Note that the Netherlands elected it's most right wing gov't ever after their own gov'ts previous run in with farmers.
What we're seeing here is how a cliquey North London left-wing metropolitan Fabian set understands neither business nor farming, and how that so readily bleeds into policy.
I've been astonished at how politically inept they've been, but they've never done it before and lack the humility to listen to anyone who has.
Can you explain, in simple terms, why farmers deserve to pass on their farms to their heirs 100% tax free when others (with similar levels of assets in their estates) don’t?
There is an argument that keeping family farms intact is a public good and therefore should be treated differently.
How is it a public good? Its obviously of benefit to those who don't pay the tax, but I don't see how it benefits the wider population?
And if we could do a simulcast of being on our LNER apps I could prove to everyone that apart from the 10.45 departure there simply are no tickets available to buy to go from London to Newcastle on any day next week.
Simply not true. I am on the LNER website right now and there are tickets available for every train from 8.30am onwards.
Edit. This is for Monday next week but the same applies to the other days.
Ah ok. There are no open returns. You have to specify a return date.
Is this the end of the world? No. Is it an irritant? Yes.
LNER abolished return tickets last year IIRC.
Open returns, you mean. Why did they do that.
Managing seating I assume. Whilst you can just walk onto a train and take your chances, LNER seem to have a system where they will not sell more tickets in advance than there are seats. At least this is what I have found when travelling down from Aberdeen at peak times.
Taking a step back, it is interesting that this agricultural policy change has cut across typical political dividing lines on here. I imagine most of pb is urban so not an urban/rural thing...
New MoreinCommon poll shows voters oppose the tractor tax by a 57% to 24% margin.
A massive 75% of Tory voters think a a farmer who passes their farm to the next generation should not be required to pay inheritance tax on it as do 74% of Reform voters and 56% of LDs.
56% of 2019 Conservative voters who switched to vote Labour in 2024 also believe family farms should be exempt from inheritance tax.
Labour and Green voters are more divided but still 45% of Labour voters 47% of Green voters think the farmer inheritance tax exemption should have been kept
Note that the Netherlands elected it's most right wing gov't ever after their own gov'ts previous run in with farmers.
What we're seeing here is how a cliquey North London left-wing metropolitan Fabian set understands neither business nor farming, and how that so readily bleeds into policy.
I've been astonished at how politically inept they've been, but they've never done it before and lack the humility to listen to anyone who has.
Can you explain, in simple terms, why farmers deserve to pass on their farms to their heirs 100% tax free when others (with similar levels of assets in their estates) don’t?
There is an argument that keeping family farms intact is a public good and therefore should be treated differently.
How is it a public good? Its obviously of benefit to those who don't pay the tax, but I don't see how it benefits the wider population?
Food security and a diversified means of producing food (not large corporations) is definitely a public good.
Just about to use a train for the first time in many weeks and it's been cancelled. Going to M'chester Airport. Damn. And the snow has already melted here so it surely can't be that bad.
Zero snow here, even on the hilltops, in SE Scotland.
But some heavy falls in the Manc-ish area, though, Mrs C heard from a colleague there.
Note that the Netherlands elected it's most right wing gov't ever after their own gov'ts previous run in with farmers.
What we're seeing here is how a cliquey North London left-wing metropolitan Fabian set understands neither business nor farming, and how that so readily bleeds into policy.
I've been astonished at how politically inept they've been, but they've never done it before and lack the humility to listen to anyone who has.
There are approximately 108000 farmers in the UK. If you look online, it gives the population of North London as 978100, although I think that's just N postcodes. The population of London north of the Thames is several million.
Ah, but how many North Londoners are "left-wing"? Well, 40% of Londoners voted Labour in the last Assembly elections.
So, 40% of 978100 is 391240. That means there are roughly 3.6 times as many in the North London left-wing set, on conservative assumptions of how we define "North London", compared to farmers.
Yes well MoreinCommon has just shown the average UK voter is more supportive of farmers than left liberal North Londoners and their socialist schemes
Note that the Netherlands elected it's most right wing gov't ever after their own gov'ts previous run in with farmers.
What we're seeing here is how a cliquey North London left-wing metropolitan Fabian set understands neither business nor farming, and how that so readily bleeds into policy.
I've been astonished at how politically inept they've been, but they've never done it before and lack the humility to listen to anyone who has.
Can you explain, in simple terms, why farmers deserve to pass on their farms to their heirs 100% tax free when others (with similar levels of assets in their estates) don’t?
All IHT could be abolished by cutting carbon capture and storage by 50%. This would bring inline the monarch and public service pensions 0% rate with everybody else.
Breakdown of 2024 election vote by sexuality. Tories got their highest vote share among straight women, Labour among lesbian/gay women, Reform with straight men and the greens and lib dems with bisexual women. https://x.com/LukeTryl/status/1857482400474747384
Across the 6 categories, the LibDem vote share varies from 10% (lesbian) to 16% (gay men), so remarkably consistent.
The Green vote varies from 5% (straight men) to 22% (bisexual women). The Conservative vote varies from 6% (bisexual women) to 27% (straight women).
I think this reliably proves that the LibDems are the most egalitarian party sexually.
And if we could do a simulcast of being on our LNER apps I could prove to everyone that apart from the 10.45 departure there simply are no tickets available to buy to go from London to Newcastle on any day next week.
Simply not true. I am on the LNER website right now and there are tickets available for every train from 8.30am onwards.
Edit. This is for Monday next week but the same applies to the other days.
Ah ok. There are no open returns. You have to specify a return date.
Is this the end of the world? No. Is it an irritant? Yes.
LNER abolished return tickets last year IIRC.
Open returns, you mean. Why did they do that.
Managing seating I assume. Whilst you can just walk onto a train and take your chances, LNER seem to have a system where they will not sell more tickets in advance than there are seats. At least this is what I have found when travelling down from Aberdeen at peak times.
That has always been the case but the usage never made it obvious.
Now a fair percentage of trains are full LNER prefer to use reservations to manage passenger numbers.
As I posted earlier today - book a week in advance and the prices are very reasonable...
Note that the Netherlands elected it's most right wing gov't ever after their own gov'ts previous run in with farmers.
What we're seeing here is how a cliquey North London left-wing metropolitan Fabian set understands neither business nor farming, and how that so readily bleeds into policy.
I've been astonished at how politically inept they've been, but they've never done it before and lack the humility to listen to anyone who has.
Can you explain, in simple terms, why farmers deserve to pass on their farms to their heirs 100% tax free when others (with similar levels of assets in their estates) don’t?
There is an argument that keeping family farms intact is a public good and therefore should be treated differently.
How is it a public good? Its obviously of benefit to those who don't pay the tax, but I don't see how it benefits the wider population?
Food security and a diversified means of producing food (not large corporations) is definitely a public good.
Agreed. But why did the TOries, and why don't Labour, address the issues more directly rather than when Farmer X of Mossy Bottom kicks the bucket?
Note that the Netherlands elected it's most right wing gov't ever after their own gov'ts previous run in with farmers.
What we're seeing here is how a cliquey North London left-wing metropolitan Fabian set understands neither business nor farming, and how that so readily bleeds into policy.
I've been astonished at how politically inept they've been, but they've never done it before and lack the humility to listen to anyone who has.
Can you explain, in simple terms, why farmers deserve to pass on their farms to their heirs 100% tax free when others (with similar levels of assets in their estates) don’t?
Because if they can't then in a lot of cases the famers are no longer viable as businesses. As has been repeated many tiems recently (and as the thicker supporters of this policy fail to comprehend) farms tend to be asset rich and cash poor. Now I suppose the farmer could always sell a tractor or some land to pay the IHT but then the business may no longer be able to operate.
The only pepole who will benefit from this (apart from lawyers and accountants) are the biggest farm enterprises who will be able to buy up the family farms and also won't have to pay IHT.
Note that the Netherlands elected it's most right wing gov't ever after their own gov'ts previous run in with farmers.
What we're seeing here is how a cliquey North London left-wing metropolitan Fabian set understands neither business nor farming, and how that so readily bleeds into policy.
I've been astonished at how politically inept they've been, but they've never done it before and lack the humility to listen to anyone who has.
Can you explain, in simple terms, why farmers deserve to pass on their farms to their heirs 100% tax free when others (with similar levels of assets in their estates) don’t?
There is an argument that keeping family farms intact is a public good and therefore should be treated differently.
How is it a public good? Its obviously of benefit to those who don't pay the tax, but I don't see how it benefits the wider population?
Don't worry you'll see it eventually in the shops.
Taking a step back, it is interesting that this agricultural policy change has cut across typical political dividing lines on here. I imagine most of pb is urban so not an urban/rural thing...
New MoreinCommon poll shows voters oppose the tractor tax by a 57% to 24% margin.
A massive 75% of Tory voters think a a farmer who passes their farm to the next generation should not be required to pay inheritance tax on it as do 74% of Reform voters and 56% of LDs.
56% of 2019 Conservative voters who switched to vote Labour in 2024 also believe family farms should be exempt from inheritance tax.
Labour and Green voters are more divided but still 45% of Labour voters 47% of Green voters think the farmer inheritance tax exemption should have been kept
Note that the Netherlands elected it's most right wing gov't ever after their own gov'ts previous run in with farmers.
What we're seeing here is how a cliquey North London left-wing metropolitan Fabian set understands neither business nor farming, and how that so readily bleeds into policy.
I've been astonished at how politically inept they've been, but they've never done it before and lack the humility to listen to anyone who has.
There are approximately 108000 farmers in the UK. If you look online, it gives the population of North London as 978100, although I think that's just N postcodes. The population of London north of the Thames is several million.
Ah, but how many North Londoners are "left-wing"? Well, 40% of Londoners voted Labour in the last Assembly elections.
So, 40% of 978100 is 391240. That means there are roughly 3.6 times as many in the North London left-wing set, on conservative assumptions of how we define "North London", compared to farmers.
Yes well MoreinCommon has just shown the average UK voter is more supportive of farmers than left liberal North Londoners and their socialist schemes
If you keep pretending it's farmers rather than landowners who pay IHT then no wonder people get confused.
Note that the Netherlands elected it's most right wing gov't ever after their own gov'ts previous run in with farmers.
What we're seeing here is how a cliquey North London left-wing metropolitan Fabian set understands neither business nor farming, and how that so readily bleeds into policy.
I've been astonished at how politically inept they've been, but they've never done it before and lack the humility to listen to anyone who has.
Can you explain, in simple terms, why farmers deserve to pass on their farms to their heirs 100% tax free when others (with similar levels of assets in their estates) don’t?
There is an argument that keeping family farms intact is a public good and therefore should be treated differently.
How is it a public good? Its obviously of benefit to those who don't pay the tax, but I don't see how it benefits the wider population?
Food security and a diversified means of producing food (not large corporations) is definitely a public good.
