WTF are the usual parties of opposition doing!?

I would just comment that there is agreement that we face an extraordinary cost of living crisis with worldwide energy prices rocketing, shortages across the planet with container ships held at anchor in many places, indeed 14 were held at anchor of Anglesey last week due to adverse weather conditions for docking in Liverpool

HMG is facing the bleakest outlook I can remember, not least as covid continues and the economic shocks are extreme.

Taxes are rising and it is fair enough to complain about the loss of the £20 UC uplift but that would add £6billion or 1% on income tax year year on year and Starmer has still not said how he would cover the deficit other than muttering 'tory donors'.

I would be very surprised to see the conservatives retain their poll lead but does anyone know how labour would fund their 170 billion of spending and address the present energy and shortages issues

HMG is having to make extraordinarily unpopular decisions, but in truth governments across Europe and elsewhere are facing the same tsunami of a crisis

We must also remember that on top of this, COP26 is going to involve very expensive commitments (Insulate Britain said they want a trillion to insulate UK homes) and sooner or later the costs are going to collide with policy makers and why has nobody had the courage to say we have to transition to carbon neutral in a manner that does not create massive poverty and societal disruption and if that includes in the UK case giving the go ahead to the Shetland oil fields then so be it

True, but just about all of the wounds you list are self-inflicted. Energy shortages, but shale gas just left in the ground. Public finances in crisis, but lots of hugely wasteful spending. House prices too high, but absurd planning laws. COP26 commitments because of green crap.

It's the consequence of the soft socialism and politically correct pandering we've subjected the economy to over the last 20 years.

(I could have added lockdown, which was designed to inflict maximum economic damage).

Shale gas has been left in the ground (globally), because we had a pandemic and prices crashed.

Remember that the production profile of a shale gas well is very different to that of a traditional oil or gas project. With shale, if you stop drilling, production drops very rapidly.

What we've seen is that demand fell during the pandemic, drilling stopped, and shale gas production dropped sharply. Rig counts are now rising (although they still need to increase further), and production will rapidly follow.

There are still essentially no spot exports of LNG from the US, but that will change in the next few months. By April/May next year, US natural gas production should have increased more than 10 billion cubic feet a day, and be hitting new highs. (For reference, UK natural gas demand is only 7 billion feet/day)

Shale gas was left in the ground in the UK because the government messed around for years about issuing then suspending licences, and had absurdly and unrealistically tight seismic requirements. That's one important reason why our wholesale gas prices are several times America's, and we're desperately dependent on Russia.

Yet another example of the government shooting the country in the foot.

Shale gas is not currently economic in the UK.

Even before the March 2000 moratorium (which, it should be noted was because the locals were not happy), the data on flow rates was not particularly encouraging. I mean if the land were empty, and if the UK had a large indigenous supply of land drilling rigs (and people to staff them), then it *might* work. But we don't.

So, an operator would be essentially taking a massive flyer on either future wells being very significantly more productive than the initial ones, or longer term gas prices being $12-14/mmbtu.

And I don't think any operator is going to do that.

(The only way I could see it working would be if the UK government guaranteed - say - $12/mmbtu for shale gas for the next five to seven years to encourage development.)

Richard_Tyndall said:

rcs1000 said:

Fishing said:

rcs1000 said:

Fishing said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Omnium said:

Re header and @MikeSmithson. Endless header posts will not assuage your conscience. The Tories are currently the best placed to be in government. The other parties are simply hopeless, and that's especially the LDs.

Beyond the Tory party the next best placed person to be PM in my opinion is Farage. Fertile ground for the Greens, but WTF are the usual parties of opposition doing!?

I would just comment that there is agreement that we face an extraordinary cost of living crisis with worldwide energy prices rocketing, shortages across the planet with container ships held at anchor in many places, indeed 14 were held at anchor of Anglesey last week due to adverse weather conditions for docking in Liverpool

HMG is facing the bleakest outlook I can remember, not least as covid continues and the economic shocks are extreme.

Taxes are rising and it is fair enough to complain about the loss of the £20 UC uplift but that would add £6billion or 1% on income tax year year on year and Starmer has still not said how he would cover the deficit other than muttering 'tory donors'.

I would be very surprised to see the conservatives retain their poll lead but does anyone know how labour would fund their 170 billion of spending and address the present energy and shortages issues

HMG is having to make extraordinarily unpopular decisions, but in truth governments across Europe and elsewhere are facing the same tsunami of a crisis

We must also remember that on top of this, COP26 is going to involve very expensive commitments (Insulate Britain said they want a trillion to insulate UK homes) and sooner or later the costs are going to collide with policy makers and why has nobody had the courage to say we have to transition to carbon neutral in a manner that does not create massive poverty and societal disruption and if that includes in the UK case giving the go ahead to the Shetland oil fields then so be it

True, but just about all of the wounds you list are self-inflicted. Energy shortages, but shale gas just left in the ground. Public finances in crisis, but lots of hugely wasteful spending. House prices too high, but absurd planning laws. COP26 commitments because of green crap.

It's the consequence of the soft socialism and politically correct pandering we've subjected the economy to over the last 20 years.

(I could have added lockdown, which was designed to inflict maximum economic damage).

Shale gas has been left in the ground (globally), because we had a pandemic and prices crashed.

Remember that the production profile of a shale gas well is very different to that of a traditional oil or gas project. With shale, if you stop drilling, production drops very rapidly.

What we've seen is that demand fell during the pandemic, drilling stopped, and shale gas production dropped sharply. Rig counts are now rising (although they still need to increase further), and production will rapidly follow.

There are still essentially no spot exports of LNG from the US, but that will change in the next few months. By April/May next year, US natural gas production should have increased more than 10 billion cubic feet a day, and be hitting new highs. (For reference, UK natural gas demand is only 7 billion feet/day)

Shale gas was left in the ground in the UK because the government messed around for years about issuing then suspending licences, and had absurdly and unrealistically tight seismic requirements. That's one important reason why our wholesale gas prices are several times America's, and we're desperately dependent on Russia.

Yet another example of the government shooting the country in the foot.

Shale gas is not currently economic in the UK.

Even before the March 2000 moratorium (which, it should be noted was because the locals were not happy), the data on flow rates was not particularly encouraging. I mean if the land were empty, and if the UK had a large indigenous supply of land drilling rigs (and people to staff them), then it *might* work. But we don't.

So, an operator would be essentially taking a massive flyer on either future wells being very significantly more productive than the initial ones, or longer term gas prices being $12-14/mmbtu.

And I don't think any operator is going to do that.

(The only way I could see it working would be if the UK government guaranteed - say - $12/mmbtu for shale gas for the next five to seven years to encourage development.)

Shale gas may not be economic but there are other hydrocarbon reserves which are being prevented from being developed because of the Government at both a local and national level. The Government is making it increasingly difficult to exploit gas reserves in the Southern North sea and as a result many companies are abandoning any plans for further exploration and are concentrating on the limited gains from near field development.

The UK attitude to hydrocarbons is inconsistent, incoherent and will result in more environmental damage rather than less whilst seriously damaging our economy at the same time.

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

dixiedean said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

The question you should be asking is whether the UK should even be doing low margin, low grade agriculture work that requires scores of minimum wage imported labour.
...

Hmm.

The promise:

When Greenland left the EU in 1985, it secured a free trade deal with the EU that allowed it to sell its fish to the EU tariff-free. Britain is a much larger economy and far more important to the EU - we are certain to secure an even better deal. Last year, we exported £7.5 billion worth of food to the EU but we imported food worth £18 billion. We have an annual trade deficit with the EU in food alone of £10 billion.

The reality:

Dominic Goudie, head of international trade at the FDF, said: “The return to growth in exports to non-EU markets is welcome news, but it doesn’t make up for the disastrous loss of £2bn in sales to the EU. It clearly demonstrates the serious difficulties manufacturers in our industry continue to face and the urgent need for additional specialist support.”

He said the difficulties now facing British food and drinks manufacturers and farmers were compounded by the lorry driver and warehouse workers shortages, which were choking the supply chain.

“At the same time, we are seeing labour shortages across the UK’s farm-to-fork food and drink supply chain, resulting in empty spaces on UK shop shelves, disruptions to deliveries and decreased production,” Goudie said. “Unless steps are taken to address these issues, the ability of businesses to fulfil vital export orders will be impacted.”

http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/briefing_food.html

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/02/brexit-uk-food-drink-exports-eu-disastrous-decline

As for the specific point about whether we should be using imported labour for agriculture, yes of course we should. Those jobs are never going to be high skilled, and high paying. That's partly why the Brits won't do them (not the only reason, of course). There's lots of reasons why we want agriculture to continue, and without imported labour we'll simply be exporting those jobs (even more of them) to continental Europe, and importing food which will be of lower quality because of the food miles, at higher prices.

Even in the new Brexit orthodoxy that has suddenly decided to fuck both business and agriculture, it makes no sense to try to push Brits into what will always be low-paying jobs.

I've got the research coming on Monday and I'm open to the idea that the UK should continue to subsidise low margin agriculture on the basis of needing a strategic reserve of agricultural capacity for situations such as a pandemic or another black swan event that causes global shipping to seize. However, other nations have shown a path that walks the line of having that reserve capacity and also not needing heavily subsidised agriculture either with direct cash grants like the CAP or indirect grants like tax credits to make up for low wages. The state's job is to find where that line is, clearly we shouldn't be a nation that farms battery chickens, other countries do it better and imports are all of similar enough quality. The whole industry relies on imported low wage labour and the end product has got razor thin margins and is constantly undercut by imports from Eastern Europe.

It's possible that by shutting down that industry the UK will see a net gain in GDP per capita and a net gain in the government's fiscal position, at least that's what the initial research showed which is why I asked the team to look at the whole sector.

Shut an entire industry down in areas which elect government MP's?
To transfer employment from rural to urban? Levelling up?
You do see the issue here?

Shut down entire industries that have no voters. The whole labour force is imported from end to end, the whining is only ever going to be from agribusiness.

It's also not state mandated shutting down, it's just inevitably going to become unviable vs imports of battery chickens without cheap immigrant labour or absolutely huge investment in automation. The latter strikes me as unlikely, instead the business owners will whine about lack of cheap labour and continue to do so until the companies fail and then whine about the companies failing but completely ignore that they just sat there and took profits in the good times and didn't put any investment in.

Farming-wise we could do whatever New Zealand does. They have lots of fertile land, yet hardly any workers, they can’t import cheap labour because they are a billion miles from anywhere, yet they manage to be an agricultural superpower - eg one of the top 2 or 3 dairy exporters in the whole world.

https://www.gtreview.com/magazine/volume-15issue-5/milk-new-zealands-dairy-exports-conquered-world

Surely number 1 dairy exporter.
But it worked because we have a comparative advantage in dairy, and we made the most of it.

Britain doesn’t really have that option.

For sure. But NZ is still an example of an agricultural sector that lost a huge market (in their case the UK, as we joined the EEC), which then had to go through a painful transition, but has now adapted, and is now thriving.

And I’m guessing they did it without 100,000s of cheap foreign workers

This is true.

Well, we’ve had high immigration, but not to the agricultural sector.

The transition took around 20 years and was rather bumpy at times.

The entire UK economy is about to go through what NZ went through with agriculture in the 70s and 80s.

It will definitely be ‘bumpy’ tho I think it will be largely over in 10 years, not 20. And at the end I believe we will thrive, as Kiwi butter exporters do today

dixiedean said:

Philip_Thompson said:

dixiedean said:

Philip_Thompson said:

dixiedean said:

Philip_Thompson said:

dixiedean said:

MaxPB said:

dixiedean said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

The question you should be asking is whether the UK should even be doing low margin, low grade agriculture work that requires scores of minimum wage imported labour.
...

Hmm.

The promise:

When Greenland left the EU in 1985, it secured a free trade deal with the EU that allowed it to sell its fish to the EU tariff-free. Britain is a much larger economy and far more important to the EU - we are certain to secure an even better deal. Last year, we exported £7.5 billion worth of food to the EU but we imported food worth £18 billion. We have an annual trade deficit with the EU in food alone of £10 billion.

The reality:

Dominic Goudie, head of international trade at the FDF, said: “The return to growth in exports to non-EU markets is welcome news, but it doesn’t make up for the disastrous loss of £2bn in sales to the EU. It clearly demonstrates the serious difficulties manufacturers in our industry continue to face and the urgent need for additional specialist support.”