How does it help food security? The land still exists to farm on whoever farms it. Except now less productive farmers will have more of an incentive to sell up.
Taking a step back, it is interesting that this agricultural policy change has cut across typical political dividing lines on here. I imagine most of pb is urban so not an urban/rural thing...
New MoreinCommon poll shows voters oppose the tractor tax by a 57% to 24% margin.
A massive 75% of Tory voters think a a farmer who passes their farm to the next generation should not be required to pay inheritance tax on it as do 74% of Reform voters and 56% of LDs.
56% of 2019 Conservative voters who switched to vote Labour in 2024 also believe family farms should be exempt from inheritance tax.
Labour and Green voters are more divided but still 45% of Labour voters 47% of Green voters think the farmer inheritance tax exemption should have been kept
Taking a step back, it is interesting that this agricultural policy change has cut across typical political dividing lines on here. I imagine most of pb is urban so not an urban/rural thing...
New MoreinCommon poll shows voters oppose the tractor tax by a 57% to 24% margin.
A massive 75% of Tory voters think a a farmer who passes their farm to the next generation should not be required to pay inheritance tax on it as do 74% of Reform voters and 56% of LDs.
56% of 2019 Conservative voters who switched to vote Labour in 2024 also believe family farms should be exempt from inheritance tax.
Labour and Green voters are more divided but still 45% of Labour voters and 47% of Green voters think the farmer inheritance tax exemption should have been kept
Note that the Netherlands elected it's most right wing gov't ever after their own gov'ts previous run in with farmers.
What we're seeing here is how a cliquey North London left-wing metropolitan Fabian set understands neither business nor farming, and how that so readily bleeds into policy.
I've been astonished at how politically inept they've been, but they've never done it before and lack the humility to listen to anyone who has.
Can you explain, in simple terms, why farmers deserve to pass on their farms to their heirs 100% tax free when others (with similar levels of assets in their estates) don’t?
There is an argument that keeping family farms intact is a public good and therefore should be treated differently.
How is it a public good? Its obviously of benefit to those who don't pay the tax, but I don't see how it benefits the wider population?
Food security and a diversified means of producing food (not large corporations) is definitely a public good.
How does it help food security? The land still exists to farm on whoever farms it. Except now less productive farmers will have more of an incentive to sell up.
As I said, it's better than it's diversified and not bought up by monopolies.
Note that the Netherlands elected it's most right wing gov't ever after their own gov'ts previous run in with farmers.
What we're seeing here is how a cliquey North London left-wing metropolitan Fabian set understands neither business nor farming, and how that so readily bleeds into policy.
I've been astonished at how politically inept they've been, but they've never done it before and lack the humility to listen to anyone who has.
Can you explain, in simple terms, why farmers deserve to pass on their farms to their heirs 100% tax free when others (with similar levels of assets in their estates) don’t?
It's not exactly 'deserve to'.
For us townies, in terms of beauty, conservation, recreational amenity, long-term stewardship of the countryside etc, it is seen as a better outcome if agriculture is done by family farmers with a long-term interest in the land rather than agribusinesses. It's not cut and dried, but I'm willing to buy that. The IHT dodge is a way of trying to keep farms in the hands of families with a long-term interest rather than agribusinesses. I'm not convinced it's 100% effective, mind. But that's the reason for it. What we should be arguing about is how we better effect that particular outcome (if we are agreed that the outcome is worthwhile - I think it is, but am open to persuasion.)
And if we could do a simulcast of being on our LNER apps I could prove to everyone that apart from the 10.45 departure there simply are no tickets available to buy to go from London to Newcastle on any day next week.
Simply not true. I am on the LNER website right now and there are tickets available for every train from 8.30am onwards.
Edit. This is for Monday next week but the same applies to the other days.
Ah ok. There are no open returns. You have to specify a return date.
Is this the end of the world? No. Is it an irritant? Yes.
A trial in which return tickets have been scrapped to make fares simpler will be extended as part of a shake-up of the country's railways.
Transport Secretary Mark Harper confirmed that LNER, which operates trains along the East Coast mainline, will extend its trial of selling single tickets only on its routes from Spring.
If it continues to be successful it will be extended to other operators.
Thanks. That's super weird. Because soon someone will have the bright idea of putting two single tickets together and calling them a "return".
Note that the Netherlands elected it's most right wing gov't ever after their own gov'ts previous run in with farmers.
What we're seeing here is how a cliquey North London left-wing metropolitan Fabian set understands neither business nor farming, and how that so readily bleeds into policy.
I've been astonished at how politically inept they've been, but they've never done it before and lack the humility to listen to anyone who has.
There are approximately 108000 farmers in the UK. If you look online, it gives the population of North London as 978100, although I think that's just N postcodes. The population of London north of the Thames is several million.
Ah, but how many North Londoners are "left-wing"? Well, 40% of Londoners voted Labour in the last Assembly elections.
So, 40% of 978100 is 391240. That means there are roughly 3.6 times as many in the North London left-wing set, on conservative assumptions of how we define "North London", compared to farmers.
Yes well MoreinCommon has just shown the average UK voter is more supportive of farmers than left liberal North Londoners and their socialist schemes
Polling about individual policies is, I suggest, of limited use. Ask people about individual policies and they'd fund everything and tax nothing. What matters is whether people think a policy matters enough to change their vote.
Note that the Netherlands elected it's most right wing gov't ever after their own gov'ts previous run in with farmers.
What we're seeing here is how a cliquey North London left-wing metropolitan Fabian set understands neither business nor farming, and how that so readily bleeds into policy.
I've been astonished at how politically inept they've been, but they've never done it before and lack the humility to listen to anyone who has.
Can you explain, in simple terms, why farmers deserve to pass on their farms to their heirs 100% tax free when others (with similar levels of assets in their estates) don’t?
Because if they can't then in a lot of cases the famers are no longer viable as businesses. As has been repeated many tiems recently (and as the thicker supporters of this policy fail to comprehend) farms tend to be asset rich and cash poor. Now I suppose the farmer could always sell a tractor or some land to pay the IHT but then the business may no longer be able to operate.
The only pepole who will benefit from this (apart from lawyers and accountants) are the biggest farm enterprises who will be able to buy up the family farms and also won't have to pay IHT.
Also the big family trusts, too, so it's not just soulless commercial firms.
But those are often aristocrats so HYUFD doesn't want to go there.
There's a real issue about trusts and IHT - I entirely agree - but maybe that is next on the menu.
And if we could do a simulcast of being on our LNER apps I could prove to everyone that apart from the 10.45 departure there simply are no tickets available to buy to go from London to Newcastle on any day next week.
Simply not true. I am on the LNER website right now and there are tickets available for every train from 8.30am onwards.
Edit. This is for Monday next week but the same applies to the other days.
Ah ok. There are no open returns. You have to specify a return date.
Is this the end of the world? No. Is it an irritant? Yes.
A trial in which return tickets have been scrapped to make fares simpler will be extended as part of a shake-up of the country's railways.
Transport Secretary Mark Harper confirmed that LNER, which operates trains along the East Coast mainline, will extend its trial of selling single tickets only on its routes from Spring.
If it continues to be successful it will be extended to other operators.
Thanks. That's super weird. Because soon someone will have the bright idea of putting two single tickets together and calling them a "return".
They won't because none of the inter city networks want to deal with open tickets - they want reserved seats for safety reasons..
Note that the Netherlands elected it's most right wing gov't ever after their own gov'ts previous run in with farmers.
What we're seeing here is how a cliquey North London left-wing metropolitan Fabian set understands neither business nor farming, and how that so readily bleeds into policy.
I've been astonished at how politically inept they've been, but they've never done it before and lack the humility to listen to anyone who has.
There are approximately 108000 farmers in the UK. If you look online, it gives the population of North London as 978100, although I think that's just N postcodes. The population of London north of the Thames is several million.
Ah, but how many North Londoners are "left-wing"? Well, 40% of Londoners voted Labour in the last Assembly elections.
So, 40% of 978100 is 391240. That means there are roughly 3.6 times as many in the North London left-wing set, on conservative assumptions of how we define "North London", compared to farmers.
Yes well MoreinCommon has just shown the average UK voter is more supportive of farmers than left liberal North Londoners and their socialist schemes
Polling about individual policies is, I suggest, of limited use. Ask people about individual policies and they'd fund everything and tax nothing. What matters is whether people think a policy matters enough to change their vote.
Note that the Netherlands elected it's most right wing gov't ever after their own gov'ts previous run in with farmers.
What we're seeing here is how a cliquey North London left-wing metropolitan Fabian set understands neither business nor farming, and how that so readily bleeds into policy.
I've been astonished at how politically inept they've been, but they've never done it before and lack the humility to listen to anyone who has.
Can you explain, in simple terms, why farmers deserve to pass on their farms to their heirs 100% tax free when others (with similar levels of assets in their estates) don’t?
It's not exactly 'deserve to'.
For us townies, in terms of beauty, conservation, recreational amenity, long-term stewardship of the countryside etc, it is seen as a better outcome if agriculture is done by family farmers with a long-term interest in the land rather than agribusinesses. It's not cut and dried, but I'm willing to buy that. The IHT dodge is a way of trying to keep farms in the hands of families with a long-term interest rather than agribusinesses. I'm not convinced it's 100% effective, mind. But that's the reason for it. What we should be arguing about is how we better effect that particular outcome (if we are agreed that the outcome is worthwhile - I think it is, but am open to persuasion.)
In this case the farmers are to a considerable extent being tulchan cows for the big landowners and landowning families, which is a major issue with this outcome and with the politicking about it.
The central issue as I see it is that people don't take the concept of "food security" seriously. They point to imports and the limitless availability of foods from across the planet in Aldi (in particular from Bordeaux, ahem) and scorn the idea that a country should be able to feed itself from its own resources.
Now, is that a sensible view? We have had COVID and Ukraine which tested this to the limits perhaps (or was it just panic buying/hoarding).
If we really think that food security is an issue then it matters that farms are afforded protection and incentives in a non-monopolistic way (what happens if Farmer Ted's farm is bought by Russian AgriGrain Inc). If we don't, it doesn't.
Note that the Netherlands elected it's most right wing gov't ever after their own gov'ts previous run in with farmers.
What we're seeing here is how a cliquey North London left-wing metropolitan Fabian set understands neither business nor farming, and how that so readily bleeds into policy.
I've been astonished at how politically inept they've been, but they've never done it before and lack the humility to listen to anyone who has.
Can you explain, in simple terms, why farmers deserve to pass on their farms to their heirs 100% tax free when others (with similar levels of assets in their estates) don’t?
Because if they can't then in a lot of cases the famers are no longer viable as businesses. As has been repeated many tiems recently (and as the thicker supporters of this policy fail to comprehend) farms tend to be asset rich and cash poor. Now I suppose the farmer could always sell a tractor or some land to pay the IHT but then the business may no longer be able to operate.
The only pepole who will benefit from this (apart from lawyers and accountants) are the biggest farm enterprises who will be able to buy up the family farms and also won't have to pay IHT.
Also the big family trusts, too, so it's not just soulless commercial firms.
But those are often aristocrats so HYUFD doesn't want to go there.
There's a real issue about trusts and IHT - I entirely agree - but maybe that is next on the menu.
changes were made there as well but didn't get much publicity.
Note that the Netherlands elected it's most right wing gov't ever after their own gov'ts previous run in with farmers.
What we're seeing here is how a cliquey North London left-wing metropolitan Fabian set understands neither business nor farming, and how that so readily bleeds into policy.
I've been astonished at how politically inept they've been, but they've never done it before and lack the humility to listen to anyone who has.
There are approximately 108000 farmers in the UK. If you look online, it gives the population of North London as 978100, although I think that's just N postcodes. The population of London north of the Thames is several million.
Ah, but how many North Londoners are "left-wing"? Well, 40% of Londoners voted Labour in the last Assembly elections.
So, 40% of 978100 is 391240. That means there are roughly 3.6 times as many in the North London left-wing set, on conservative assumptions of how we define "North London", compared to farmers.
Yes well MoreinCommon has just shown the average UK voter is more supportive of farmers than left liberal North Londoners and their socialist schemes
Polling about individual policies is, I suggest, of limited use. Ask people about individual policies and they'd fund everything and tax nothing. What matters is whether people think a policy matters enough to change their vote.
Sure, but does that reflect changes to farming IHT, or changes to National Insurance, or cancelling the WFA, or the Chagos deal, or Starmer going to see Taylor Swift, or Kemi Badenoch being elected, or Nigel Farage, or, or, or...?
The central issue as I see it is that people don't take the concept of "food security" seriously. They point to imports and the limitless availability of foods from across the planet in Aldi (in particular from Bordeaux, ahem) and scorn the idea that a country should be able to feed itself from its own resources.
Now, is that a sensible view? We have had COVID and Ukraine which tested this to the limits perhaps (or was it just panic buying/hoarding).
If we really think that food security is an issue then it matters that farms are afforded protection and incentives in a non-monopolistic way (what happens if Farmer Ted's farm is bought by Russian AgriGrain Inc). If we don't, it doesn't.
Are IHT changes the best way of supporting food security? There are other ways of doing that. And, indeed, we do subsidise farming in other ways.
In response to @NickPalmer questioning if the conservatives will cancel the farmers IHT, Kemi is to join Jeremy Clarkson on stage to address and support the farmer's demonstration outside no 10
Also Scottish Labour are announcing they will reinstate the WFP
I just wandered through the demonstration. Very good natured. Only 2 calls for Medics that I heard, and Ed Davey up on stage
Note that the Netherlands elected it's most right wing gov't ever after their own gov'ts previous run in with farmers.
What we're seeing here is how a cliquey North London left-wing metropolitan Fabian set understands neither business nor farming, and how that so readily bleeds into policy.
I've been astonished at how politically inept they've been, but they've never done it before and lack the humility to listen to anyone who has.
Can you explain, in simple terms, why farmers deserve to pass on their farms to their heirs 100% tax free when others (with similar levels of assets in their estates) don’t?
It's not exactly 'deserve to'.
For us townies, in terms of beauty, conservation, recreational amenity, long-term stewardship of the countryside etc, it is seen as a better outcome if agriculture is done by family farmers with a long-term interest in the land rather than agribusinesses. It's not cut and dried, but I'm willing to buy that. The IHT dodge is a way of trying to keep farms in the hands of families with a long-term interest rather than agribusinesses. I'm not convinced it's 100% effective, mind. But that's the reason for it. What we should be arguing about is how we better effect that particular outcome (if we are agreed that the outcome is worthwhile - I think it is, but am open to persuasion.)
In this case the farmers are to a considerable extent being tulchan cows for the big landowners and landowning families, which is a major issue with this outcome and with the politicking about it.
It's not small farmers vs landowning families. It is people who care about the stewardship of the countryside vs those who see it purely in commercial terms (ie the large agribusinesses).
That is the critical element.
Interesting to see left wingers (no idea if you are one of those) advocating for the agricultural industrial complex.
Breakdown of 2024 election vote by sexuality. Tories got their highest vote share among straight women, Labour among lesbian/gay women, Reform with straight men and the greens and lib dems with bisexual women. https://x.com/LukeTryl/status/1857482400474747384
Across the 6 categories, the LibDem vote share varies from 10% (lesbian) to 16% (gay men), so remarkably consistent.
The Green vote varies from 5% (straight men) to 22% (bisexual women). The Conservative vote varies from 6% (bisexual women) to 27% (straight women).
I think this reliably proves that the LibDems are the most egalitarian party sexually.
The central issue as I see it is that people don't take the concept of "food security" seriously. They point to imports and the limitless availability of foods from across the planet in Aldi (in particular from Bordeaux, ahem) and scorn the idea that a country should be able to feed itself from its own resources.
Now, is that a sensible view? We have had COVID and Ukraine which tested this to the limits perhaps (or was it just panic buying/hoarding).
If we really think that food security is an issue then it matters that farms are afforded protection and incentives in a non-monopolistic way (what happens if Farmer Ted's farm is bought by Russian AgriGrain Inc). If we don't, it doesn't.
We don't have food security anyway. We only grow 60% of our calories, a lot of what we grow depends on imports from other parts of the world, and the value of what we grow is subject to the vagaries of world markets.
It would take an enormous, fiscally crippling intervention to resolve all of that.
Note that the Netherlands elected it's most right wing gov't ever after their own gov'ts previous run in with farmers.
What we're seeing here is how a cliquey North London left-wing metropolitan Fabian set understands neither business nor farming, and how that so readily bleeds into policy.
I've been astonished at how politically inept they've been, but they've never done it before and lack the humility to listen to anyone who has.
Can you explain, in simple terms, why farmers deserve to pass on their farms to their heirs 100% tax free when others (with similar levels of assets in their estates) don’t?
It's not exactly 'deserve to'.
For us townies, in terms of beauty, conservation, recreational amenity, long-term stewardship of the countryside etc, it is seen as a better outcome if agriculture is done by family farmers with a long-term interest in the land rather than agribusinesses. It's not cut and dried, but I'm willing to buy that. The IHT dodge is a way of trying to keep farms in the hands of families with a long-term interest rather than agribusinesses. I'm not convinced it's 100% effective, mind. But that's the reason for it. What we should be arguing about is how we better effect that particular outcome (if we are agreed that the outcome is worthwhile - I think it is, but am open to persuasion.)
Unfortunately the net outcome of the IHT dodge has been to drive up the price of agricultural land even further out of reach of ordinary farmers.
It seems to me that this is a classic case of subsidising a proxy for the thing you want in the hope that you will get more of that thing & discovering that the market will very efficiently drive up the price of the proxy instead.
And if we could do a simulcast of being on our LNER apps I could prove to everyone that apart from the 10.45 departure there simply are no tickets available to buy to go from London to Newcastle on any day next week.
Simply not true. I am on the LNER website right now and there are tickets available for every train from 8.30am onwards.
Edit. This is for Monday next week but the same applies to the other days.
Ah ok. There are no open returns. You have to specify a return date.
Is this the end of the world? No. Is it an irritant? Yes.
LNER abolished return tickets last year IIRC.
They did. And very tedious it is for going on holiday. Getting a cheap advance ticket on the outward journey and then getting stung for a bought-on-the-day single coming back normally works out to more than an off-peak open return used to be. And booking an advance single for the way back is a recipe for stress or waste or waiting.
Note that the Netherlands elected it's most right wing gov't ever after their own gov'ts previous run in with farmers.
What we're seeing here is how a cliquey North London left-wing metropolitan Fabian set understands neither business nor farming, and how that so readily bleeds into policy.
I've been astonished at how politically inept they've been, but they've never done it before and lack the humility to listen to anyone who has.
Can you explain, in simple terms, why farmers deserve to pass on their farms to their heirs 100% tax free when others (with similar levels of assets in their estates) don’t?
Because if they can't then in a lot of cases the famers are no longer viable as businesses. As has been repeated many tiems recently (and as the thicker supporters of this policy fail to comprehend) farms tend to be asset rich and cash poor. Now I suppose the farmer could always sell a tractor or some land to pay the IHT but then the business may no longer be able to operate.
The only pepole who will benefit from this (apart from lawyers and accountants) are the biggest farm enterprises who will be able to buy up the family farms and also won't have to pay IHT.
Also the big family trusts, too, so it's not just soulless commercial firms.
But those are often aristocrats so HYUFD doesn't want to go there.
There's a real issue about trusts and IHT - I entirely agree - but maybe that is next on the menu.
changes were made there as well but didn't get much publicity.
Note that the Netherlands elected it's most right wing gov't ever after their own gov'ts previous run in with farmers.
What we're seeing here is how a cliquey North London left-wing metropolitan Fabian set understands neither business nor farming, and how that so readily bleeds into policy.
I've been astonished at how politically inept they've been, but they've never done it before and lack the humility to listen to anyone who has.
Can you explain, in simple terms, why farmers deserve to pass on their farms to their heirs 100% tax free when others (with similar levels of assets in their estates) don’t?
It's not exactly 'deserve to'.
For us townies, in terms of beauty, conservation, recreational amenity, long-term stewardship of the countryside etc, it is seen as a better outcome if agriculture is done by family farmers with a long-term interest in the land rather than agribusinesses. It's not cut and dried, but I'm willing to buy that. The IHT dodge is a way of trying to keep farms in the hands of families with a long-term interest rather than agribusinesses. I'm not convinced it's 100% effective, mind. But that's the reason for it. What we should be arguing about is how we better effect that particular outcome (if we are agreed that the outcome is worthwhile - I think it is, but am open to persuasion.)
In this case the farmers are to a considerable extent being tulchan cows for the big landowners and landowning families, which is a major issue with this outcome and with the politicking about it.
It's not small farmers vs landowning families. It is people who care about the stewardship of the countryside vs those who see it purely in commercial terms (ie the large agribusinesses).
That is the critical element.
Interesting to see left wingers (no idea if you are one of those) advocating for the agricultural industrial complex.
I was thinking of the IHT issue - investors seeing agric land as an IHT avoidance mechanism. That certainly conflicts with the interests of farmers qua farmers.
To all those people who make farming families out to be rich: I'd like to see them get up at dawn and work until dusk, in all sorts of weathers. To have a year where the weather means all your profits are wiped out, or where government legislation floods the market with cheap meat. Where tourists routinely stray off the paths, interfere with livestock and knock down walls and fences. Where you have to go out in the snow to find ewes that are lambing. If they want us to be rich, then they should fucking well pay more for British food. Until then, I'll go work in an office and they can ****ing well starve.