He said the difficulties now facing British food and drinks manufacturers and farmers were compounded by the lorry driver and warehouse workers shortages, which were choking the supply chain.

“At the same time, we are seeing labour shortages across the UK’s farm-to-fork food and drink supply chain, resulting in empty spaces on UK shop shelves, disruptions to deliveries and decreased production,” Goudie said. “Unless steps are taken to address these issues, the ability of businesses to fulfil vital export orders will be impacted.”

http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/briefing_food.html

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/02/brexit-uk-food-drink-exports-eu-disastrous-decline

As for the specific point about whether we should be using imported labour for agriculture, yes of course we should. Those jobs are never going to be high skilled, and high paying. That's partly why the Brits won't do them (not the only reason, of course). There's lots of reasons why we want agriculture to continue, and without imported labour we'll simply be exporting those jobs (even more of them) to continental Europe, and importing food which will be of lower quality because of the food miles, at higher prices.

Even in the new Brexit orthodoxy that has suddenly decided to fuck both business and agriculture, it makes no sense to try to push Brits into what will always be low-paying jobs.

I've got the research coming on Monday and I'm open to the idea that the UK should continue to subsidise low margin agriculture on the basis of needing a strategic reserve of agricultural capacity for situations such as a pandemic or another black swan event that causes global shipping to seize. However, other nations have shown a path that walks the line of having that reserve capacity and also not needing heavily subsidised agriculture either with direct cash grants like the CAP or indirect grants like tax credits to make up for low wages. The state's job is to find where that line is, clearly we shouldn't be a nation that farms battery chickens, other countries do it better and imports are all of similar enough quality. The whole industry relies on imported low wage labour and the end product has got razor thin margins and is constantly undercut by imports from Eastern Europe.

It's possible that by shutting down that industry the UK will see a net gain in GDP per capita and a net gain in the government's fiscal position, at least that's what the initial research showed which is why I asked the team to look at the whole sector.

Shut an entire industry down in areas which elect government MP's?
To transfer employment from rural to urban? Levelling up?
You do see the issue here?

Shut down entire industries that have no voters. The whole labour force is imported from end to end, the whining is only ever going to be from agribusiness.

I don't know where you are speaking from. But agribusiness votes Tory.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of jobs round here are in, or dependent on, agriculture. Nary an imported worker, nor much of a subsidy to be seen.
Nor much of a profit. Take away UC and the whole place would go tits up.
You're talking early 80's industrial North.
Votes Tory too.

You are HYUFD and I claim my £5

The right thing to do is still the right thing to do, even if it affects Tory voters.

Been accused of many things in my time....
Meanwhile.
Quite apart from owt else. You think this PM will do what's right above Tory voters? Bless.

Yes I do actually.

It depends which Tory voters you're talking about afterall. "Business" tends to be pro-Tory traditionally but when it came push to shove this PM had the cojones to say "fuck business" when some chose to stand in the way of what needed to be done.

So that's business. And agriculture. And with it the rural communities.
Any other Tory voters who actually do a day's work to be sacrificed for the pensioners?

Not for pensioners.

Businesses that are addicted to the crack cocaine of shipping in people to work for minimum wage while the taxpayer sponsors those people with housing credit, tax credits, universal credit etc to supplement their below living wages . . . they need to be told to fuck right off and pay a market rate.

Agriculture - same thing.

Let companies compete in a free market. Bizarre that free marketeers might still believe in a free market, rather than pander to client businesses and agriculture isn't it?

Bizarre that you cling to the belief that Boris Johnson and his crew have any interest in the free market.

dixiedean said:

Philip_Thompson said:

dixiedean said:

another_richard said:

dixiedean said:

Philip_Thompson said:

dixiedean said:

Philip_Thompson said:

dixiedean said:

MaxPB said:

dixiedean said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

The question you should be asking is whether the UK should even be doing low margin, low grade agriculture work that requires scores of minimum wage imported labour.
...

Hmm.

The promise:

When Greenland left the EU in 1985, it secured a free trade deal with the EU that allowed it to sell its fish to the EU tariff-free. Britain is a much larger economy and far more important to the EU - we are certain to secure an even better deal. Last year, we exported £7.5 billion worth of food to the EU but we imported food worth £18 billion. We have an annual trade deficit with the EU in food alone of £10 billion.

The reality:

Dominic Goudie, head of international trade at the FDF, said: “The return to growth in exports to non-EU markets is welcome news, but it doesn’t make up for the disastrous loss of £2bn in sales to the EU. It clearly demonstrates the serious difficulties manufacturers in our industry continue to face and the urgent need for additional specialist support.”

He said the difficulties now facing British food and drinks manufacturers and farmers were compounded by the lorry driver and warehouse workers shortages, which were choking the supply chain.

“At the same time, we are seeing labour shortages across the UK’s farm-to-fork food and drink supply chain, resulting in empty spaces on UK shop shelves, disruptions to deliveries and decreased production,” Goudie said. “Unless steps are taken to address these issues, the ability of businesses to fulfil vital export orders will be impacted.”

http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/briefing_food.html

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/02/brexit-uk-food-drink-exports-eu-disastrous-decline

As for the specific point about whether we should be using imported labour for agriculture, yes of course we should. Those jobs are never going to be high skilled, and high paying. That's partly why the Brits won't do them (not the only reason, of course). There's lots of reasons why we want agriculture to continue, and without imported labour we'll simply be exporting those jobs (even more of them) to continental Europe, and importing food which will be of lower quality because of the food miles, at higher prices.

Even in the new Brexit orthodoxy that has suddenly decided to fuck both business and agriculture, it makes no sense to try to push Brits into what will always be low-paying jobs.

I've got the research coming on Monday and I'm open to the idea that the UK should continue to subsidise low margin agriculture on the basis of needing a strategic reserve of agricultural capacity for situations such as a pandemic or another black swan event that causes global shipping to seize. However, other nations have shown a path that walks the line of having that reserve capacity and also not needing heavily subsidised agriculture either with direct cash grants like the CAP or indirect grants like tax credits to make up for low wages. The state's job is to find where that line is, clearly we shouldn't be a nation that farms battery chickens, other countries do it better and imports are all of similar enough quality. The whole industry relies on imported low wage labour and the end product has got razor thin margins and is constantly undercut by imports from Eastern Europe.

It's possible that by shutting down that industry the UK will see a net gain in GDP per capita and a net gain in the government's fiscal position, at least that's what the initial research showed which is why I asked the team to look at the whole sector.

Shut an entire industry down in areas which elect government MP's?
To transfer employment from rural to urban? Levelling up?
You do see the issue here?

Shut down entire industries that have no voters. The whole labour force is imported from end to end, the whining is only ever going to be from agribusiness.

I don't know where you are speaking from. But agribusiness votes Tory.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of jobs round here are in, or dependent on, agriculture. Nary an imported worker, nor much of a subsidy to be seen.
Nor much of a profit. Take away UC and the whole place would go tits up.
You're talking early 80's industrial North.
Votes Tory too.

You are HYUFD and I claim my £5

The right thing to do is still the right thing to do, even if it affects Tory voters.

Been accused of many things in my time....
Meanwhile.
Quite apart from owt else. You think this PM will do what's right above Tory voters? Bless.

Yes I do actually.

It depends which Tory voters you're talking about afterall. "Business" tends to be pro-Tory traditionally but when it came push to shove this PM had the cojones to say "fuck business" when some chose to stand in the way of what needed to be done.

So that's business. And agriculture. And with it the rural communities.
Any other Tory voters who actually do a day's work to be sacrificed for the pensioners?

I doubt many rural communities would be overly bothered to see the back of intensively reared pig farming and the imported workforce which goes with it.

As long as the grain fields and meadows with sheep baaing / cattle mooing remain people will be happy with what the British countryside looks like.

Precisely as I explained. Remove UC and you won't have much upland farming. It's aĺl agriculture round here. None of it intensive, barely any subsidised, barely any profitable. And not a foreign worker to be seen. Nor anyone above minimum wage.

Then if they can't cope without taxpayer subsidies, what are they doing still trading?

UC is supposed to be a safety net, not a way of life.

And that’s fine.
Someone the other day was musing about what Labour would need to do to win back Workington, Copeland and Barrow?
We now know. Absolutely bugger all. The complete destruction of upland agriculture will do it.

dixiedean said:

another_richard said:

dixiedean said:

another_richard said:

dixiedean said:

Philip_Thompson said:

dixiedean said:

Philip_Thompson said:

dixiedean said:

MaxPB said:

dixiedean said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

The question you should be asking is whether the UK should even be doing low margin, low grade agriculture work that requires scores of minimum wage imported labour.
...

Hmm.

The promise:

When Greenland left the EU in 1985, it secured a free trade deal with the EU that allowed it to sell its fish to the EU tariff-free. Britain is a much larger economy and far more important to the EU - we are certain to secure an even better deal. Last year, we exported £7.5 billion worth of food to the EU but we imported food worth £18 billion. We have an annual trade deficit with the EU in food alone of £10 billion.

The reality:

Dominic Goudie, head of international trade at the FDF, said: “The return to growth in exports to non-EU markets is welcome news, but it doesn’t make up for the disastrous loss of £2bn in sales to the EU. It clearly demonstrates the serious difficulties manufacturers in our industry continue to face and the urgent need for additional specialist support.”

He said the difficulties now facing British food and drinks manufacturers and farmers were compounded by the lorry driver and warehouse workers shortages, which were choking the supply chain.

“At the same time, we are seeing labour shortages across the UK’s farm-to-fork food and drink supply chain, resulting in empty spaces on UK shop shelves, disruptions to deliveries and decreased production,” Goudie said. “Unless steps are taken to address these issues, the ability of businesses to fulfil vital export orders will be impacted.”

http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/briefing_food.html

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/02/brexit-uk-food-drink-exports-eu-disastrous-decline

As for the specific point about whether we should be using imported labour for agriculture, yes of course we should. Those jobs are never going to be high skilled, and high paying. That's partly why the Brits won't do them (not the only reason, of course). There's lots of reasons why we want agriculture to continue, and without imported labour we'll simply be exporting those jobs (even more of them) to continental Europe, and importing food which will be of lower quality because of the food miles, at higher prices.

Even in the new Brexit orthodoxy that has suddenly decided to fuck both business and agriculture, it makes no sense to try to push Brits into what will always be low-paying jobs.

I've got the research coming on Monday and I'm open to the idea that the UK should continue to subsidise low margin agriculture on the basis of needing a strategic reserve of agricultural capacity for situations such as a pandemic or another black swan event that causes global shipping to seize. However, other nations have shown a path that walks the line of having that reserve capacity and also not needing heavily subsidised agriculture either with direct cash grants like the CAP or indirect grants like tax credits to make up for low wages. The state's job is to find where that line is, clearly we shouldn't be a nation that farms battery chickens, other countries do it better and imports are all of similar enough quality. The whole industry relies on imported low wage labour and the end product has got razor thin margins and is constantly undercut by imports from Eastern Europe.

It's possible that by shutting down that industry the UK will see a net gain in GDP per capita and a net gain in the government's fiscal position, at least that's what the initial research showed which is why I asked the team to look at the whole sector.

Shut an entire industry down in areas which elect government MP's?
To transfer employment from rural to urban? Levelling up?
You do see the issue here?

Shut down entire industries that have no voters. The whole labour force is imported from end to end, the whining is only ever going to be from agribusiness.

I don't know where you are speaking from. But agribusiness votes Tory.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of jobs round here are in, or dependent on, agriculture. Nary an imported worker, nor much of a subsidy to be seen.
Nor much of a profit. Take away UC and the whole place would go tits up.
You're talking early 80's industrial North.
Votes Tory too.

You are HYUFD and I claim my £5

The right thing to do is still the right thing to do, even if it affects Tory voters.

Been accused of many things in my time....
Meanwhile.
Quite apart from owt else. You think this PM will do what's right above Tory voters? Bless.

Yes I do actually.

It depends which Tory voters you're talking about afterall. "Business" tends to be pro-Tory traditionally but when it came push to shove this PM had the cojones to say "fuck business" when some chose to stand in the way of what needed to be done.