Said to me, in rather stronger terms, by a farming relative.
Anyone who has watched Clarkson's farm ought to be aware that while the asset might by very great, the profits are often marginal. I'm afraid in this instance, as in others, its Labour revealing its prejudices. I knew a phd student at UEA who hated, literally hated farmers because his ancesters had been farm workers. I can see him bringing in policies such as this.
The odd thing is that, up until the 1950s, there was a strong rural farming vote for Labour, particularly in East Anglia.
Part of that might be the collapse of tenancy after WW2. In 1950 agriculture employed around 800,000 people (paid labour and tenants rather than farm owners). Today it is around 180,000. The amalgamation of farms meant the actual number of farms has fallen by 65% since 1950. Most of this is amalgamation into much larger agri-business estates. And most of that is due to smaller family farms ceasing to be viable, in no small part due to IHT up until the 1980s. They sold out and the bigger new farms had less need of agricultural labour. And as the life tenancies introduced in 1948 died out the big farms stopped having tenants.
Note that the Netherlands elected it's most right wing gov't ever after their own gov'ts previous run in with farmers.
What we're seeing here is how a cliquey North London left-wing metropolitan Fabian set understands neither business nor farming, and how that so readily bleeds into policy.
I've been astonished at how politically inept they've been, but they've never done it before and lack the humility to listen to anyone who has.
Can you explain, in simple terms, why farmers deserve to pass on their farms to their heirs 100% tax free when others (with similar levels of assets in their estates) don’t?
It's not exactly 'deserve to'.
For us townies, in terms of beauty, conservation, recreational amenity, long-term stewardship of the countryside etc, it is seen as a better outcome if agriculture is done by family farmers with a long-term interest in the land rather than agribusinesses. It's not cut and dried, but I'm willing to buy that. The IHT dodge is a way of trying to keep farms in the hands of families with a long-term interest rather than agribusinesses. I'm not convinced it's 100% effective, mind. But that's the reason for it. What we should be arguing about is how we better effect that particular outcome (if we are agreed that the outcome is worthwhile - I think it is, but am open to persuasion.)
Unfortunately the net outcome of the IHT dodge has been to drive up the price of agricultural land even further out of reach of ordinary farmers.
It seems to me that this is a classic case of subsidising a proxy for the thing you want in the hope that you will get more of that thing & discovering that the market will very efficiently drive up the price of the proxy instead.
No it hasn't. We had this discussion yesterday. Farm land values didn't start to increase until almost 2 decades after the introduction of INT relief.
Breakdown of 2024 election vote by sexuality. Tories got their highest vote share among straight women, Labour among lesbian/gay women, Reform with straight men and the greens and lib dems with bisexual women. https://x.com/LukeTryl/status/1857482400474747384
Across the 6 categories, the LibDem vote share varies from 10% (lesbian) to 16% (gay men), so remarkably consistent.
The Green vote varies from 5% (straight men) to 22% (bisexual women). The Conservative vote varies from 6% (bisexual women) to 27% (straight women).
I think this reliably proves that the LibDems are the most egalitarian party sexually.
How many "efnik" MPs do you have out of 72?
Five?
Hobhouse: German Babarinde: Black British Moran: Palestinian/British Perteghella: Italian Wilson: Asian British
The central issue as I see it is that people don't take the concept of "food security" seriously. They point to imports and the limitless availability of foods from across the planet in Aldi (in particular from Bordeaux, ahem) and scorn the idea that a country should be able to feed itself from its own resources.
Now, is that a sensible view? We have had COVID and Ukraine which tested this to the limits perhaps (or was it just panic buying/hoarding).
If we really think that food security is an issue then it matters that farms are afforded protection and incentives in a non-monopolistic way (what happens if Farmer Ted's farm is bought by Russian AgriGrain Inc). If we don't, it doesn't.
We don't have food security anyway. We only grow 60% of our calories, a lot of what we grow depends on imports from other parts of the world, and the value of what we grow is subject to the vagaries of world markets.
It would take an enormous, fiscally crippling intervention to resolve all of that.
The UK was last self-sufficient in food around the mid 18th century. Up until the mid 19th we could feed outselves most of the time, but a poor harvest would have led to starvation without imports. Since the 1830s or so we have never been self-sufficient in food.
Arguably we could (just about) be self-sufficient if we ditched beef cattle, and reduced pig and chicken numbers to those that could be fed only on food waste / forage on scrap land, plus what feed could be grown on land unsuitable for growing human edible crops. We’d effectively be subsisting on a constrained, very seasonal vegetarian diet supplemented with a little extra meat.
Note that the Netherlands elected it's most right wing gov't ever after their own gov'ts previous run in with farmers.
What we're seeing here is how a cliquey North London left-wing metropolitan Fabian set understands neither business nor farming, and how that so readily bleeds into policy.
I've been astonished at how politically inept they've been, but they've never done it before and lack the humility to listen to anyone who has.
Can you explain, in simple terms, why farmers deserve to pass on their farms to their heirs 100% tax free when others (with similar levels of assets in their estates) don’t?
It's not exactly 'deserve to'.
For us townies, in terms of beauty, conservation, recreational amenity, long-term stewardship of the countryside etc, it is seen as a better outcome if agriculture is done by family farmers with a long-term interest in the land rather than agribusinesses. It's not cut and dried, but I'm willing to buy that. The IHT dodge is a way of trying to keep farms in the hands of families with a long-term interest rather than agribusinesses. I'm not convinced it's 100% effective, mind. But that's the reason for it. What we should be arguing about is how we better effect that particular outcome (if we are agreed that the outcome is worthwhile - I think it is, but am open to persuasion.)
Unfortunately the net outcome of the IHT dodge has been to drive up the price of agricultural land even further out of reach of ordinary farmers.
It seems to me that this is a classic case of subsidising a proxy for the thing you want in the hope that you will get more of that thing & discovering that the market will very efficiently drive up the price of the proxy instead.
No it hasn't. We had this discussion yesterday. Farm land values didn't start to increase until almost 2 decades after the introduction of INT relief.
Isn't that simply because investors stopped investing in UK industry and started buying things like London property and, indeed, farmland, relatively speaking?
Take out Jeremy Clarkson, who has become a national treasure following Clarkson's Farm, and I'm not sure the traction that this protest would get today. But plenty more people understand how a farm works than did before he appeared with his Prime series.
Now of course for him it's a plaything and I think people realise that he is the exception. Because what the prog did very well was illustrate how thin farming margins can be and how many if not most are living on the edge.
You only have to look at rates of suicide of farmers to understand this.
Anecdotal evidence. I have my parents staying with me at the moment, and they have just been introduced to Clarkson’s Farm. They’ve binge-watched the whole of it in a week, and are totally astonished by how the numbers just don’t add up.
Now Jeremy has other commitments, and he hired a tractor driver to drive his tractor and a shepherd to drive his sheep - but the reality for many farmers, including many of his neighbours, is very different, something that was made abundently clear on the show. Clarkson can afford to invest into a restaurant and make money from televising his fight with the council*, but other farmers don’t have the same publicity for any of their attempts to vertically integrate their own supply chains.
It’s difficult to underestimate the effect of this series on the average British townie, and it’s certainly made support for the farmers against the government much higher than it would otherwise have been. Not the best of targets for Starmer and Reeves to have chosen.
In the midst of all the protests, it looks like an individual landowner can still gift land and providing they survive 7 years, this will not be subject to tax - provided the recipient does not sell it. Though obviously not much good to very elderly owners
Can someone please clarify what, if any changes to trusts on APR there has been? As far as I can see there is still a loophole for pre 2006 trusts as Phil stated upthread
Ltd companies look like they are still able to make transfers, under the £1 million every 10 year threshold?
Note that the Netherlands elected it's most right wing gov't ever after their own gov'ts previous run in with farmers.
What we're seeing here is how a cliquey North London left-wing metropolitan Fabian set understands neither business nor farming, and how that so readily bleeds into policy.
I've been astonished at how politically inept they've been, but they've never done it before and lack the humility to listen to anyone who has.
Can you explain, in simple terms, why farmers deserve to pass on their farms to their heirs 100% tax free when others (with similar levels of assets in their estates) don’t?
It's not exactly 'deserve to'.
For us townies, in terms of beauty, conservation, recreational amenity, long-term stewardship of the countryside etc, it is seen as a better outcome if agriculture is done by family farmers with a long-term interest in the land rather than agribusinesses. It's not cut and dried, but I'm willing to buy that. The IHT dodge is a way of trying to keep farms in the hands of families with a long-term interest rather than agribusinesses. I'm not convinced it's 100% effective, mind. But that's the reason for it. What we should be arguing about is how we better effect that particular outcome (if we are agreed that the outcome is worthwhile - I think it is, but am open to persuasion.)
Unfortunately the net outcome of the IHT dodge has been to drive up the price of agricultural land even further out of reach of ordinary farmers.
It seems to me that this is a classic case of subsidising a proxy for the thing you want in the hope that you will get more of that thing & discovering that the market will very efficiently drive up the price of the proxy instead.
No it hasn't. We had this discussion yesterday. Farm land values didn't start to increase until almost 2 decades after the introduction of INT relief.
It seems plausible that pre 2006, the wealthy were evading IHT by putting assets into trust. When trusts were hit with a 6% per decade asset tax, they started putting their money into one of the few UK assets that were still 100% free of inheritance tax: farmland.
Note that the Netherlands elected it's most right wing gov't ever after their own gov'ts previous run in with farmers.
What we're seeing here is how a cliquey North London left-wing metropolitan Fabian set understands neither business nor farming, and how that so readily bleeds into policy.
I've been astonished at how politically inept they've been, but they've never done it before and lack the humility to listen to anyone who has.
Can you explain, in simple terms, why farmers deserve to pass on their farms to their heirs 100% tax free when others (with similar levels of assets in their estates) don’t?
It's not exactly 'deserve to'.
For us townies, in terms of beauty, conservation, recreational amenity, long-term stewardship of the countryside etc, it is seen as a better outcome if agriculture is done by family farmers with a long-term interest in the land rather than agribusinesses. It's not cut and dried, but I'm willing to buy that. The IHT dodge is a way of trying to keep farms in the hands of families with a long-term interest rather than agribusinesses. I'm not convinced it's 100% effective, mind. But that's the reason for it. What we should be arguing about is how we better effect that particular outcome (if we are agreed that the outcome is worthwhile - I think it is, but am open to persuasion.)
Unfortunately the net outcome of the IHT dodge has been to drive up the price of agricultural land even further out of reach of ordinary farmers.
It seems to me that this is a classic case of subsidising a proxy for the thing you want in the hope that you will get more of that thing & discovering that the market will very efficiently drive up the price of the proxy instead.