So that's business. And agriculture. And with it the rural communities.
Any other Tory voters who actually do a day's work to be sacrificed for the pensioners?

I doubt many rural communities would be overly bothered to see the back of intensively reared pig farming and the imported workforce which goes with it.

As long as the grain fields and meadows with sheep baaing / cattle mooing remain people will be happy with what the British countryside looks like.

Precisely as I explained. Remove UC and you won't have much upland farming. It's aĺl agriculture round here. None of it intensive, barely any subsidised, barely any profitable. And not a foreign worker to be seen. Nor anyone above minimum wage.

Has upland hill farming ever been profitable ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC5WeuLHUdU

Now you could subsidise it as part of rural tourism / environment management - pretty baa lambs and dry stone walls etc.

With a charge on all the second home owners / holiday lets in the area to fund it.

Indeed.
But I'd prefer to live in an area with jobs.

Farooq said:

MaxPB said:

Aslan said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

dixiedean said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

The question you should be asking is whether the UK should even be doing low margin, low grade agriculture work that requires scores of minimum wage imported labour.
...

Hmm.

The promise:

When Greenland left the EU in 1985, it secured a free trade deal with the EU that allowed it to sell its fish to the EU tariff-free. Britain is a much larger economy and far more important to the EU - we are certain to secure an even better deal. Last year, we exported £7.5 billion worth of food to the EU but we imported food worth £18 billion. We have an annual trade deficit with the EU in food alone of £10 billion.

The reality:

Dominic Goudie, head of international trade at the FDF, said: “The return to growth in exports to non-EU markets is welcome news, but it doesn’t make up for the disastrous loss of £2bn in sales to the EU. It clearly demonstrates the serious difficulties manufacturers in our industry continue to face and the urgent need for additional specialist support.”

He said the difficulties now facing British food and drinks manufacturers and farmers were compounded by the lorry driver and warehouse workers shortages, which were choking the supply chain.

“At the same time, we are seeing labour shortages across the UK’s farm-to-fork food and drink supply chain, resulting in empty spaces on UK shop shelves, disruptions to deliveries and decreased production,” Goudie said. “Unless steps are taken to address these issues, the ability of businesses to fulfil vital export orders will be impacted.”

http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/briefing_food.html

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/02/brexit-uk-food-drink-exports-eu-disastrous-decline

As for the specific point about whether we should be using imported labour for agriculture, yes of course we should. Those jobs are never going to be high skilled, and high paying. That's partly why the Brits won't do them (not the only reason, of course). There's lots of reasons why we want agriculture to continue, and without imported labour we'll simply be exporting those jobs (even more of them) to continental Europe, and importing food which will be of lower quality because of the food miles, at higher prices.

Even in the new Brexit orthodoxy that has suddenly decided to fuck both business and agriculture, it makes no sense to try to push Brits into what will always be low-paying jobs.

I've got the research coming on Monday and I'm open to the idea that the UK should continue to subsidise low margin agriculture on the basis of needing a strategic reserve of agricultural capacity for situations such as a pandemic or another black swan event that causes global shipping to seize. However, other nations have shown a path that walks the line of having that reserve capacity and also not needing heavily subsidised agriculture either with direct cash grants like the CAP or indirect grants like tax credits to make up for low wages. The state's job is to find where that line is, clearly we shouldn't be a nation that farms battery chickens, other countries do it better and imports are all of similar enough quality. The whole industry relies on imported low wage labour and the end product has got razor thin margins and is constantly undercut by imports from Eastern Europe.

It's possible that by shutting down that industry the UK will see a net gain in GDP per capita and a net gain in the government's fiscal position, at least that's what the initial research showed which is why I asked the team to look at the whole sector.

Shut an entire industry down in areas which elect government MP's?
To transfer employment from rural to urban? Levelling up?
You do see the issue here?

Shut down entire industries that have no voters. The whole labour force is imported from end to end, the whining is only ever going to be from agribusiness.

It's also not state mandated shutting down, it's just inevitably going to become unviable vs imports of battery chickens without cheap immigrant labour or absolutely huge investment in automation. The latter strikes me as unlikely, instead the business owners will whine about lack of cheap labour and continue to do so until the companies fail and then whine about the companies failing but completely ignore that they just sat there and took profits in the good times and didn't put any investment in.

Farming-wise we could do whatever New Zealand does. They have lots of fertile land, yet hardly any workers, they can’t import cheap labour because they are a billion miles from anywhere, yet they manage to be an agricultural superpower - eg one of the top 2 or 3 dairy exporters in the whole world.

https://www.gtreview.com/magazine/volume-15issue-5/milk-new-zealands-dairy-exports-conquered-world

Surely number 1 dairy exporter.
But it worked because we have a comparative advantage in dairy, and we made the most of it.

Britain doesn’t really have that option.

For sure. But NZ is still an example of an agricultural sector that lost a huge market (in their case the UK, as we joined the EEC), which then had to go through a painful transition, but has now adapted, and is now thriving.

And I’m guessing they did it without 100,000s of cheap foreign workers

This is true.

Well, we’ve had high immigration, but not to the agricultural sector.

The transition took around 20 years and was rather bumpy at times.

It's not like the UK is stopping high immigration.

No, it's people like me who will have the competition in high wage sectors. People in lower wage sectors will now have very large NTBs protecting their pay rates. Our economy is going to look much closer to Switzerland in 4-7 years.

Why not have NTBs protecting high wage sectors too?

Gardenwalker said:

Roger said:

geoffw said:

Roger said:

Leon said:

Roger said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

williamglenn said:

The ex-Finnish PM seems to think the EU needs to organise a charity appeal for us.

https://twitter.com/alexstubb/status/1446347168290324481

If the EU would play its cards right, it would offer assistance to the UK now or later when the supply of basic goods and services takes a turn for the worse. This is what friends do, even if the pain has been self-inflicted, stupid an unnecessary.

Sorry, but the situation in the UK is going to go from bad to worse with no respit in sight. This is not a period of adaptation, it is a rather permanent reality and fact linked to voluntary isolation and myths of sovereignty in an interdependent world.

That entire thread is hilariously insane. People from across the EU - and a couple of Americans - who honestly believe Britain is close to collapse. And famine.

Are they all reading the New York Times, and nothing else?!

It’s genuinely hard to fathom. One element must be Strasbourg Syndrome. Brexit is evil therefore it can only cause evil things to the evildoers responsible. It is a religious reflex at work

Yes, it sort of goes back to what I was talking about earlier today. The EU projects this image of perfection which causes people idealise it. We see it on here all the time. They have an almost religious zeal about the EU because in the back of their minds they know the EU is imperfect, the image it projects is false and they are overcompensating because they realise the moment they admit it isn't perfect those flaws and those minor imperfections add up, the doubt grows and suddenly the institution they place above all others a mess of undemocratic contradictions and the UK was right to leave.

Lots of people really believe the EU is the only game in town, their world is being shattered right now as the UK prospers completely outside of its structures. This is their worst nightmare come true.

A French minister has accused the British, today, of being ‘obsessed with France’, even as several other French ministers publicly announce plans to blockade Britain, ‘cut off all ties with Britain’, deprive Britain of electricity, ‘punish the British for Brexit’, ‘stop British exports’ - and this is just one day

Imagine if several British Cabinet ministers were making daily threats against France. That *would* be obsessive

You can watch French TV for days and the UK never features. Too much Telegraph can be misleading.

Mwanwhile I give you a rare Englishman who is actually admired.....Dr Rashford

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/oct/08/marcus-rashford-attacks-universal-credit-cut-at-degree-ceremony

But it’s the same on British TV. It looks much more to America (too much, for me) - but also increasingly to Asia, and China

Meanwhile a comparison between the home pages, right now, of Le Monde and the Guardian is quite instructive.

Both have about 50 stories. Just two of the stories in Le Monde are definitely about Britain: one is about Covid in the UK, the other about the Saudi-Newcastle takeover. Meanwhile in the Guardian there’s just one story ‘about France’ - but it is expressly about deteriorating Franco-Brit relations. So, about the same?

The UK-French-EU ‘obsession’ is mutual, but it is only happening in social media and only amongst politicians, Eurocrats, and geeks like us. It is a real thing, however. This is the pinned tweet of Finland’s ex prime minister, also mentioned below

‘Reading news about petrol shortages and other supply problems in the UK. Really sad to see what #Brexit is doing to a country that used to be great. Brexit is the biggest mistake a modern nation state has inflicted on itself in recent history. Hope to see an end to this mess.’

https://twitter.com/alexstubb/status/1441816802837901312?s=21

That’s his pinned tweet. That’s the opinion he has which he thinks is most important right now. Wtf. He’s Finnish. Lol

Hopefully in a few years when Brexit is accepted we can all go back to courteously ignoring each other, like normal neighbours

Finland's ex PM is on the money. There is a change in mood and it's not for the better. The Cote d'Azur doesn't feel part English anymore which is rather sad.

You can no longer saunter down the Promenade des Anglais and pretend you belong. Quelle dommage!

Some people are depressingly soulless but I suppose they have the advantage of being oblivious to what's going on around them

Jaywick is lovely this time of year, Rog.
You should give it a go.

Farooq said:

MaxPB said:

Aslan said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

dixiedean said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

The question you should be asking is whether the UK should even be doing low margin, low grade agriculture work that requires scores of minimum wage imported labour.
...

Hmm.

The promise:

When Greenland left the EU in 1985, it secured a free trade deal with the EU that allowed it to sell its fish to the EU tariff-free. Britain is a much larger economy and far more important to the EU - we are certain to secure an even better deal. Last year, we exported £7.5 billion worth of food to the EU but we imported food worth £18 billion. We have an annual trade deficit with the EU in food alone of £10 billion.

The reality:

Dominic Goudie, head of international trade at the FDF, said: “The return to growth in exports to non-EU markets is welcome news, but it doesn’t make up for the disastrous loss of £2bn in sales to the EU. It clearly demonstrates the serious difficulties manufacturers in our industry continue to face and the urgent need for additional specialist support.”

He said the difficulties now facing British food and drinks manufacturers and farmers were compounded by the lorry driver and warehouse workers shortages, which were choking the supply chain.

“At the same time, we are seeing labour shortages across the UK’s farm-to-fork food and drink supply chain, resulting in empty spaces on UK shop shelves, disruptions to deliveries and decreased production,” Goudie said. “Unless steps are taken to address these issues, the ability of businesses to fulfil vital export orders will be impacted.”

http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/briefing_food.html

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/02/brexit-uk-food-drink-exports-eu-disastrous-decline

As for the specific point about whether we should be using imported labour for agriculture, yes of course we should. Those jobs are never going to be high skilled, and high paying. That's partly why the Brits won't do them (not the only reason, of course). There's lots of reasons why we want agriculture to continue, and without imported labour we'll simply be exporting those jobs (even more of them) to continental Europe, and importing food which will be of lower quality because of the food miles, at higher prices.

Even in the new Brexit orthodoxy that has suddenly decided to fuck both business and agriculture, it makes no sense to try to push Brits into what will always be low-paying jobs.

I've got the research coming on Monday and I'm open to the idea that the UK should continue to subsidise low margin agriculture on the basis of needing a strategic reserve of agricultural capacity for situations such as a pandemic or another black swan event that causes global shipping to seize. However, other nations have shown a path that walks the line of having that reserve capacity and also not needing heavily subsidised agriculture either with direct cash grants like the CAP or indirect grants like tax credits to make up for low wages. The state's job is to find where that line is, clearly we shouldn't be a nation that farms battery chickens, other countries do it better and imports are all of similar enough quality. The whole industry relies on imported low wage labour and the end product has got razor thin margins and is constantly undercut by imports from Eastern Europe.

It's possible that by shutting down that industry the UK will see a net gain in GDP per capita and a net gain in the government's fiscal position, at least that's what the initial research showed which is why I asked the team to look at the whole sector.

Shut an entire industry down in areas which elect government MP's?
To transfer employment from rural to urban? Levelling up?
You do see the issue here?

Shut down entire industries that have no voters. The whole labour force is imported from end to end, the whining is only ever going to be from agribusiness.

It's also not state mandated shutting down, it's just inevitably going to become unviable vs imports of battery chickens without cheap immigrant labour or absolutely huge investment in automation. The latter strikes me as unlikely, instead the business owners will whine about lack of cheap labour and continue to do so until the companies fail and then whine about the companies failing but completely ignore that they just sat there and took profits in the good times and didn't put any investment in.

Farming-wise we could do whatever New Zealand does. They have lots of fertile land, yet hardly any workers, they can’t import cheap labour because they are a billion miles from anywhere, yet they manage to be an agricultural superpower - eg one of the top 2 or 3 dairy exporters in the whole world.

https://www.gtreview.com/magazine/volume-15issue-5/milk-new-zealands-dairy-exports-conquered-world

Surely number 1 dairy exporter.
But it worked because we have a comparative advantage in dairy, and we made the most of it.

Britain doesn’t really have that option.

For sure. But NZ is still an example of an agricultural sector that lost a huge market (in their case the UK, as we joined the EEC), which then had to go through a painful transition, but has now adapted, and is now thriving.

And I’m guessing they did it without 100,000s of cheap foreign workers

This is true.

Well, we’ve had high immigration, but not to the agricultural sector.

The transition took around 20 years and was rather bumpy at times.

It's not like the UK is stopping high immigration.

No, it's people like me who will have the competition in high wage sectors. People in lower wage sectors will now have very large NTBs protecting their pay rates. Our economy is going to look much closer to Switzerland in 4-7 years.

Why not have NTBs protecting high wage sectors too?

Malmesbury said:

another_richard said:

dixiedean said:

another_richard said:

dixiedean said:

Philip_Thompson said:

dixiedean said:

Philip_Thompson said:

dixiedean said:

MaxPB said:

dixiedean said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

The question you should be asking is whether the UK should even be doing low margin, low grade agriculture work that requires scores of minimum wage imported labour.
...

Hmm.

The promise:

When Greenland left the EU in 1985, it secured a free trade deal with the EU that allowed it to sell its fish to the EU tariff-free. Britain is a much larger economy and far more important to the EU - we are certain to secure an even better deal. Last year, we exported £7.5 billion worth of food to the EU but we imported food worth £18 billion. We have an annual trade deficit with the EU in food alone of £10 billion.

The reality:

Dominic Goudie, head of international trade at the FDF, said: “The return to growth in exports to non-EU markets is welcome news, but it doesn’t make up for the disastrous loss of £2bn in sales to the EU. It clearly demonstrates the serious difficulties manufacturers in our industry continue to face and the urgent need for additional specialist support.”

He said the difficulties now facing British food and drinks manufacturers and farmers were compounded by the lorry driver and warehouse workers shortages, which were choking the supply chain.

“At the same time, we are seeing labour shortages across the UK’s farm-to-fork food and drink supply chain, resulting in empty spaces on UK shop shelves, disruptions to deliveries and decreased production,” Goudie said. “Unless steps are taken to address these issues, the ability of businesses to fulfil vital export orders will be impacted.”

http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/briefing_food.html

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/02/brexit-uk-food-drink-exports-eu-disastrous-decline

As for the specific point about whether we should be using imported labour for agriculture, yes of course we should. Those jobs are never going to be high skilled, and high paying. That's partly why the Brits won't do them (not the only reason, of course). There's lots of reasons why we want agriculture to continue, and without imported labour we'll simply be exporting those jobs (even more of them) to continental Europe, and importing food which will be of lower quality because of the food miles, at higher prices.

Even in the new Brexit orthodoxy that has suddenly decided to fuck both business and agriculture, it makes no sense to try to push Brits into what will always be low-paying jobs.

I've got the research coming on Monday and I'm open to the idea that the UK should continue to subsidise low margin agriculture on the basis of needing a strategic reserve of agricultural capacity for situations such as a pandemic or another black swan event that causes global shipping to seize. However, other nations have shown a path that walks the line of having that reserve capacity and also not needing heavily subsidised agriculture either with direct cash grants like the CAP or indirect grants like tax credits to make up for low wages. The state's job is to find where that line is, clearly we shouldn't be a nation that farms battery chickens, other countries do it better and imports are all of similar enough quality. The whole industry relies on imported low wage labour and the end product has got razor thin margins and is constantly undercut by imports from Eastern Europe.

It's possible that by shutting down that industry the UK will see a net gain in GDP per capita and a net gain in the government's fiscal position, at least that's what the initial research showed which is why I asked the team to look at the whole sector.

Shut an entire industry down in areas which elect government MP's?
To transfer employment from rural to urban? Levelling up?
You do see the issue here?

Shut down entire industries that have no voters. The whole labour force is imported from end to end, the whining is only ever going to be from agribusiness.

I don't know where you are speaking from. But agribusiness votes Tory.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of jobs round here are in, or dependent on, agriculture. Nary an imported worker, nor much of a subsidy to be seen.
Nor much of a profit. Take away UC and the whole place would go tits up.
You're talking early 80's industrial North.
Votes Tory too.

You are HYUFD and I claim my £5

The right thing to do is still the right thing to do, even if it affects Tory voters.

Been accused of many things in my time....
Meanwhile.
Quite apart from owt else. You think this PM will do what's right above Tory voters? Bless.

Yes I do actually.

It depends which Tory voters you're talking about afterall. "Business" tends to be pro-Tory traditionally but when it came push to shove this PM had the cojones to say "fuck business" when some chose to stand in the way of what needed to be done.

So that's business. And agriculture. And with it the rural communities.
Any other Tory voters who actually do a day's work to be sacrificed for the pensioners?

I doubt many rural communities would be overly bothered to see the back of intensively reared pig farming and the imported workforce which goes with it.

As long as the grain fields and meadows with sheep baaing / cattle mooing remain people will be happy with what the British countryside looks like.

Precisely as I explained. Remove UC and you won't have much upland farming. It's aĺl agriculture round here. None of it intensive, barely any subsidised, barely any profitable. And not a foreign worker to be seen. Nor anyone above minimum wage.

Has upland hill farming ever been profitable ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC5WeuLHUdU

Now you could subsidise it as part of rural tourism / environment management - pretty baa lambs and dry stone walls etc.

With a charge on all the second home owners / holiday lets in the area to fund it.

Aren't some of the existing subsidies for this exactly - without sheep grazing, chunks of it would change in character etc?

Benpointer said:

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

dixiedean said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

The question you should be asking is whether the UK should even be doing low margin, low grade agriculture work that requires scores of minimum wage imported labour.
...

Hmm.

The promise:

When Greenland left the EU in 1985, it secured a free trade deal with the EU that allowed it to sell its fish to the EU tariff-free. Britain is a much larger economy and far more important to the EU - we are certain to secure an even better deal. Last year, we exported £7.5 billion worth of food to the EU but we imported food worth £18 billion. We have an annual trade deficit with the EU in food alone of £10 billion.

The reality:

Dominic Goudie, head of international trade at the FDF, said: “The return to growth in exports to non-EU markets is welcome news, but it doesn’t make up for the disastrous loss of £2bn in sales to the EU. It clearly demonstrates the serious difficulties manufacturers in our industry continue to face and the urgent need for additional specialist support.”

He said the difficulties now facing British food and drinks manufacturers and farmers were compounded by the lorry driver and warehouse workers shortages, which were choking the supply chain.

“At the same time, we are seeing labour shortages across the UK’s farm-to-fork food and drink supply chain, resulting in empty spaces on UK shop shelves, disruptions to deliveries and decreased production,” Goudie said. “Unless steps are taken to address these issues, the ability of businesses to fulfil vital export orders will be impacted.”

http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/briefing_food.html

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/02/brexit-uk-food-drink-exports-eu-disastrous-decline

As for the specific point about whether we should be using imported labour for agriculture, yes of course we should. Those jobs are never going to be high skilled, and high paying. That's partly why the Brits won't do them (not the only reason, of course). There's lots of reasons why we want agriculture to continue, and without imported labour we'll simply be exporting those jobs (even more of them) to continental Europe, and importing food which will be of lower quality because of the food miles, at higher prices.

Even in the new Brexit orthodoxy that has suddenly decided to fuck both business and agriculture, it makes no sense to try to push Brits into what will always be low-paying jobs.

I've got the research coming on Monday and I'm open to the idea that the UK should continue to subsidise low margin agriculture on the basis of needing a strategic reserve of agricultural capacity for situations such as a pandemic or another black swan event that causes global shipping to seize. However, other nations have shown a path that walks the line of having that reserve capacity and also not needing heavily subsidised agriculture either with direct cash grants like the CAP or indirect grants like tax credits to make up for low wages. The state's job is to find where that line is, clearly we shouldn't be a nation that farms battery chickens, other countries do it better and imports are all of similar enough quality. The whole industry relies on imported low wage labour and the end product has got razor thin margins and is constantly undercut by imports from Eastern Europe.

It's possible that by shutting down that industry the UK will see a net gain in GDP per capita and a net gain in the government's fiscal position, at least that's what the initial research showed which is why I asked the team to look at the whole sector.

Shut an entire industry down in areas which elect government MP's?
To transfer employment from rural to urban? Levelling up?
You do see the issue here?

Shut down entire industries that have no voters. The whole labour force is imported from end to end, the whining is only ever going to be from agribusiness.

It's also not state mandated shutting down, it's just inevitably going to become unviable vs imports of battery chickens without cheap immigrant labour or absolutely huge investment in automation. The latter strikes me as unlikely, instead the business owners will whine about lack of cheap labour and continue to do so until the companies fail and then whine about the companies failing but completely ignore that they just sat there and took profits in the good times and didn't put any investment in.

Farming-wise we could do whatever New Zealand does. They have lots of fertile land, yet hardly any workers, they can’t import cheap labour because they are a billion miles from anywhere, yet they manage to be an agricultural superpower - eg one of the top 2 or 3 dairy exporters in the whole world.

https://www.gtreview.com/magazine/volume-15issue-5/milk-new-zealands-dairy-exports-conquered-world

Surely number 1 dairy exporter.
But it worked because we have a comparative advantage in dairy, and we made the most of it.

Britain doesn’t really have that option.

For sure. But NZ is still an example of an agricultural sector that lost a huge market (in their case the UK, as we joined the EEC), which then had to go through a painful transition, but has now adapted, and is now thriving.

And I’m guessing they did it without 100,000s of cheap foreign workers

This is true.

Well, we’ve had high immigration, but not to the agricultural sector.

The transition took around 20 years and was rather bumpy at times.

The entire UK economy is about to go through what NZ went through with agriculture in the 70s and 80s.

It will definitely be ‘bumpy’ tho I think it will be largely over in 10 years, not 20. And at the end I believe we will thrive, as Kiwi butter exporters do today

The entire UK economy is about to go through a bumpy ride that will be 'largely over in 10 years'... so that we can thrive like Kiwi butter exporters?

Fucking hell - no wonder the Finns are feeling sorry for us!

Benpointer said:

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

dixiedean said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

The question you should be asking is whether the UK should even be doing low margin, low grade agriculture work that requires scores of minimum wage imported labour.
...

Hmm.

The promise:

When Greenland left the EU in 1985, it secured a free trade deal with the EU that allowed it to sell its fish to the EU tariff-free. Britain is a much larger economy and far more important to the EU - we are certain to secure an even better deal. Last year, we exported £7.5 billion worth of food to the EU but we imported food worth £18 billion. We have an annual trade deficit with the EU in food alone of £10 billion.

The reality:

Dominic Goudie, head of international trade at the FDF, said: “The return to growth in exports to non-EU markets is welcome news, but it doesn’t make up for the disastrous loss of £2bn in sales to the EU. It clearly demonstrates the serious difficulties manufacturers in our industry continue to face and the urgent need for additional specialist support.”

He said the difficulties now facing British food and drinks manufacturers and farmers were compounded by the lorry driver and warehouse workers shortages, which were choking the supply chain.

“At the same time, we are seeing labour shortages across the UK’s farm-to-fork food and drink supply chain, resulting in empty spaces on UK shop shelves, disruptions to deliveries and decreased production,” Goudie said. “Unless steps are taken to address these issues, the ability of businesses to fulfil vital export orders will be impacted.”

http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/briefing_food.html

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/02/brexit-uk-food-drink-exports-eu-disastrous-decline

As for the specific point about whether we should be using imported labour for agriculture, yes of course we should. Those jobs are never going to be high skilled, and high paying. That's partly why the Brits won't do them (not the only reason, of course). There's lots of reasons why we want agriculture to continue, and without imported labour we'll simply be exporting those jobs (even more of them) to continental Europe, and importing food which will be of lower quality because of the food miles, at higher prices.