No it hasn't. We had this discussion yesterday. Farm land values didn't start to increase until almost 2 decades after the introduction of INT relief.
It seems plausible that pre 2006, the wealthy were evading IHT by putting assets into trust. When trusts were hit with a 6% per decade asset tax, they started putting their money into one of the few UK assets that were still 100% free of inheritance tax: farmland.
THe IHT relief which is what we are talking about came in in the early 1980s.
Note that the Netherlands elected it's most right wing gov't ever after their own gov'ts previous run in with farmers.
What we're seeing here is how a cliquey North London left-wing metropolitan Fabian set understands neither business nor farming, and how that so readily bleeds into policy.
I've been astonished at how politically inept they've been, but they've never done it before and lack the humility to listen to anyone who has.
Can you explain, in simple terms, why farmers deserve to pass on their farms to their heirs 100% tax free when others (with similar levels of assets in their estates) don’t?
It's not exactly 'deserve to'.
For us townies, in terms of beauty, conservation, recreational amenity, long-term stewardship of the countryside etc, it is seen as a better outcome if agriculture is done by family farmers with a long-term interest in the land rather than agribusinesses. It's not cut and dried, but I'm willing to buy that. The IHT dodge is a way of trying to keep farms in the hands of families with a long-term interest rather than agribusinesses. I'm not convinced it's 100% effective, mind. But that's the reason for it. What we should be arguing about is how we better effect that particular outcome (if we are agreed that the outcome is worthwhile - I think it is, but am open to persuasion.)
Unfortunately the net outcome of the IHT dodge has been to drive up the price of agricultural land even further out of reach of ordinary farmers.
It seems to me that this is a classic case of subsidising a proxy for the thing you want in the hope that you will get more of that thing & discovering that the market will very efficiently drive up the price of the proxy instead.
No it hasn't. We had this discussion yesterday. Farm land values didn't start to increase until almost 2 decades after the introduction of INT relief.
It seems plausible that pre 2006, the wealthy were evading IHT by putting assets into trust. When trusts were hit with a 6% per decade asset tax, they started putting their money into one of the few UK assets that were still 100% free of inheritance tax: farmland.
That's very interesting - in view of the apparent anomaly RT identifies.
Triouble is, RT also provides excellent evidence for a major capital gain over the last generation or so. And IHT is very definitely for cutting the state a share of otherwise untaxed capital gains passed on at death. Indeed, it used to be calculated as an actual capital gain tax IIRC under its older name of CTT.
Interesting argument by the government that farmers want to benefit from good public services but let others pay for them.
At last they're getting their PR sorted out.
Except if you live in the country you would know we have never had good public services and probably never will. Paying high taxes to improve the public services of those living in cities is really not going to be a winning argument.
Your daily reminder that the Destroy the Farms Tax will raise about £600m a year
We spend about £3.5bn a year on putting asylum seekers in hotels, a total that rises by the hour
Should be falling, given that we're now, finally, starting to get a grip on the backlog? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68435629 (see the chart half way down with, it must be said, a really bizarre labelling of the x-axis)
Still, I guess the obvious thing is to house asylum seekers in tents on farms abandoned by IHT-hit would-be farmers and getting them to work the land instead? Win-win and also does its bit for William Glenn's wish to see more ethnic diversity in farming
So how come farm land is so valuable when it appears you can't actually make any money out of farming it?
The price contains an embedded option on getting planning permission, which results in a ~30x increase in the price of land. Add in demand from the wealthy trying to avoid IHT & here we are.
IHT valuations are lower, precisely because of this (as I described earlier) but that doesn’t help anyone looking to buy land to farm.
(Arguably farmland for rent should be cheap, but I would imagine that the instability of renting your farmland combined with the necessarily long term nature land use choices if you want to make farming viable makes farming someone elses land unappealing. Any improvements you make will accrue to the land owner, not you after all.)
The central issue as I see it is that people don't take the concept of "food security" seriously. They point to imports and the limitless availability of foods from across the planet in Aldi (in particular from Bordeaux, ahem) and scorn the idea that a country should be able to feed itself from its own resources.
Now, is that a sensible view? We have had COVID and Ukraine which tested this to the limits perhaps (or was it just panic buying/hoarding).
If we really think that food security is an issue then it matters that farms are afforded protection and incentives in a non-monopolistic way (what happens if Farmer Ted's farm is bought by Russian AgriGrain Inc). If we don't, it doesn't.
We don't have food security anyway. We only grow 60% of our calories, a lot of what we grow depends on imports from other parts of the world, and the value of what we grow is subject to the vagaries of world markets.
It would take an enormous, fiscally crippling intervention to resolve all of that.
The UK was last self-sufficient in food around the mid 18th century. Up until the mid 19th we could feed outselves most of the time, but a poor harvest would have led to starvation without imports. Since the 1830s or so we have never been self-sufficient in food.
Arguably we could (just about) be self-sufficient if we ditched beef cattle, and reduced pig and chicken numbers to those that could be fed only on food waste / forage on scrap land, plus what feed could be grown on land unsuitable for growing human edible crops. We’d effectively be subsisting on a constrained, very seasonal vegetarian diet supplemented with a little extra meat.
Interesting argument by the government that farmers want to benefit from good public services but let others pay for them.
At last they're getting their PR sorted out.
Except if you live in the country you would know we have never had good public services and probably never will. Paying high taxes to improve the public services of those living in cities is really not going to be a winning argument.
It may be for the people who live in cities, who also pay taxes.
Breakdown of 2024 election vote by sexuality. Tories got their highest vote share among straight women, Labour among lesbian/gay women, Reform with straight men and the greens and lib dems with bisexual women. https://x.com/LukeTryl/status/1857482400474747384
Across the 6 categories, the LibDem vote share varies from 10% (lesbian) to 16% (gay men), so remarkably consistent.
The Green vote varies from 5% (straight men) to 22% (bisexual women). The Conservative vote varies from 6% (bisexual women) to 27% (straight women).
I think this reliably proves that the LibDems are the most egalitarian party sexually.
How many "efnik" MPs do you have out of 72?
Five?
Hobhouse: German Babarinde: Black British Moran: Palestinian/British Perteghella: Italian Wilson: Asian British
Taking a step back, it is interesting that this agricultural policy change has cut across typical political dividing lines on here. I imagine most of pb is urban so not an urban/rural thing...
New MoreinCommon poll shows voters oppose the tractor tax by a 57% to 24% margin.
A massive 75% of Tory voters think a a farmer who passes their farm to the next generation should not be required to pay inheritance tax on it as do 74% of Reform voters and 56% of LDs.
56% of 2019 Conservative voters who switched to vote Labour in 2024 also believe family farms should be exempt from inheritance tax.
Labour and Green voters are more divided but still 45% of Labour voters 47% of Green voters think the farmer inheritance tax exemption should have been kept
Taking a step back, it is interesting that this agricultural policy change has cut across typical political dividing lines on here. I imagine most of pb is urban so not an urban/rural thing...
New MoreinCommon poll shows voters oppose the tractor tax by a 57% to 24% margin.
A massive 75% of Tory voters think a a farmer who passes their farm to the next generation should not be required to pay inheritance tax on it as do 74% of Reform voters and 56% of LDs.
56% of 2019 Conservative voters who switched to vote Labour in 2024 also believe family farms should be exempt from inheritance tax.
Labour and Green voters are more divided but still 45% of Labour voters 47% of Green voters think the farmer inheritance tax exemption should have been kept
But there NEVER WAS A FARMER INHERITANCE TAX EXEMPTION. It was the LANDOWNER not the FARMER.
I am an owner occupier I want to leave my farm to the son of someone who has worked with me since 1984 through good times and bad to keep the farm the same viable business which my great great grandfather, a parish orphan born in 1867 started as a tenant in 1898.
You all ignore the fact we are not allowed to do as we could choose. I could build 30 houses on my bottom meadow tomorrow and sell them before they were built. That would pay your fucking IHT but you won't let me do what I would choose as a sensible business decision.
YOU threatened to put my grandfather and his brother in prison because they REFUSED to put drainage trenches in Breaksey Hill. They said it would have been an ecological disaster and so there are no trenches on Breaksey Hill. Now YOU say trenches must be filled in, because evil farmers dug them up. You omit the fact they were doing it at gun point.
You ask by what right I choose to do the best for my farm. My family has looked after this land for 126 years and everthing we have done since 1898 has been to try to do the best for the farm and the land. Judging from her speech this morning Kemi gets it. I did not vote for her as leader but she has been as spot on as Mrs T in understanding what is needed. She gets it just as Starmer and Wilson and Callaghan before him doesn't.
Interesting argument by the government that farmers want to benefit from good public services but let others pay for them.
At last they're getting their PR sorted out.
Except if you live in the country you would know we have never had good public services and probably never will. Paying high taxes to improve the public services of those living in cities is really not going to be a winning argument.
It may be for the people who live in cities, who also pay taxes.
This is true. But they also eat food. And food inflation is one of the big reasons the last Government was swept away.
Interesting argument by the government that farmers want to benefit from good public services but let others pay for them.
At last they're getting their PR sorted out.
Except if you live in the country you would know we have never had good public services and probably never will. Paying high taxes to improve the public services of those living in cities is really not going to be a winning argument.
They are also heavily subsidised. It's why any debate about the rural economy is so difficult - on a spreadsheet, it always looks like a dreadful ROI. At the other end of the scale, you have London getting Crossrail, HS2...
(The public services we enjoyed in the north of Scotland were excellent, with the exception of maternity services)
Your daily reminder that the Destroy the Farms Tax will raise about £600m a year
We spend about £3.5bn a year on putting asylum seekers in hotels, a total that rises by the hour
Should be falling, given that we're now, finally, starting to get a grip on the backlog? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68435629 (see the chart half way down with, it must be said, a really bizarre labelling of the x-axis)
Still, I guess the obvious thing is to house asylum seekers in tents on farms abandoned by IHT-hit would-be farmers and getting them to work the land instead? Win-win and also does its bit for William Glenn's wish to see more ethnic diversity in farming
Interesting argument by the government that farmers want to benefit from good public services but let others pay for them.
At last they're getting their PR sorted out.
Except if you live in the country you would know we have never had good public services and probably never will. Paying high taxes to improve the public services of those living in cities is really not going to be a winning argument.
It may be for the people who live in cities, who also pay taxes.
This is true. But they also eat food. And food inflation is one of the big reasons the last Government was swept away.
If we paid prices for food that reflect the cost of producing it farmers would be better off but the price of just about everything would be far higher. The roots of farming discontent lie in the power of supermarkets to dictate prices but we all benefit from that so do not really care very much.