Even in the new Brexit orthodoxy that has suddenly decided to fuck both business and agriculture, it makes no sense to try to push Brits into what will always be low-paying jobs.

I've got the research coming on Monday and I'm open to the idea that the UK should continue to subsidise low margin agriculture on the basis of needing a strategic reserve of agricultural capacity for situations such as a pandemic or another black swan event that causes global shipping to seize. However, other nations have shown a path that walks the line of having that reserve capacity and also not needing heavily subsidised agriculture either with direct cash grants like the CAP or indirect grants like tax credits to make up for low wages. The state's job is to find where that line is, clearly we shouldn't be a nation that farms battery chickens, other countries do it better and imports are all of similar enough quality. The whole industry relies on imported low wage labour and the end product has got razor thin margins and is constantly undercut by imports from Eastern Europe.

It's possible that by shutting down that industry the UK will see a net gain in GDP per capita and a net gain in the government's fiscal position, at least that's what the initial research showed which is why I asked the team to look at the whole sector.

Shut an entire industry down in areas which elect government MP's?
To transfer employment from rural to urban? Levelling up?
You do see the issue here?

Shut down entire industries that have no voters. The whole labour force is imported from end to end, the whining is only ever going to be from agribusiness.

It's also not state mandated shutting down, it's just inevitably going to become unviable vs imports of battery chickens without cheap immigrant labour or absolutely huge investment in automation. The latter strikes me as unlikely, instead the business owners will whine about lack of cheap labour and continue to do so until the companies fail and then whine about the companies failing but completely ignore that they just sat there and took profits in the good times and didn't put any investment in.

Farming-wise we could do whatever New Zealand does. They have lots of fertile land, yet hardly any workers, they can’t import cheap labour because they are a billion miles from anywhere, yet they manage to be an agricultural superpower - eg one of the top 2 or 3 dairy exporters in the whole world.

https://www.gtreview.com/magazine/volume-15issue-5/milk-new-zealands-dairy-exports-conquered-world

Surely number 1 dairy exporter.
But it worked because we have a comparative advantage in dairy, and we made the most of it.

Britain doesn’t really have that option.

For sure. But NZ is still an example of an agricultural sector that lost a huge market (in their case the UK, as we joined the EEC), which then had to go through a painful transition, but has now adapted, and is now thriving.

And I’m guessing they did it without 100,000s of cheap foreign workers

This is true.

Well, we’ve had high immigration, but not to the agricultural sector.

The transition took around 20 years and was rather bumpy at times.

The entire UK economy is about to go through what NZ went through with agriculture in the 70s and 80s.

It will definitely be ‘bumpy’ tho I think it will be largely over in 10 years, not 20. And at the end I believe we will thrive, as Kiwi butter exporters do today

The entire UK economy is about to go through a bumpy ride that will be 'largely over in 10 years'... so that we can thrive like Kiwi butter exporters?

Fucking hell - no wonder the Finns are feeling sorry for us!

rcs1000 said:

MaxPB said:

Aslan said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

dixiedean said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

The question you should be asking is whether the UK should even be doing low margin, low grade agriculture work that requires scores of minimum wage imported labour.
...

Hmm.

The promise:

When Greenland left the EU in 1985, it secured a free trade deal with the EU that allowed it to sell its fish to the EU tariff-free. Britain is a much larger economy and far more important to the EU - we are certain to secure an even better deal. Last year, we exported £7.5 billion worth of food to the EU but we imported food worth £18 billion. We have an annual trade deficit with the EU in food alone of £10 billion.

The reality:

Dominic Goudie, head of international trade at the FDF, said: “The return to growth in exports to non-EU markets is welcome news, but it doesn’t make up for the disastrous loss of £2bn in sales to the EU. It clearly demonstrates the serious difficulties manufacturers in our industry continue to face and the urgent need for additional specialist support.”

He said the difficulties now facing British food and drinks manufacturers and farmers were compounded by the lorry driver and warehouse workers shortages, which were choking the supply chain.

“At the same time, we are seeing labour shortages across the UK’s farm-to-fork food and drink supply chain, resulting in empty spaces on UK shop shelves, disruptions to deliveries and decreased production,” Goudie said. “Unless steps are taken to address these issues, the ability of businesses to fulfil vital export orders will be impacted.”

http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/briefing_food.html

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/02/brexit-uk-food-drink-exports-eu-disastrous-decline

As for the specific point about whether we should be using imported labour for agriculture, yes of course we should. Those jobs are never going to be high skilled, and high paying. That's partly why the Brits won't do them (not the only reason, of course). There's lots of reasons why we want agriculture to continue, and without imported labour we'll simply be exporting those jobs (even more of them) to continental Europe, and importing food which will be of lower quality because of the food miles, at higher prices.

Even in the new Brexit orthodoxy that has suddenly decided to fuck both business and agriculture, it makes no sense to try to push Brits into what will always be low-paying jobs.

I've got the research coming on Monday and I'm open to the idea that the UK should continue to subsidise low margin agriculture on the basis of needing a strategic reserve of agricultural capacity for situations such as a pandemic or another black swan event that causes global shipping to seize. However, other nations have shown a path that walks the line of having that reserve capacity and also not needing heavily subsidised agriculture either with direct cash grants like the CAP or indirect grants like tax credits to make up for low wages. The state's job is to find where that line is, clearly we shouldn't be a nation that farms battery chickens, other countries do it better and imports are all of similar enough quality. The whole industry relies on imported low wage labour and the end product has got razor thin margins and is constantly undercut by imports from Eastern Europe.

It's possible that by shutting down that industry the UK will see a net gain in GDP per capita and a net gain in the government's fiscal position, at least that's what the initial research showed which is why I asked the team to look at the whole sector.

Shut an entire industry down in areas which elect government MP's?
To transfer employment from rural to urban? Levelling up?
You do see the issue here?

Shut down entire industries that have no voters. The whole labour force is imported from end to end, the whining is only ever going to be from agribusiness.

It's also not state mandated shutting down, it's just inevitably going to become unviable vs imports of battery chickens without cheap immigrant labour or absolutely huge investment in automation. The latter strikes me as unlikely, instead the business owners will whine about lack of cheap labour and continue to do so until the companies fail and then whine about the companies failing but completely ignore that they just sat there and took profits in the good times and didn't put any investment in.

Farming-wise we could do whatever New Zealand does. They have lots of fertile land, yet hardly any workers, they can’t import cheap labour because they are a billion miles from anywhere, yet they manage to be an agricultural superpower - eg one of the top 2 or 3 dairy exporters in the whole world.

https://www.gtreview.com/magazine/volume-15issue-5/milk-new-zealands-dairy-exports-conquered-world

Surely number 1 dairy exporter.
But it worked because we have a comparative advantage in dairy, and we made the most of it.

Britain doesn’t really have that option.

For sure. But NZ is still an example of an agricultural sector that lost a huge market (in their case the UK, as we joined the EEC), which then had to go through a painful transition, but has now adapted, and is now thriving.

And I’m guessing they did it without 100,000s of cheap foreign workers

This is true.

Well, we’ve had high immigration, but not to the agricultural sector.

The transition took around 20 years and was rather bumpy at times.

It's not like the UK is stopping high immigration.

No, it's people like me who will have the competition in high wage sectors. People in lower wage sectors will now have very large NTBs protecting their pay rates. Our economy is going to look much closer to Switzerland in 4-7 years.

I think you also should note that both Switzerland (and Germany) have very good vocational employment systems, that really help ensure that those young people who won't end up in financial services have the skills needed to thrive.

We need to make sure that we're not dealing with the symptoms (immigration of people with plumbing skills), rather than the cause (lack of Brits with plumbing skills).

Malmesbury said:

gealbhan said:

Malmesbury said:

Leon said:

Malmesbury said:

IanB2 said:

Has SeanLeon noticed today’s German case numbers yet, and spotted that yesterday’s published number of deaths has been reduced dramatically downwards?

You'd think by this point people would have learnt about

1) reporting delays
2) weekly cyclic effects created by the.
3) Reported on vs day of

Even Pesto is catching up with this, I believe.

If you go back to the actual comment I made, yesterday, on the odd German numbers, I explicitly asked ‘is this a statistical glitch?’ - because the figures were so out of whack

Before you Scott&Paste things, trying doing a little bit of research.

What do you make of this one test says yeah, second says no I first mentioned yesterday, Mal, a bad batch of testing, or new variant or an known unknown?

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-news-live-uk-latest-coronavirus-daily-cases-rules-travel-updates-12425651?postid=2818806#liveblog-body

The much vaunted lab for spotting variants have been up to six weeks behind haven’t they?

The PCR testing labs are audited by cross testing between labs using batch samples etc etc.

So they are very very likely to be right.

rcs1000 said:

MaxPB said:

Aslan said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

dixiedean said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

The question you should be asking is whether the UK should even be doing low margin, low grade agriculture work that requires scores of minimum wage imported labour.
...

Hmm.

The promise:

When Greenland left the EU in 1985, it secured a free trade deal with the EU that allowed it to sell its fish to the EU tariff-free. Britain is a much larger economy and far more important to the EU - we are certain to secure an even better deal. Last year, we exported £7.5 billion worth of food to the EU but we imported food worth £18 billion. We have an annual trade deficit with the EU in food alone of £10 billion.

The reality:

Dominic Goudie, head of international trade at the FDF, said: “The return to growth in exports to non-EU markets is welcome news, but it doesn’t make up for the disastrous loss of £2bn in sales to the EU. It clearly demonstrates the serious difficulties manufacturers in our industry continue to face and the urgent need for additional specialist support.”

He said the difficulties now facing British food and drinks manufacturers and farmers were compounded by the lorry driver and warehouse workers shortages, which were choking the supply chain.

“At the same time, we are seeing labour shortages across the UK’s farm-to-fork food and drink supply chain, resulting in empty spaces on UK shop shelves, disruptions to deliveries and decreased production,” Goudie said. “Unless steps are taken to address these issues, the ability of businesses to fulfil vital export orders will be impacted.”

http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/briefing_food.html

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/02/brexit-uk-food-drink-exports-eu-disastrous-decline

As for the specific point about whether we should be using imported labour for agriculture, yes of course we should. Those jobs are never going to be high skilled, and high paying. That's partly why the Brits won't do them (not the only reason, of course). There's lots of reasons why we want agriculture to continue, and without imported labour we'll simply be exporting those jobs (even more of them) to continental Europe, and importing food which will be of lower quality because of the food miles, at higher prices.

Even in the new Brexit orthodoxy that has suddenly decided to fuck both business and agriculture, it makes no sense to try to push Brits into what will always be low-paying jobs.

I've got the research coming on Monday and I'm open to the idea that the UK should continue to subsidise low margin agriculture on the basis of needing a strategic reserve of agricultural capacity for situations such as a pandemic or another black swan event that causes global shipping to seize. However, other nations have shown a path that walks the line of having that reserve capacity and also not needing heavily subsidised agriculture either with direct cash grants like the CAP or indirect grants like tax credits to make up for low wages. The state's job is to find where that line is, clearly we shouldn't be a nation that farms battery chickens, other countries do it better and imports are all of similar enough quality. The whole industry relies on imported low wage labour and the end product has got razor thin margins and is constantly undercut by imports from Eastern Europe.

It's possible that by shutting down that industry the UK will see a net gain in GDP per capita and a net gain in the government's fiscal position, at least that's what the initial research showed which is why I asked the team to look at the whole sector.

Shut an entire industry down in areas which elect government MP's?
To transfer employment from rural to urban? Levelling up?
You do see the issue here?

Shut down entire industries that have no voters. The whole labour force is imported from end to end, the whining is only ever going to be from agribusiness.

It's also not state mandated shutting down, it's just inevitably going to become unviable vs imports of battery chickens without cheap immigrant labour or absolutely huge investment in automation. The latter strikes me as unlikely, instead the business owners will whine about lack of cheap labour and continue to do so until the companies fail and then whine about the companies failing but completely ignore that they just sat there and took profits in the good times and didn't put any investment in.

Farming-wise we could do whatever New Zealand does. They have lots of fertile land, yet hardly any workers, they can’t import cheap labour because they are a billion miles from anywhere, yet they manage to be an agricultural superpower - eg one of the top 2 or 3 dairy exporters in the whole world.

https://www.gtreview.com/magazine/volume-15issue-5/milk-new-zealands-dairy-exports-conquered-world

Surely number 1 dairy exporter.
But it worked because we have a comparative advantage in dairy, and we made the most of it.

Britain doesn’t really have that option.

For sure. But NZ is still an example of an agricultural sector that lost a huge market (in their case the UK, as we joined the EEC), which then had to go through a painful transition, but has now adapted, and is now thriving.

And I’m guessing they did it without 100,000s of cheap foreign workers

This is true.

Well, we’ve had high immigration, but not to the agricultural sector.

The transition took around 20 years and was rather bumpy at times.

It's not like the UK is stopping high immigration.

No, it's people like me who will have the competition in high wage sectors. People in lower wage sectors will now have very large NTBs protecting their pay rates. Our economy is going to look much closer to Switzerland in 4-7 years.

I think you also should note that both Switzerland (and Germany) have very good vocational employment systems, that really help ensure that those young people who won't end up in financial services have the skills needed to thrive.

We need to make sure that we're not dealing with the symptoms (immigration of people with plumbing skills), rather than the cause (lack of Brits with plumbing skills).

Benpointer said:

rcs1000 said:

MaxPB said:

Aslan said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

dixiedean said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

The question you should be asking is whether the UK should even be doing low margin, low grade agriculture work that requires scores of minimum wage imported labour.
...

Hmm.

The promise:

When Greenland left the EU in 1985, it secured a free trade deal with the EU that allowed it to sell its fish to the EU tariff-free. Britain is a much larger economy and far more important to the EU - we are certain to secure an even better deal. Last year, we exported £7.5 billion worth of food to the EU but we imported food worth £18 billion. We have an annual trade deficit with the EU in food alone of £10 billion.

The reality:

Dominic Goudie, head of international trade at the FDF, said: “The return to growth in exports to non-EU markets is welcome news, but it doesn’t make up for the disastrous loss of £2bn in sales to the EU. It clearly demonstrates the serious difficulties manufacturers in our industry continue to face and the urgent need for additional specialist support.”

He said the difficulties now facing British food and drinks manufacturers and farmers were compounded by the lorry driver and warehouse workers shortages, which were choking the supply chain.

“At the same time, we are seeing labour shortages across the UK’s farm-to-fork food and drink supply chain, resulting in empty spaces on UK shop shelves, disruptions to deliveries and decreased production,” Goudie said. “Unless steps are taken to address these issues, the ability of businesses to fulfil vital export orders will be impacted.”

http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/briefing_food.html

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/02/brexit-uk-food-drink-exports-eu-disastrous-decline

As for the specific point about whether we should be using imported labour for agriculture, yes of course we should. Those jobs are never going to be high skilled, and high paying. That's partly why the Brits won't do them (not the only reason, of course). There's lots of reasons why we want agriculture to continue, and without imported labour we'll simply be exporting those jobs (even more of them) to continental Europe, and importing food which will be of lower quality because of the food miles, at higher prices.

Even in the new Brexit orthodoxy that has suddenly decided to fuck both business and agriculture, it makes no sense to try to push Brits into what will always be low-paying jobs.

I've got the research coming on Monday and I'm open to the idea that the UK should continue to subsidise low margin agriculture on the basis of needing a strategic reserve of agricultural capacity for situations such as a pandemic or another black swan event that causes global shipping to seize. However, other nations have shown a path that walks the line of having that reserve capacity and also not needing heavily subsidised agriculture either with direct cash grants like the CAP or indirect grants like tax credits to make up for low wages. The state's job is to find where that line is, clearly we shouldn't be a nation that farms battery chickens, other countries do it better and imports are all of similar enough quality. The whole industry relies on imported low wage labour and the end product has got razor thin margins and is constantly undercut by imports from Eastern Europe.

It's possible that by shutting down that industry the UK will see a net gain in GDP per capita and a net gain in the government's fiscal position, at least that's what the initial research showed which is why I asked the team to look at the whole sector.

Shut an entire industry down in areas which elect government MP's?
To transfer employment from rural to urban? Levelling up?
You do see the issue here?

Shut down entire industries that have no voters. The whole labour force is imported from end to end, the whining is only ever going to be from agribusiness.

It's also not state mandated shutting down, it's just inevitably going to become unviable vs imports of battery chickens without cheap immigrant labour or absolutely huge investment in automation. The latter strikes me as unlikely, instead the business owners will whine about lack of cheap labour and continue to do so until the companies fail and then whine about the companies failing but completely ignore that they just sat there and took profits in the good times and didn't put any investment in.

Farming-wise we could do whatever New Zealand does. They have lots of fertile land, yet hardly any workers, they can’t import cheap labour because they are a billion miles from anywhere, yet they manage to be an agricultural superpower - eg one of the top 2 or 3 dairy exporters in the whole world.

https://www.gtreview.com/magazine/volume-15issue-5/milk-new-zealands-dairy-exports-conquered-world

Surely number 1 dairy exporter.
But it worked because we have a comparative advantage in dairy, and we made the most of it.

Britain doesn’t really have that option.

For sure. But NZ is still an example of an agricultural sector that lost a huge market (in their case the UK, as we joined the EEC), which then had to go through a painful transition, but has now adapted, and is now thriving.

And I’m guessing they did it without 100,000s of cheap foreign workers

This is true.

Well, we’ve had high immigration, but not to the agricultural sector.

The transition took around 20 years and was rather bumpy at times.

It's not like the UK is stopping high immigration.

No, it's people like me who will have the competition in high wage sectors. People in lower wage sectors will now have very large NTBs protecting their pay rates. Our economy is going to look much closer to Switzerland in 4-7 years.

I think you also should note that both Switzerland (and Germany) have very good vocational employment systems, that really help ensure that those young people who won't end up in financial services have the skills needed to thrive.

We need to make sure that we're not dealing with the symptoms (immigration of people with plumbing skills), rather than the cause (lack of Brits with plumbing skills).

My brother's a plumber. Sure, to a small degree we can train more plumbers but to be a good, competent, safe plumber you actually need to be quite bright and have reasonably good customer skills.

Where are all those trainees coming from? What jobs are they doing now and who's going to backfill them?

Let's not pretend that the sort of people capapable of trainign to be a plumber are sat on the dole in their 1000s waiting for a training opportunity.

another_richard said:

rcs1000 said:

MaxPB said:

Aslan said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

dixiedean said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

The question you should be asking is whether the UK should even be doing low margin, low grade agriculture work that requires scores of minimum wage imported labour.
...

Hmm.

The promise:

When Greenland left the EU in 1985, it secured a free trade deal with the EU that allowed it to sell its fish to the EU tariff-free. Britain is a much larger economy and far more important to the EU - we are certain to secure an even better deal. Last year, we exported £7.5 billion worth of food to the EU but we imported food worth £18 billion. We have an annual trade deficit with the EU in food alone of £10 billion.

The reality:

Dominic Goudie, head of international trade at the FDF, said: “The return to growth in exports to non-EU markets is welcome news, but it doesn’t make up for the disastrous loss of £2bn in sales to the EU. It clearly demonstrates the serious difficulties manufacturers in our industry continue to face and the urgent need for additional specialist support.”

He said the difficulties now facing British food and drinks manufacturers and farmers were compounded by the lorry driver and warehouse workers shortages, which were choking the supply chain.

“At the same time, we are seeing labour shortages across the UK’s farm-to-fork food and drink supply chain, resulting in empty spaces on UK shop shelves, disruptions to deliveries and decreased production,” Goudie said. “Unless steps are taken to address these issues, the ability of businesses to fulfil vital export orders will be impacted.”

http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/briefing_food.html

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/02/brexit-uk-food-drink-exports-eu-disastrous-decline

As for the specific point about whether we should be using imported labour for agriculture, yes of course we should. Those jobs are never going to be high skilled, and high paying. That's partly why the Brits won't do them (not the only reason, of course). There's lots of reasons why we want agriculture to continue, and without imported labour we'll simply be exporting those jobs (even more of them) to continental Europe, and importing food which will be of lower quality because of the food miles, at higher prices.

Even in the new Brexit orthodoxy that has suddenly decided to fuck both business and agriculture, it makes no sense to try to push Brits into what will always be low-paying jobs.

I've got the research coming on Monday and I'm open to the idea that the UK should continue to subsidise low margin agriculture on the basis of needing a strategic reserve of agricultural capacity for situations such as a pandemic or another black swan event that causes global shipping to seize. However, other nations have shown a path that walks the line of having that reserve capacity and also not needing heavily subsidised agriculture either with direct cash grants like the CAP or indirect grants like tax credits to make up for low wages. The state's job is to find where that line is, clearly we shouldn't be a nation that farms battery chickens, other countries do it better and imports are all of similar enough quality. The whole industry relies on imported low wage labour and the end product has got razor thin margins and is constantly undercut by imports from Eastern Europe.

It's possible that by shutting down that industry the UK will see a net gain in GDP per capita and a net gain in the government's fiscal position, at least that's what the initial research showed which is why I asked the team to look at the whole sector.

Shut an entire industry down in areas which elect government MP's?
To transfer employment from rural to urban? Levelling up?
You do see the issue here?

Shut down entire industries that have no voters. The whole labour force is imported from end to end, the whining is only ever going to be from agribusiness.

It's also not state mandated shutting down, it's just inevitably going to become unviable vs imports of battery chickens without cheap immigrant labour or absolutely huge investment in automation. The latter strikes me as unlikely, instead the business owners will whine about lack of cheap labour and continue to do so until the companies fail and then whine about the companies failing but completely ignore that they just sat there and took profits in the good times and didn't put any investment in.

Farming-wise we could do whatever New Zealand does. They have lots of fertile land, yet hardly any workers, they can’t import cheap labour because they are a billion miles from anywhere, yet they manage to be an agricultural superpower - eg one of the top 2 or 3 dairy exporters in the whole world.

https://www.gtreview.com/magazine/volume-15issue-5/milk-new-zealands-dairy-exports-conquered-world

Surely number 1 dairy exporter.
But it worked because we have a comparative advantage in dairy, and we made the most of it.

Britain doesn’t really have that option.

For sure. But NZ is still an example of an agricultural sector that lost a huge market (in their case the UK, as we joined the EEC), which then had to go through a painful transition, but has now adapted, and is now thriving.

And I’m guessing they did it without 100,000s of cheap foreign workers

This is true.

Well, we’ve had high immigration, but not to the agricultural sector.

The transition took around 20 years and was rather bumpy at times.

It's not like the UK is stopping high immigration.

No, it's people like me who will have the competition in high wage sectors. People in lower wage sectors will now have very large NTBs protecting their pay rates. Our economy is going to look much closer to Switzerland in 4-7 years.

I think you also should note that both Switzerland (and Germany) have very good vocational employment systems, that really help ensure that those young people who won't end up in financial services have the skills needed to thrive.

We need to make sure that we're not dealing with the symptoms (immigration of people with plumbing skills), rather than the cause (lack of Brits with plumbing skills).

I find it amazing, indeed depressing, that increasing numbers submit to the financial abuse of university.

Even with the university experience being negatively affected by covid and increased opportunities in the employment market.

SandyRentool said:

Malmesbury said:

another_richard said:

dixiedean said:

another_richard said:

dixiedean said:

Philip_Thompson said:

dixiedean said:

Philip_Thompson said:

dixiedean said:

MaxPB said:

dixiedean said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

The question you should be asking is whether the UK should even be doing low margin, low grade agriculture work that requires scores of minimum wage imported labour.
...

Hmm.

The promise:

When Greenland left the EU in 1985, it secured a free trade deal with the EU that allowed it to sell its fish to the EU tariff-free. Britain is a much larger economy and far more important to the EU - we are certain to secure an even better deal. Last year, we exported £7.5 billion worth of food to the EU but we imported food worth £18 billion. We have an annual trade deficit with the EU in food alone of £10 billion.

The reality:

Dominic Goudie, head of international trade at the FDF, said: “The return to growth in exports to non-EU markets is welcome news, but it doesn’t make up for the disastrous loss of £2bn in sales to the EU. It clearly demonstrates the serious difficulties manufacturers in our industry continue to face and the urgent need for additional specialist support.”