Your daily reminder that the Destroy the Farms Tax will raise about £600m a year
We spend about £3.5bn a year on putting asylum seekers in hotels, a total that rises by the hour
Should be falling, given that we're now, finally, starting to get a grip on the backlog? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68435629 (see the chart half way down with, it must be said, a really bizarre labelling of the x-axis)
Still, I guess the obvious thing is to house asylum seekers in tents on farms abandoned by IHT-hit would-be farmers and getting them to work the land instead? Win-win and also does its bit for William Glenn's wish to see more ethnic diversity in farming
That's from February?
Yes. Any reason to think the trend has been reversed since then? It's possible, of course, but I'd work on the trend until there are new data.
(If your point is 'so under the Conservative government' then yes to that, too)
ETA: My "now, finally" I can see is a bit misleading, but not intentionally so - 'now' as in this year and the back end of last. 'Recently' would have been better.
Note that the Netherlands elected it's most right wing gov't ever after their own gov'ts previous run in with farmers.
What we're seeing here is how a cliquey North London left-wing metropolitan Fabian set understands neither business nor farming, and how that so readily bleeds into policy.
I've been astonished at how politically inept they've been, but they've never done it before and lack the humility to listen to anyone who has.
Can you explain, in simple terms, why farmers deserve to pass on their farms to their heirs 100% tax free when others (with similar levels of assets in their estates) don’t?
It's not exactly 'deserve to'.
For us townies, in terms of beauty, conservation, recreational amenity, long-term stewardship of the countryside etc, it is seen as a better outcome if agriculture is done by family farmers with a long-term interest in the land rather than agribusinesses. It's not cut and dried, but I'm willing to buy that. The IHT dodge is a way of trying to keep farms in the hands of families with a long-term interest rather than agribusinesses. I'm not convinced it's 100% effective, mind. But that's the reason for it. What we should be arguing about is how we better effect that particular outcome (if we are agreed that the outcome is worthwhile - I think it is, but am open to persuasion.)
Unfortunately the net outcome of the IHT dodge has been to drive up the price of agricultural land even further out of reach of ordinary farmers.
It seems to me that this is a classic case of subsidising a proxy for the thing you want in the hope that you will get more of that thing & discovering that the market will very efficiently drive up the price of the proxy instead.
No it hasn't. We had this discussion yesterday. Farm land values didn't start to increase until almost 2 decades after the introduction of INT relief.
It seems plausible that pre 2006, the wealthy were evading IHT by putting assets into trust. When trusts were hit with a 6% per decade asset tax, they started putting their money into one of the few UK assets that were still 100% free of inheritance tax: farmland.
THe IHT relief which is what we are talking about came in in the early 1980s.
I think you have missed my point: 100% relief on IHT for farmland may have been introduced in the 1980s, but the wealthy at that point could evade IHT by putting their assets into trust: they had no extra incentive to buy any more farmland than they already owned as it made no difference to their tax position.
When the tax treatment of trusts changed in 2006, suddenly farmland is one of the very few assets you can own that you can pass onto your heirs tax free & so the wealthy (& moderately weathly) start buying it in enough size to move the market significantly.
That’s the argument I’m making. It seems a plausible one?
Interesting argument by the government that farmers want to benefit from good public services but let others pay for them.
At last they're getting their PR sorted out.
Except if you live in the country you would know we have never had good public services and probably never will. Paying high taxes to improve the public services of those living in cities is really not going to be a winning argument.
The interesting thing here is how much they seem to relish a fight with the farmers.
It's as if they believe their own propaganda about them being well-heeled landowning toffs.
And if we could do a simulcast of being on our LNER apps I could prove to everyone that apart from the 10.45 departure there simply are no tickets available to buy to go from London to Newcastle on any day next week.
Simply not true. I am on the LNER website right now and there are tickets available for every train from 8.30am onwards.
Edit. This is for Monday next week but the same applies to the other days.
Ah ok. There are no open returns. You have to specify a return date.
Is this the end of the world? No. Is it an irritant? Yes.
A trial in which return tickets have been scrapped to make fares simpler will be extended as part of a shake-up of the country's railways.
Transport Secretary Mark Harper confirmed that LNER, which operates trains along the East Coast mainline, will extend its trial of selling single tickets only on its routes from Spring.
If it continues to be successful it will be extended to other operators.
Some years ago I needed a single ticket from Norwich to Salisbury. I was going to pick up a new car, so had no need of the return. The ticket office person persisted manfully to get me to buy a return "Its just a pound more for the return", he wailed. I explained I had no need.
The crazy point about this was why was it only a pound more for the return?
I accept that pure pricing by mile would probably not work, but why shouldn't a return be 2 x a single?
The central issue as I see it is that people don't take the concept of "food security" seriously. They point to imports and the limitless availability of foods from across the planet in Aldi (in particular from Bordeaux, ahem) and scorn the idea that a country should be able to feed itself from its own resources.
Now, is that a sensible view? We have had COVID and Ukraine which tested this to the limits perhaps (or was it just panic buying/hoarding).
If we really think that food security is an issue then it matters that farms are afforded protection and incentives in a non-monopolistic way (what happens if Farmer Ted's farm is bought by Russian AgriGrain Inc). If we don't, it doesn't.
We don't have food security anyway. We only grow 60% of our calories, a lot of what we grow depends on imports from other parts of the world, and the value of what we grow is subject to the vagaries of world markets.
It would take an enormous, fiscally crippling intervention to resolve all of that.
The UK was last self-sufficient in food around the mid 18th century. Up until the mid 19th we could feed outselves most of the time, but a poor harvest would have led to starvation without imports. Since the 1830s or so we have never been self-sufficient in food.
Arguably we could (just about) be self-sufficient if we ditched beef cattle, and reduced pig and chicken numbers to those that could be fed only on food waste / forage on scrap land, plus what feed could be grown on land unsuitable for growing human edible crops. We’d effectively be subsisting on a constrained, very seasonal vegetarian diet supplemented with a little extra meat.
Take out Jeremy Clarkson, who has become a national treasure following Clarkson's Farm, and I'm not sure the traction that this protest would get today. But plenty more people understand how a farm works than did before he appeared with his Prime series.
Now of course for him it's a plaything and I think people realise that he is the exception. Because what the prog did very well was illustrate how thin farming margins can be and how many if not most are living on the edge.
You only have to look at rates of suicide of farmers to understand this.
Anecdotal evidence. I have my parents staying with me at the moment, and they have just been introduced to Clarkson’s Farm. They’ve binge-watched the whole of it in a week, and are totally astonished by how the numbers just don’t add up.
Now Jeremy has other commitments, and he hired a tractor driver to drive his tractor and a shepherd to drive his sheep - but the reality for many farmers, including many of his neighbours, is very different, something that was made abundently clear on the show. Clarkson can afford to invest into a restaurant and make money from televising his fight with the council*, but other farmers don’t have the same publicity for any of their attempts to vertically integrate their own supply chains.
It’s difficult to underestimate the effect of this series on the average British townie, and it’s certainly made support for the farmers against the government much higher than it would otherwise have been. Not the best of targets for Starmer and Reeves to have chosen.
Oops, forgot to add the *
* Whoever the feck at West Oxfordshire District Council thought it might be a good idea to allow Clarkson to bring video cameras into their meeting is a total idiot. Unless of course it was their aim to highlight what NIMBYism and local vendettas look like in practice, to a massive audience of people who generally hate NIMBYs and their local council.
Interesting argument by the government that farmers want to benefit from good public services but let others pay for them.
At last they're getting their PR sorted out.
Except if you live in the country you would know we have never had good public services and probably never will. Paying high taxes to improve the public services of those living in cities is really not going to be a winning argument.
The interesting thing here is how much they seem to relish a fight with the farmers.
It's as if they believe their own propaganda about them being well-heeled landowning toffs.
See also fox hunting, VAT on private schools etc. It’s a religion for them.
Interesting argument by the government that farmers want to benefit from good public services but let others pay for them.
At last they're getting their PR sorted out.
Except if you live in the country you would know we have never had good public services and probably never will. Paying high taxes to improve the public services of those living in cities is really not going to be a winning argument.
The interesting thing here is how much they seem to relish a fight with the farmers.
It's as if they believe their own propaganda about them being well-heeled landowning toffs.
See also fox hunting, VAT on private schools etc. It’s a religion for them.
You need to have a fair few chips on your shoulder to want to be a Labour MP in the first place, it seems.
Interesting piece in the Spectator: no MP for a truly 'rural' area sits in Cabinet: most represent London, Leeds or Manchester seats.
The four-man DEFRA team sit for constituencies in Streatham, Cambridge, Coventry and Hull.
Interesting, Labour definitely does have some heavily rural constituencies, Montgomeryshire and Glyndwr looks to me to be one of their largest by area.
Take out Jeremy Clarkson, who has become a national treasure following Clarkson's Farm, and I'm not sure the traction that this protest would get today. But plenty more people understand how a farm works than did before he appeared with his Prime series.
Now of course for him it's a plaything and I think people realise that he is the exception. Because what the prog did very well was illustrate how thin farming margins can be and how many if not most are living on the edge.
You only have to look at rates of suicide of farmers to understand this.
Anecdotal evidence. I have my parents staying with me at the moment, and they have just been introduced to Clarkson’s Farm. They’ve binge-watched the whole of it in a week, and are totally astonished by how the numbers just don’t add up.
Now Jeremy has other commitments, and he hired a tractor driver to drive his tractor and a shepherd to drive his sheep - but the reality for many farmers, including many of his neighbours, is very different, something that was made abundently clear on the show. Clarkson can afford to invest into a restaurant and make money from televising his fight with the council*, but other farmers don’t have the same publicity for any of their attempts to vertically integrate their own supply chains.
It’s difficult to underestimate the effect of this series on the average British townie, and it’s certainly made support for the farmers against the government much higher than it would otherwise have been. Not the best of targets for Starmer and Reeves to have chosen.
Oops, forgot to add the *
* Whoever the feck at West Oxfordshire District Council thought it might be a good idea to allow Clarkson to bring video cameras into their meeting is a total idiot. Unless of course it was their aim to highlight what NIMBYism and local vendettas look like in practice, to a massive audience of people who generally hate NIMBYs and their local council.
As an apt demonstration of how local councils are an obstacle to economic growth in this country you couldn’t ask for better.
As a demonstration of how profitable modern farming is, I’m not so sure: Clarkson clearly doesn’t follow the advice of his land agent!
Breakdown of 2024 election vote by sexuality. Tories got their highest vote share among straight women, Labour among lesbian/gay women, Reform with straight men and the greens and lib dems with bisexual women. https://x.com/LukeTryl/status/1857482400474747384
Across the 6 categories, the LibDem vote share varies from 10% (lesbian) to 16% (gay men), so remarkably consistent.
The Green vote varies from 5% (straight men) to 22% (bisexual women). The Conservative vote varies from 6% (bisexual women) to 27% (straight women).