He said the difficulties now facing British food and drinks manufacturers and farmers were compounded by the lorry driver and warehouse workers shortages, which were choking the supply chain.

“At the same time, we are seeing labour shortages across the UK’s farm-to-fork food and drink supply chain, resulting in empty spaces on UK shop shelves, disruptions to deliveries and decreased production,” Goudie said. “Unless steps are taken to address these issues, the ability of businesses to fulfil vital export orders will be impacted.”

http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/briefing_food.html

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/02/brexit-uk-food-drink-exports-eu-disastrous-decline

As for the specific point about whether we should be using imported labour for agriculture, yes of course we should. Those jobs are never going to be high skilled, and high paying. That's partly why the Brits won't do them (not the only reason, of course). There's lots of reasons why we want agriculture to continue, and without imported labour we'll simply be exporting those jobs (even more of them) to continental Europe, and importing food which will be of lower quality because of the food miles, at higher prices.

Even in the new Brexit orthodoxy that has suddenly decided to fuck both business and agriculture, it makes no sense to try to push Brits into what will always be low-paying jobs.

I've got the research coming on Monday and I'm open to the idea that the UK should continue to subsidise low margin agriculture on the basis of needing a strategic reserve of agricultural capacity for situations such as a pandemic or another black swan event that causes global shipping to seize. However, other nations have shown a path that walks the line of having that reserve capacity and also not needing heavily subsidised agriculture either with direct cash grants like the CAP or indirect grants like tax credits to make up for low wages. The state's job is to find where that line is, clearly we shouldn't be a nation that farms battery chickens, other countries do it better and imports are all of similar enough quality. The whole industry relies on imported low wage labour and the end product has got razor thin margins and is constantly undercut by imports from Eastern Europe.

It's possible that by shutting down that industry the UK will see a net gain in GDP per capita and a net gain in the government's fiscal position, at least that's what the initial research showed which is why I asked the team to look at the whole sector.

Shut an entire industry down in areas which elect government MP's?
To transfer employment from rural to urban? Levelling up?
You do see the issue here?

Shut down entire industries that have no voters. The whole labour force is imported from end to end, the whining is only ever going to be from agribusiness.

I don't know where you are speaking from. But agribusiness votes Tory.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of jobs round here are in, or dependent on, agriculture. Nary an imported worker, nor much of a subsidy to be seen.
Nor much of a profit. Take away UC and the whole place would go tits up.
You're talking early 80's industrial North.
Votes Tory too.

You are HYUFD and I claim my £5

The right thing to do is still the right thing to do, even if it affects Tory voters.

Been accused of many things in my time....
Meanwhile.
Quite apart from owt else. You think this PM will do what's right above Tory voters? Bless.

Yes I do actually.

It depends which Tory voters you're talking about afterall. "Business" tends to be pro-Tory traditionally but when it came push to shove this PM had the cojones to say "fuck business" when some chose to stand in the way of what needed to be done.

So that's business. And agriculture. And with it the rural communities.
Any other Tory voters who actually do a day's work to be sacrificed for the pensioners?

I doubt many rural communities would be overly bothered to see the back of intensively reared pig farming and the imported workforce which goes with it.

As long as the grain fields and meadows with sheep baaing / cattle mooing remain people will be happy with what the British countryside looks like.

Precisely as I explained. Remove UC and you won't have much upland farming. It's aĺl agriculture round here. None of it intensive, barely any subsidised, barely any profitable. And not a foreign worker to be seen. Nor anyone above minimum wage.

Has upland hill farming ever been profitable ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC5WeuLHUdU

Now you could subsidise it as part of rural tourism / environment management - pretty baa lambs and dry stone walls etc.

With a charge on all the second home owners / holiday lets in the area to fund it.

Aren't some of the existing subsidies for this exactly - without sheep grazing, chunks of it would change in character etc?

Yes. You'd end up with wild flowers and pollinating insects. Fewer sheep, better uplands.

another_richard said:

Benpointer said:

Leon said:

Benpointer said:

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

dixiedean said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

The question you should be asking is whether the UK should even be doing low margin, low grade agriculture work that requires scores of minimum wage imported labour.
...

Hmm.

The promise:

When Greenland left the EU in 1985, it secured a free trade deal with the EU that allowed it to sell its fish to the EU tariff-free. Britain is a much larger economy and far more important to the EU - we are certain to secure an even better deal. Last year, we exported £7.5 billion worth of food to the EU but we imported food worth £18 billion. We have an annual trade deficit with the EU in food alone of £10 billion.

The reality:

Dominic Goudie, head of international trade at the FDF, said: “The return to growth in exports to non-EU markets is welcome news, but it doesn’t make up for the disastrous loss of £2bn in sales to the EU. It clearly demonstrates the serious difficulties manufacturers in our industry continue to face and the urgent need for additional specialist support.”

He said the difficulties now facing British food and drinks manufacturers and farmers were compounded by the lorry driver and warehouse workers shortages, which were choking the supply chain.

“At the same time, we are seeing labour shortages across the UK’s farm-to-fork food and drink supply chain, resulting in empty spaces on UK shop shelves, disruptions to deliveries and decreased production,” Goudie said. “Unless steps are taken to address these issues, the ability of businesses to fulfil vital export orders will be impacted.”

http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/briefing_food.html

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/02/brexit-uk-food-drink-exports-eu-disastrous-decline

As for the specific point about whether we should be using imported labour for agriculture, yes of course we should. Those jobs are never going to be high skilled, and high paying. That's partly why the Brits won't do them (not the only reason, of course). There's lots of reasons why we want agriculture to continue, and without imported labour we'll simply be exporting those jobs (even more of them) to continental Europe, and importing food which will be of lower quality because of the food miles, at higher prices.

Even in the new Brexit orthodoxy that has suddenly decided to fuck both business and agriculture, it makes no sense to try to push Brits into what will always be low-paying jobs.

I've got the research coming on Monday and I'm open to the idea that the UK should continue to subsidise low margin agriculture on the basis of needing a strategic reserve of agricultural capacity for situations such as a pandemic or another black swan event that causes global shipping to seize. However, other nations have shown a path that walks the line of having that reserve capacity and also not needing heavily subsidised agriculture either with direct cash grants like the CAP or indirect grants like tax credits to make up for low wages. The state's job is to find where that line is, clearly we shouldn't be a nation that farms battery chickens, other countries do it better and imports are all of similar enough quality. The whole industry relies on imported low wage labour and the end product has got razor thin margins and is constantly undercut by imports from Eastern Europe.

It's possible that by shutting down that industry the UK will see a net gain in GDP per capita and a net gain in the government's fiscal position, at least that's what the initial research showed which is why I asked the team to look at the whole sector.

Shut an entire industry down in areas which elect government MP's?
To transfer employment from rural to urban? Levelling up?
You do see the issue here?

Shut down entire industries that have no voters. The whole labour force is imported from end to end, the whining is only ever going to be from agribusiness.

It's also not state mandated shutting down, it's just inevitably going to become unviable vs imports of battery chickens without cheap immigrant labour or absolutely huge investment in automation. The latter strikes me as unlikely, instead the business owners will whine about lack of cheap labour and continue to do so until the companies fail and then whine about the companies failing but completely ignore that they just sat there and took profits in the good times and didn't put any investment in.

Farming-wise we could do whatever New Zealand does. They have lots of fertile land, yet hardly any workers, they can’t import cheap labour because they are a billion miles from anywhere, yet they manage to be an agricultural superpower - eg one of the top 2 or 3 dairy exporters in the whole world.

https://www.gtreview.com/magazine/volume-15issue-5/milk-new-zealands-dairy-exports-conquered-world

Surely number 1 dairy exporter.
But it worked because we have a comparative advantage in dairy, and we made the most of it.

Britain doesn’t really have that option.

For sure. But NZ is still an example of an agricultural sector that lost a huge market (in their case the UK, as we joined the EEC), which then had to go through a painful transition, but has now adapted, and is now thriving.

And I’m guessing they did it without 100,000s of cheap foreign workers

This is true.

Well, we’ve had high immigration, but not to the agricultural sector.

The transition took around 20 years and was rather bumpy at times.

The entire UK economy is about to go through what NZ went through with agriculture in the 70s and 80s.

It will definitely be ‘bumpy’ tho I think it will be largely over in 10 years, not 20. And at the end I believe we will thrive, as Kiwi butter exporters do today

The entire UK economy is about to go through a bumpy ride that will be 'largely over in 10 years'... so that we can thrive like Kiwi butter exporters?

Fucking hell - no wonder the Finns are feeling sorry for us!

Did you expect Hard Brexit to be easy? Anyone that said it would be easy - and I’m looking at idiot Brexiteers here - was either stupid or lying or both

I expected Brexit to be an unmitigated disaster. So far, so right.

Its this sort of comment which baffles me.

We were continually told that there would be an enormous recession, mass unemployment, the City relocating to Frankfurt.

All slaveringly pasted onto PB.

Yet here we are with full employment and rising pay.

Now its possible to make sensible critiques and point out potential problems.

But where's the unmitigated disaster ?

Benpointer said:

rcs1000 said:

MaxPB said:

Aslan said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

dixiedean said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

The question you should be asking is whether the UK should even be doing low margin, low grade agriculture work that requires scores of minimum wage imported labour.
...

Hmm.

The promise:

When Greenland left the EU in 1985, it secured a free trade deal with the EU that allowed it to sell its fish to the EU tariff-free. Britain is a much larger economy and far more important to the EU - we are certain to secure an even better deal. Last year, we exported £7.5 billion worth of food to the EU but we imported food worth £18 billion. We have an annual trade deficit with the EU in food alone of £10 billion.

The reality:

Dominic Goudie, head of international trade at the FDF, said: “The return to growth in exports to non-EU markets is welcome news, but it doesn’t make up for the disastrous loss of £2bn in sales to the EU. It clearly demonstrates the serious difficulties manufacturers in our industry continue to face and the urgent need for additional specialist support.”

He said the difficulties now facing British food and drinks manufacturers and farmers were compounded by the lorry driver and warehouse workers shortages, which were choking the supply chain.

“At the same time, we are seeing labour shortages across the UK’s farm-to-fork food and drink supply chain, resulting in empty spaces on UK shop shelves, disruptions to deliveries and decreased production,” Goudie said. “Unless steps are taken to address these issues, the ability of businesses to fulfil vital export orders will be impacted.”

http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/briefing_food.html

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/02/brexit-uk-food-drink-exports-eu-disastrous-decline

As for the specific point about whether we should be using imported labour for agriculture, yes of course we should. Those jobs are never going to be high skilled, and high paying. That's partly why the Brits won't do them (not the only reason, of course). There's lots of reasons why we want agriculture to continue, and without imported labour we'll simply be exporting those jobs (even more of them) to continental Europe, and importing food which will be of lower quality because of the food miles, at higher prices.

Even in the new Brexit orthodoxy that has suddenly decided to fuck both business and agriculture, it makes no sense to try to push Brits into what will always be low-paying jobs.

I've got the research coming on Monday and I'm open to the idea that the UK should continue to subsidise low margin agriculture on the basis of needing a strategic reserve of agricultural capacity for situations such as a pandemic or another black swan event that causes global shipping to seize. However, other nations have shown a path that walks the line of having that reserve capacity and also not needing heavily subsidised agriculture either with direct cash grants like the CAP or indirect grants like tax credits to make up for low wages. The state's job is to find where that line is, clearly we shouldn't be a nation that farms battery chickens, other countries do it better and imports are all of similar enough quality. The whole industry relies on imported low wage labour and the end product has got razor thin margins and is constantly undercut by imports from Eastern Europe.

It's possible that by shutting down that industry the UK will see a net gain in GDP per capita and a net gain in the government's fiscal position, at least that's what the initial research showed which is why I asked the team to look at the whole sector.

Shut an entire industry down in areas which elect government MP's?
To transfer employment from rural to urban? Levelling up?
You do see the issue here?

Shut down entire industries that have no voters. The whole labour force is imported from end to end, the whining is only ever going to be from agribusiness.