I think this reliably proves that the LibDems are the most egalitarian party sexually.
How many "efnik" MPs do you have out of 72?
Five?
Hobhouse: German Babarinde: Black British Moran: Palestinian/British Perteghella: Italian Wilson: Asian British
Lowest percentage of the Big Three parties?
I'd guess so. Higher than Reform UK or SNP or PC or Green or DUP or SF.
Interesting piece in the Spectator: no MP for a truly 'rural' area sits in Cabinet: most represent London, Leeds or Manchester seats.
The four-man DEFRA team sit for constituencies in Streatham, Cambridge, Coventry and Hull.
Is that not just the nature of being a Labour Government in the current environment? How many truly 'rural' constituencies have Labour MP's for them to be able to choose from?
And if we could do a simulcast of being on our LNER apps I could prove to everyone that apart from the 10.45 departure there simply are no tickets available to buy to go from London to Newcastle on any day next week.
Simply not true. I am on the LNER website right now and there are tickets available for every train from 8.30am onwards.
Edit. This is for Monday next week but the same applies to the other days.
Ah ok. There are no open returns. You have to specify a return date.
Is this the end of the world? No. Is it an irritant? Yes.
A trial in which return tickets have been scrapped to make fares simpler will be extended as part of a shake-up of the country's railways.
Transport Secretary Mark Harper confirmed that LNER, which operates trains along the East Coast mainline, will extend its trial of selling single tickets only on its routes from Spring.
If it continues to be successful it will be extended to other operators.
Thanks. That's super weird. Because soon someone will have the bright idea of putting two single tickets together and calling them a "return".
A day return used to be 105-110% of the price of a single though. Now it’s presumably double, depending on which train you take back home.
Interesting piece in the Spectator: no MP for a truly 'rural' area sits in Cabinet: most represent London, Leeds or Manchester seats.
The four-man DEFRA team sit for constituencies in Streatham, Cambridge, Coventry and Hull.
Interesting, Labour definitely does have some heavily rural constituencies, Montgomeryshire and Glyndwr looks to me to be one of their largest by area.
That or Hexham or Western Isles, though that one is a bit sui generis.
Interesting argument by the government that farmers want to benefit from good public services but let others pay for them.
At last they're getting their PR sorted out.
Except if you live in the country you would know we have never had good public services and probably never will. Paying high taxes to improve the public services of those living in cities is really not going to be a winning argument.
Are you suggesting that reducing waiting lists and having a much-improved NHS, to give just one example, only benefits city dwellers?
Interesting argument by the government that farmers want to benefit from good public services but let others pay for them.
At last they're getting their PR sorted out.
Except if you live in the country you would know we have never had good public services and probably never will. Paying high taxes to improve the public services of those living in cities is really not going to be a winning argument.
Are you suggesting that reducing waiting lists and having a much-improved NHS, to give just one example, only benefits city dwellers?
That's an interesting question. It perhaps disproportionately benefits city-dwellers. But rural services can be very different requirements: the bus taking kids to school (which my sister relied on); or the library bus.
So how come farm land is so valuable when it appears you can't actually make any money out of farming it?
The price contains an embedded option on getting planning permission, which results in a ~30x increase in the price of land. Add in demand from the wealthy trying to avoid IHT & here we are.
IHT valuations are lower, precisely because of this (as I described earlier) but that doesn’t help anyone looking to buy land to farm.
(Arguably farmland for rent should be cheap, but I would imagine that the instability of renting your farmland combined with the necessarily long term nature land use choices if you want to make farming viable makes farming someone elses land unappealing. Any improvements you make will accrue to the land owner, not you after all.)
You can't apply for SFI grants etc without a long lease on the land so grass lets are becoming a thing of the past. Also Lib Dems councillors would like to compulsory purchase land at farm land prices give themselves planning permission and then sell it on to developers with a 50 fold mark up.
Interesting argument by the government that farmers want to benefit from good public services but let others pay for them.
At last they're getting their PR sorted out.
Except if you live in the country you would know we have never had good public services and probably never will. Paying high taxes to improve the public services of those living in cities is really not going to be a winning argument.
The interesting thing here is how much they seem to relish a fight with the farmers.
It's as if they believe their own propaganda about them being well-heeled landowning toffs.
See also fox hunting, VAT on private schools etc. It’s a religion for them.
As opposed to the Tory attack on Sure Start centres that has done so much long term harm to so many. It's just that those affected never had the voice or ready access to the media that fox hunters, farmers and private schools do.
Interesting piece in the Spectator: no MP for a truly 'rural' area sits in Cabinet: most represent London, Leeds or Manchester seats.
The four-man DEFRA team sit for constituencies in Streatham, Cambridge, Coventry and Hull.
Is that not just the nature of being a Labour Government in the current environment? How many truly 'rural' constituencies have Labour MP's for them to be able to choose from?
Just to add that the vast majority of rural seats won by Labour in 2024 were won by new MPs, obviously, who would not be considered for Cabinet roles four months after being elected.
Interesting argument by the government that farmers want to benefit from good public services but let others pay for them.
At last they're getting their PR sorted out.
Except if you live in the country you would know we have never had good public services and probably never will. Paying high taxes to improve the public services of those living in cities is really not going to be a winning argument.
Are you suggesting that reducing waiting lists and having a much-improved NHS, to give just one example, only benefits city dwellers?
Sure, the rich toff farmers all go private, innit?
Interesting argument by the government that farmers want to benefit from good public services but let others pay for them.
At last they're getting their PR sorted out.
Except if you live in the country you would know we have never had good public services and probably never will. Paying high taxes to improve the public services of those living in cities is really not going to be a winning argument.
The interesting thing here is how much they seem to relish a fight with the farmers.
It's as if they believe their own propaganda about them being well-heeled landowning toffs.
See also fox hunting, VAT on private schools etc. It’s a religion for them.
Fox hunting... heh, we were discussing earlier the proclivity of oppositions to fail to reverse things they opposed in opposition once they get into government.
Take out Jeremy Clarkson, who has become a national treasure following Clarkson's Farm, and I'm not sure the traction that this protest would get today. But plenty more people understand how a farm works than did before he appeared with his Prime series.
Now of course for him it's a plaything and I think people realise that he is the exception. Because what the prog did very well was illustrate how thin farming margins can be and how many if not most are living on the edge.
You only have to look at rates of suicide of farmers to understand this.
Anecdotal evidence. I have my parents staying with me at the moment, and they have just been introduced to Clarkson’s Farm. They’ve binge-watched the whole of it in a week, and are totally astonished by how the numbers just don’t add up.
Now Jeremy has other commitments, and he hired a tractor driver to drive his tractor and a shepherd to drive his sheep - but the reality for many farmers, including many of his neighbours, is very different, something that was made abundently clear on the show. Clarkson can afford to invest into a restaurant and make money from televising his fight with the council*, but other farmers don’t have the same publicity for any of their attempts to vertically integrate their own supply chains.
It’s difficult to underestimate the effect of this series on the average British townie, and it’s certainly made support for the farmers against the government much higher than it would otherwise have been. Not the best of targets for Starmer and Reeves to have chosen.
Oops, forgot to add the *
* Whoever the feck at West Oxfordshire District Council thought it might be a good idea to allow Clarkson to bring video cameras into their meeting is a total idiot. Unless of course it was their aim to highlight what NIMBYism and local vendettas look like in practice, to a massive audience of people who generally hate NIMBYs and their local council.
I think people have the right to film all council meetings. A decision taken by central government, then, not one for the local council.
And if we could do a simulcast of being on our LNER apps I could prove to everyone that apart from the 10.45 departure there simply are no tickets available to buy to go from London to Newcastle on any day next week.
Simply not true. I am on the LNER website right now and there are tickets available for every train from 8.30am onwards.
Edit. This is for Monday next week but the same applies to the other days.
Ah ok. There are no open returns. You have to specify a return date.
Is this the end of the world? No. Is it an irritant? Yes.
A trial in which return tickets have been scrapped to make fares simpler will be extended as part of a shake-up of the country's railways.
Transport Secretary Mark Harper confirmed that LNER, which operates trains along the East Coast mainline, will extend its trial of selling single tickets only on its routes from Spring.
If it continues to be successful it will be extended to other operators.
Thanks. That's super weird. Because soon someone will have the bright idea of putting two single tickets together and calling them a "return".
A day return used to be 105-110% of the price of a single though. Now it’s presumably double, depending on which train you take back home.
Nope - when LNER introduced their new prices the cost of the singles was halved so a single is now 50% of the old return price.
Take out Jeremy Clarkson, who has become a national treasure following Clarkson's Farm, and I'm not sure the traction that this protest would get today. But plenty more people understand how a farm works than did before he appeared with his Prime series.
Now of course for him it's a plaything and I think people realise that he is the exception. Because what the prog did very well was illustrate how thin farming margins can be and how many if not most are living on the edge.
You only have to look at rates of suicide of farmers to understand this.
Anecdotal evidence. I have my parents staying with me at the moment, and they have just been introduced to Clarkson’s Farm. They’ve binge-watched the whole of it in a week, and are totally astonished by how the numbers just don’t add up.
Now Jeremy has other commitments, and he hired a tractor driver to drive his tractor and a shepherd to drive his sheep - but the reality for many farmers, including many of his neighbours, is very different, something that was made abundently clear on the show. Clarkson can afford to invest into a restaurant and make money from televising his fight with the council*, but other farmers don’t have the same publicity for any of their attempts to vertically integrate their own supply chains.
It’s difficult to underestimate the effect of this series on the average British townie, and it’s certainly made support for the farmers against the government much higher than it would otherwise have been. Not the best of targets for Starmer and Reeves to have chosen.
Oops, forgot to add the *
* Whoever the feck at West Oxfordshire District Council thought it might be a good idea to allow Clarkson to bring video cameras into their meeting is a total idiot. Unless of course it was their aim to highlight what NIMBYism and local vendettas look like in practice, to a massive audience of people who generally hate NIMBYs and their local council.
You can film any council meeting nowadays and even live stream it. "Open government" might have been a joke in Yes Minister but this is a fundamental difference between the Conservative Party and our opponents. It was the Conservative Party which opened up local government in 1972 and it was us who allowed filming in council meetings. We take the view that by and large people being able to see what happens in meetings is a good thing.
The cringiest meetings are those Cabinet meetings where the cameras look in for three minutes of banter at the start.
Take out Jeremy Clarkson, who has become a national treasure following Clarkson's Farm, and I'm not sure the traction that this protest would get today. But plenty more people understand how a farm works than did before he appeared with his Prime series.
Now of course for him it's a plaything and I think people realise that he is the exception. Because what the prog did very well was illustrate how thin farming margins can be and how many if not most are living on the edge.
You only have to look at rates of suicide of farmers to understand this.
Anecdotal evidence. I have my parents staying with me at the moment, and they have just been introduced to Clarkson’s Farm. They’ve binge-watched the whole of it in a week, and are totally astonished by how the numbers just don’t add up.
Now Jeremy has other commitments, and he hired a tractor driver to drive his tractor and a shepherd to drive his sheep - but the reality for many farmers, including many of his neighbours, is very different, something that was made abundently clear on the show. Clarkson can afford to invest into a restaurant and make money from televising his fight with the council*, but other farmers don’t have the same publicity for any of their attempts to vertically integrate their own supply chains.
It’s difficult to underestimate the effect of this series on the average British townie, and it’s certainly made support for the farmers against the government much higher than it would otherwise have been. Not the best of targets for Starmer and Reeves to have chosen.
Oops, forgot to add the *
* Whoever the feck at West Oxfordshire District Council thought it might be a good idea to allow Clarkson to bring video cameras into their meeting is a total idiot. Unless of course it was their aim to highlight what NIMBYism and local vendettas look like in practice, to a massive audience of people who generally hate NIMBYs and their local council.
I think people have the right to film all council meetings. A decision taken by central government, then, not one for the local council.
As it should be. One of the worst things that has happend in recent years in local government is the growth of cabinets deciding things behind closed doors with even many councillors excluded until the final vote.
So how come farm land is so valuable when it appears you can't actually make any money out of farming it?
The price contains an embedded option on getting planning permission, which results in a ~30x increase in the price of land. Add in demand from the wealthy trying to avoid IHT & here we are.
IHT valuations are lower, precisely because of this (as I described earlier) but that doesn’t help anyone looking to buy land to farm.
(Arguably farmland for rent should be cheap, but I would imagine that the instability of renting your farmland combined with the necessarily long term nature land use choices if you want to make farming viable makes farming someone elses land unappealing. Any improvements you make will accrue to the land owner, not you after all.)
You can't apply for SFI grants etc without a long lease on the land so grass lets are becoming a thing of the past. Also Lib Dems councillors would like to compulsory purchase land at farm land prices give themselves planning permission and then sell it on to developers with a 50 fold mark up.
So you can get grants to do the things the government wants you to do, but only if you own the land outright: Tenant farmers get left out in the cold.
The “council purchases the land & gives itself planning permission” is how things are done in Denmark (or the Netherlands? One of those two IIRC). If I remember correctly if you want to build you sell the land at open market price to the council, they give it planning permission & sell it back to you at the uplifted price. Much simpler than faffing about with section 106 I guess!
Comments
But some heavy falls in the Manc-ish area, though, Mrs C heard from a colleague there.
The Green vote varies from 5% (straight men) to 22% (bisexual women). The Conservative vote varies from 6% (bisexual women) to 27% (straight women).
I think this reliably proves that the LibDems are the most egalitarian party sexually.
Now a fair percentage of trains are full LNER prefer to use reservations to manage passenger numbers.
As I posted earlier today - book a week in advance and the prices are very reasonable...
Supermarket pricing for milk, and so on.
The only pepole who will benefit from this (apart from lawyers and accountants) are the biggest farm enterprises who will be able to buy up the family farms and also won't have to pay IHT.
Same as most industrial companies these days lease their factories and virtually all logistics companies lease their warehouses.
Except now less productive farmers will have more of an incentive to sell up.
For us townies, in terms of beauty, conservation, recreational amenity, long-term stewardship of the countryside etc, it is seen as a better outcome if agriculture is done by family farmers with a long-term interest in the land rather than agribusinesses. It's not cut and dried, but I'm willing to buy that. The IHT dodge is a way of trying to keep farms in the hands of families with a long-term interest rather than agribusinesses.
I'm not convinced it's 100% effective, mind. But that's the reason for it.
What we should be arguing about is how we better effect that particular outcome (if we are agreed that the outcome is worthwhile - I think it is, but am open to persuasion.)
Look at MoreinCommon's issues polling at https://www.moreincommon.org.uk/our-work/tracking-public-opinion/ Farming doesn't feature. There is 2% for "other".
But those are often aristocrats so HYUFD doesn't want to go there.
There's a real issue about trusts and IHT - I entirely agree - but maybe that is next on the menu.
Conservatives 29%
Labour 27%
Reform 19%
LDs 11%
Greens 8%
https://x.com/LukeTryl/status/1856249257214239046
Now, is that a sensible view? We have had COVID and Ukraine which tested this to the limits perhaps (or was it just panic buying/hoarding).
If we really think that food security is an issue then it matters that farms are afforded protection and incentives in a non-monopolistic way (what happens if Farmer Ted's farm is bought by Russian AgriGrain Inc). If we don't, it doesn't.
That is the critical element.
Interesting to see left wingers (no idea if you are one of those) advocating for the agricultural industrial complex.
It would take an enormous, fiscally crippling intervention to resolve all of that.
It seems to me that this is a classic case of subsidising a proxy for the thing you want in the hope that you will get more of that thing & discovering that the market will very efficiently drive up the price of the proxy instead.
We spend about £3.5bn a year on putting asylum seekers in hotels, a total that rises by the hour
@JohnRentoul
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54m
Fancy dress day in Westminster: I’ve never seen so many Tory MPs dressed up as farmers
Hobhouse: German
Babarinde: Black British
Moran: Palestinian/British
Perteghella: Italian
Wilson: Asian British
Arguably we could (just about) be self-sufficient if we ditched beef cattle, and reduced pig and chicken numbers to those that could be fed only on food waste / forage on scrap land, plus what feed could be grown on land unsuitable for growing human edible crops. We’d effectively be subsisting on a constrained, very seasonal vegetarian diet supplemented with a little extra meat.
At last they're getting their PR sorted out.
Now Jeremy has other commitments, and he hired a tractor driver to drive his tractor and a shepherd to drive his sheep - but the reality for many farmers, including many of his neighbours, is very different, something that was made abundently clear on the show. Clarkson can afford to invest into a restaurant and make money from televising his fight with the council*, but other farmers don’t have the same publicity for any of their attempts to vertically integrate their own supply chains.
It’s difficult to underestimate the effect of this series on the average British townie, and it’s certainly made support for the farmers against the government much higher than it would otherwise have been. Not the best of targets for Starmer and Reeves to have chosen.
Can someone please clarify what, if any changes to trusts on APR there has been? As far as I can see there is still a loophole for pre 2006 trusts as Phil stated upthread
Ltd companies look like they are still able to make transfers, under the £1 million every 10 year threshold?
It seems plausible that pre 2006, the wealthy were evading IHT by putting assets into trust. When trusts were hit with a 6% per decade asset tax, they started putting their money into one of the few UK assets that were still 100% free of inheritance tax: farmland.
David Spours, a tenant farmer from north Northumberland, says "every single farmer" in his area will be affected by the change.
On top of the changes to inheritance tax, Spours says changes to carbon emissions rules will increase the price of crop fertiliser.
He tells PA he will be £60,000 worse off next year, which combined with a rise in the cost of fertiliser means his prospects are "looking pretty grim"
Well, it's a view.
Triouble is, RT also provides excellent evidence for a major capital gain over the last generation or so. And IHT is very definitely for cutting the state a share of otherwise untaxed capital gains passed on at death. Indeed, it used to be calculated as an actual capital gain tax IIRC under its older name of CTT.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68435629 (see the chart half way down with, it must be said, a really bizarre labelling of the x-axis)
Still, I guess the obvious thing is to house asylum seekers in tents on farms abandoned by IHT-hit would-be farmers and getting them to work the land instead? Win-win and also does its bit for William Glenn's wish to see more ethnic diversity in farming
IHT valuations are lower, precisely because of this (as I described earlier) but that doesn’t help anyone looking to buy land to farm.
(Arguably farmland for rent should be cheap, but I would imagine that the instability of renting your farmland combined with the necessarily long term nature land use choices if you want to make farming viable makes farming someone elses land unappealing. Any improvements you make will accrue to the land owner, not you after all.)
You all ignore the fact we are not allowed to do as we could choose. I could build 30 houses on my bottom meadow tomorrow and sell them before they were built. That would pay your fucking IHT but you won't let me do what I would choose as a sensible business decision.
YOU threatened to put my grandfather and his brother in prison because they REFUSED to put drainage trenches in Breaksey Hill. They said it would have been an ecological disaster and so there are no trenches on Breaksey Hill. Now YOU say trenches must be filled in, because evil farmers dug them up. You omit the fact they were doing it at gun point.
You ask by what right I choose to do the best for my farm. My family has looked after this land for 126 years and everthing we have done since 1898 has been to try to do the best for the farm and the land. Judging from her speech this morning Kemi gets it. I did not vote for her as leader but she has been as spot on as Mrs T in understanding what is needed. She gets it just as Starmer and Wilson and Callaghan before him doesn't.
(The public services we enjoyed in the north of Scotland were excellent, with the exception of maternity services)
(If your point is 'so under the Conservative government' then yes to that, too)
ETA: My "now, finally" I can see is a bit misleading, but not intentionally so - 'now' as in this year and the back end of last. 'Recently' would have been better.
When the tax treatment of trusts changed in 2006, suddenly farmland is one of the very few assets you can own that you can pass onto your heirs tax free & so the wealthy (& moderately weathly) start buying it in enough size to move the market significantly.
That’s the argument I’m making. It seems a plausible one?
It's as if they believe their own propaganda about them being well-heeled landowning toffs.
The crazy point about this was why was it only a pound more for the return?
I accept that pure pricing by mile would probably not work, but why shouldn't a return be 2 x a single?
The four-man DEFRA team sit for constituencies in Streatham, Cambridge, Coventry and Hull.
* Whoever the feck at West Oxfordshire District Council thought it might be a good idea to allow Clarkson to bring video cameras into their meeting is a total idiot. Unless of course it was their aim to highlight what NIMBYism and local vendettas look like in practice, to a massive audience of people who generally hate NIMBYs and their local council.
Sir Matthew Pinsent: Why £5 billion super sewer can save the Boat Race
E.coli scares dogged teams at the last event in March, with rowers on the men’s Oxford team complaining of ‘poo in the water’
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rowing/2024/11/19/matthew-pinsent-super-sewer-save-boat-race-thames-pollution/
As a demonstration of how profitable modern farming is, I’m not so sure: Clarkson clearly doesn’t follow the advice of his land agent!
New Phone
It gives me a reason not to look up at the wrist-slitting weather
Their ratings are such that most people don’t listen to them.
The cringiest meetings are those Cabinet meetings where the cameras look in for three minutes of banter at the start.
The “council purchases the land & gives itself planning permission” is how things are done in Denmark (or the Netherlands? One of those two IIRC). If I remember correctly if you want to build you sell the land at open market price to the council, they give it planning permission & sell it back to you at the uplifted price. Much simpler than faffing about with section 106 I guess!