It's also not state mandated shutting down, it's just inevitably going to become unviable vs imports of battery chickens without cheap immigrant labour or absolutely huge investment in automation. The latter strikes me as unlikely, instead the business owners will whine about lack of cheap labour and continue to do so until the companies fail and then whine about the companies failing but completely ignore that they just sat there and took profits in the good times and didn't put any investment in.

Farming-wise we could do whatever New Zealand does. They have lots of fertile land, yet hardly any workers, they can’t import cheap labour because they are a billion miles from anywhere, yet they manage to be an agricultural superpower - eg one of the top 2 or 3 dairy exporters in the whole world.

https://www.gtreview.com/magazine/volume-15issue-5/milk-new-zealands-dairy-exports-conquered-world

Surely number 1 dairy exporter.
But it worked because we have a comparative advantage in dairy, and we made the most of it.

Britain doesn’t really have that option.

For sure. But NZ is still an example of an agricultural sector that lost a huge market (in their case the UK, as we joined the EEC), which then had to go through a painful transition, but has now adapted, and is now thriving.

And I’m guessing they did it without 100,000s of cheap foreign workers

This is true.

Well, we’ve had high immigration, but not to the agricultural sector.

The transition took around 20 years and was rather bumpy at times.

It's not like the UK is stopping high immigration.

No, it's people like me who will have the competition in high wage sectors. People in lower wage sectors will now have very large NTBs protecting their pay rates. Our economy is going to look much closer to Switzerland in 4-7 years.

I think you also should note that both Switzerland (and Germany) have very good vocational employment systems, that really help ensure that those young people who won't end up in financial services have the skills needed to thrive.

We need to make sure that we're not dealing with the symptoms (immigration of people with plumbing skills), rather than the cause (lack of Brits with plumbing skills).

My brother's a plumber. Sure, to a small degree we can train more plumbers but to be a good, competent, safe plumber you actually need to be quite bright and have reasonably good customer skills.

Where are all those trainees coming from? What jobs are they doing now and who's going to backfill them?

Let's not pretend that the sort of people capable of training as a plumber are sat on the dole in their 1000s waiting for a training opportunity.

Leon said:

Roger said:

Leon said:

Roger said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

williamglenn said:

The ex-Finnish PM seems to think the EU needs to organise a charity appeal for us.

https://twitter.com/alexstubb/status/1446347168290324481

If the EU would play its cards right, it would offer assistance to the UK now or later when the supply of basic goods and services takes a turn for the worse. This is what friends do, even if the pain has been self-inflicted, stupid an unnecessary.

Sorry, but the situation in the UK is going to go from bad to worse with no respit in sight. This is not a period of adaptation, it is a rather permanent reality and fact linked to voluntary isolation and myths of sovereignty in an interdependent world.

That entire thread is hilariously insane. People from across the EU - and a couple of Americans - who honestly believe Britain is close to collapse. And famine.

Are they all reading the New York Times, and nothing else?!

It’s genuinely hard to fathom. One element must be Strasbourg Syndrome. Brexit is evil therefore it can only cause evil things to the evildoers responsible. It is a religious reflex at work

Yes, it sort of goes back to what I was talking about earlier today. The EU projects this image of perfection which causes people idealise it. We see it on here all the time. They have an almost religious zeal about the EU because in the back of their minds they know the EU is imperfect, the image it projects is false and they are overcompensating because they realise the moment they admit it isn't perfect those flaws and those minor imperfections add up, the doubt grows and suddenly the institution they place above all others a mess of undemocratic contradictions and the UK was right to leave.

Lots of people really believe the EU is the only game in town, their world is being shattered right now as the UK prospers completely outside of its structures. This is their worst nightmare come true.

A French minister has accused the British, today, of being ‘obsessed with France’, even as several other French ministers publicly announce plans to blockade Britain, ‘cut off all ties with Britain’, deprive Britain of electricity, ‘punish the British for Brexit’, ‘stop British exports’ - and this is just one day

Imagine if several British Cabinet ministers were making daily threats against France. That *would* be obsessive

You can watch French TV for days and the UK never features. Too much Telegraph can be misleading.

Mwanwhile I give you a rare Englishman who is actually admired.....Dr Rashford

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/oct/08/marcus-rashford-attacks-universal-credit-cut-at-degree-ceremony

But it’s the same on British TV. It looks much more to America (too much, for me) - but also increasingly to Asia, and China

Meanwhile a comparison between the home pages, right now, of Le Monde and the Guardian is quite instructive.

Both have about 50 stories. Just two of the stories in Le Monde are definitely about Britain: one is about Covid in the UK, the other about the Saudi-Newcastle takeover. Meanwhile in the Guardian there’s just one story ‘about France’ - but it is expressly about deteriorating Franco-Brit relations. So, about the same?

The UK-French-EU ‘obsession’ is mutual, but it is only happening in social media and only amongst politicians, Eurocrats, and geeks like us. It is a real thing, however. This is the pinned tweet of Finland’s ex prime minister, also mentioned below

‘Reading news about petrol shortages and other supply problems in the UK. Really sad to see what #Brexit is doing to a country that used to be great. Brexit is the biggest mistake a modern nation state has inflicted on itself in recent history. Hope to see an end to this mess.’

https://twitter.com/alexstubb/status/1441816802837901312?s=21

That’s his pinned tweet. That’s the opinion he has which he thinks is most important right now. Wtf. He’s Finnish. Lol

Hopefully in a few years when Brexit is accepted we can all go back to courteously ignoring each other, like normal neighbours

Finland's ex PM is on the money. There is a change in mood and it's not for the better. The Cote d'Azur doesn't feel part English anymore which is rather sad.

There IS a sadness to Brexit, which I share. The EU has noble origins - the quest for peaceful harmony in Europe. Freedom of Movement was the best thing about it, and I regret the loss. I hope one day a compromise can be found that satisfies all sides and restores it, at least in part

The great tragedy is that Brexit didn’t have to happen. If only a UK government had offered a referendum much earlier, maybe after Maastricht or Lisbon, we’d have said No to further integration, and that compromise would have been found. And we’d probably be a happy but semi-detached country, still associated with the EU and enjoying some of those benefits. And Nice would still feel a little bit English

But no, the British europhiles, in their arrogance, kept forcing more and more integration on us, without seeking our explicit democratic consent, stoking greater and greater anger over decades. Until eventually the final total rupture became inevitable

It is a melancholy story. And the authors are Major, Blair, Heseltine, Brown, Clarke, Cameron, et al. It is the europhiles who created Brexit. Indeed, with their push for a ‘2nd referendum’, they made sure we got the hardest Brexit of all, right at the end. The cherry on their ridiculous cake. It is magnificent irony, fit for the ages

Benpointer said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Benpointer said:

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

dixiedean said:

MaxPB said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

MaxPB said:

The question you should be asking is whether the UK should even be doing low margin, low grade agriculture work that requires scores of minimum wage imported labour.
...

Hmm.

The promise:

When Greenland left the EU in 1985, it secured a free trade deal with the EU that allowed it to sell its fish to the EU tariff-free. Britain is a much larger economy and far more important to the EU - we are certain to secure an even better deal. Last year, we exported £7.5 billion worth of food to the EU but we imported food worth £18 billion. We have an annual trade deficit with the EU in food alone of £10 billion.

The reality:

Dominic Goudie, head of international trade at the FDF, said: “The return to growth in exports to non-EU markets is welcome news, but it doesn’t make up for the disastrous loss of £2bn in sales to the EU. It clearly demonstrates the serious difficulties manufacturers in our industry continue to face and the urgent need for additional specialist support.”

He said the difficulties now facing British food and drinks manufacturers and farmers were compounded by the lorry driver and warehouse workers shortages, which were choking the supply chain.

“At the same time, we are seeing labour shortages across the UK’s farm-to-fork food and drink supply chain, resulting in empty spaces on UK shop shelves, disruptions to deliveries and decreased production,” Goudie said. “Unless steps are taken to address these issues, the ability of businesses to fulfil vital export orders will be impacted.”

http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org/briefing_food.html

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/02/brexit-uk-food-drink-exports-eu-disastrous-decline

As for the specific point about whether we should be using imported labour for agriculture, yes of course we should. Those jobs are never going to be high skilled, and high paying. That's partly why the Brits won't do them (not the only reason, of course). There's lots of reasons why we want agriculture to continue, and without imported labour we'll simply be exporting those jobs (even more of them) to continental Europe, and importing food which will be of lower quality because of the food miles, at higher prices.

Even in the new Brexit orthodoxy that has suddenly decided to fuck both business and agriculture, it makes no sense to try to push Brits into what will always be low-paying jobs.

I've got the research coming on Monday and I'm open to the idea that the UK should continue to subsidise low margin agriculture on the basis of needing a strategic reserve of agricultural capacity for situations such as a pandemic or another black swan event that causes global shipping to seize. However, other nations have shown a path that walks the line of having that reserve capacity and also not needing heavily subsidised agriculture either with direct cash grants like the CAP or indirect grants like tax credits to make up for low wages. The state's job is to find where that line is, clearly we shouldn't be a nation that farms battery chickens, other countries do it better and imports are all of similar enough quality. The whole industry relies on imported low wage labour and the end product has got razor thin margins and is constantly undercut by imports from Eastern Europe.

It's possible that by shutting down that industry the UK will see a net gain in GDP per capita and a net gain in the government's fiscal position, at least that's what the initial research showed which is why I asked the team to look at the whole sector.

Shut an entire industry down in areas which elect government MP's?
To transfer employment from rural to urban? Levelling up?
You do see the issue here?

Shut down entire industries that have no voters. The whole labour force is imported from end to end, the whining is only ever going to be from agribusiness.

It's also not state mandated shutting down, it's just inevitably going to become unviable vs imports of battery chickens without cheap immigrant labour or absolutely huge investment in automation. The latter strikes me as unlikely, instead the business owners will whine about lack of cheap labour and continue to do so until the companies fail and then whine about the companies failing but completely ignore that they just sat there and took profits in the good times and didn't put any investment in.

Farming-wise we could do whatever New Zealand does. They have lots of fertile land, yet hardly any workers, they can’t import cheap labour because they are a billion miles from anywhere, yet they manage to be an agricultural superpower - eg one of the top 2 or 3 dairy exporters in the whole world.

https://www.gtreview.com/magazine/volume-15issue-5/milk-new-zealands-dairy-exports-conquered-world

Surely number 1 dairy exporter.
But it worked because we have a comparative advantage in dairy, and we made the most of it.

Britain doesn’t really have that option.

For sure. But NZ is still an example of an agricultural sector that lost a huge market (in their case the UK, as we joined the EEC), which then had to go through a painful transition, but has now adapted, and is now thriving.

And I’m guessing they did it without 100,000s of cheap foreign workers

This is true.

Well, we’ve had high immigration, but not to the agricultural sector.

The transition took around 20 years and was rather bumpy at times.

The entire UK economy is about to go through what NZ went through with agriculture in the 70s and 80s.

It will definitely be ‘bumpy’ tho I think it will be largely over in 10 years, not 20. And at the end I believe we will thrive, as Kiwi butter exporters do today

The entire UK economy is about to go through a bumpy ride that will be 'largely over in 10 years'... so that we can thrive like Kiwi butter exporters?

Fucking hell - no wonder the Finns are feeling sorry for us!

Anything worth doing is difficult. Doesn't mean its not worth doing.

Do you think an elite athlete spending ten years of rigorous training, diet and exercise before they're finally able to shine regrets afterwards undergoing all that effort?

Why should we not be the same? We've become fat and lazy as a nation relying upon minimum wage people imported to do jobs people here didn't want to do at the wages offered. We're going cold turkey with diet and exercise now which is as much of a shock as an ice bath . . . but the right thing to do.

'Anything worth doing is difficult' is patent bollocks. Writing a will is worth doing; it's not difficult. Breathing is worth doing; it's not difficult.

I certainly agree that 'some things worth doing are difficult'. But I sure as hell know there are plenty of very difficult things were never worth doing and shouldn't have been attempted in the first place.

There is no reliable correlation between 'worth doing' and 'difficult'.

The point is: you're saying Brexit is worth doing and difficult; I'm saying it was never worth doing and difficult. We're agreed it's difficult. I'd say it wouldn't be worth doing, even if it were easy (which it could have been tbh, if we'd chosen EEA or single market.

We were of course told it would be 'the easiest thing in the world'.