The government needs a touch of the Oliver Twist in its approach to UK food production. Freed of the Common Agriculture policy which left us short of permits to produce milk, paid grants to rip outĀ Ā our orchards and used rules to slim our beef herds we expected a policy that promoted more UK produced food. We need to recapture the lost market share of the CAP years.
Instead so far the government has used its freedoms to pay farmers to leave farming, paid farmers to wild their land and stop growing crops, and paid them money for a range of environmental goods that impede or prevent food growing. What we now need is recognition that imported food can be hard to come by when the world experiences shocks like the Ukraine invasion and the gas shortages. There is a good green argument to cut the food miles. It is easier to be assured of the safety of our food and of the humane treatment of animals and birds reared for the table if the work is done at home under UK regulations.
Agriculture in most parts of the world is heavily subsidised and regulated by governments. Most countries use their powers and money to promote more domestic production,Ā not to stop people farming. We need to catch up. The UK needs to restore full fertiliser production, hit by high gas prices. ItĀ needs to work with supermarkets to ensure sensible prices are offered farmers to grow the grains, rear the animalsĀ and produce the milk and eggs people will want, seeing that farmers costs for these items have risen rapidly in recent weeks.
Farmers need grants to help buy the more automated systems to plant and harvest a wide range of crops, and to assist in putting in the extra greenhouse and polytunnel capacity needed to extend our growing season. It is bizarre that we import so many flowers, salad stuffs and vegetables from countries like the Netherlands that have no better weather than us but have better systems of investment encouragement and support.
April 10, 2022
Well itās not a great idea to open a vein with a rusty razor blade and then sit and watch the life blood gush out!
Our govt however has proved itself to be excellent at paying people to do nothing.
The real question is why?
And it rather ties in with people destroying public property, blocking motorways and denying access to oil lorriesā¦.and not being apprehended.
April 10, 2022
Seriously, theyād better hurry up because so much land is getting built on.
They really should come out and sayā¦.āSorry we want you to starveā or start incentivising farmers ( are there any independent farmers now?) to do what they should.
When I think of around here it is shocking how many food growing resources have been lost.
BTW govt need not think that we have not noticed how multinational firms have replaced our dentists and vets. All done during the Great Imprisonment.
And more to come ?
April 10, 2022
Fertiliser up to four times more expensive, red diesel doubling in price, energy up 50% up so far – quite some inflation especially for farmers. Unless they are farming wind subsidies or solar!
April 10, 2022
Perhaps we need more CO2 in the atmosphere to help ”green up” the planet. Just a thought.
April 10, 2022
I like your thinking
April 10, 2022
+1 A very good thought too!
April 10, 2022
A little more CO2 certainly seems to be a net positive increasing crop yields, tree and plant growth and biodiversity too. A little warmer no bad think either.
JR says “It is bizarre that we import so many flowers, salad stuffs and vegetables from countries like the Netherlands that have no better weather than us but have better systems of investment encouragement and support.” Well true to a degree but they do have huge economies of scale as they have a much larger market rather closer to hand. For the UK to do this we need far cheaper energy, cheap fertilisers, cheap land, cheaper more flexible labour and more economies of scale.
April 10, 2022
LJ
Agreed, without Co2 thereās no life on Earth , I think that getting government to agree on that fact is well nigh impossible
The Great Reset in operation
April 10, 2022
And there are rumblings about a coming bird flu pandemic.
Is that why Johnson wonāt rule out more lockdowns?
Blaming all infectious diseases on farming.
( and something to do with gender equality in farming??)
So there is the nub of it.
Theyāre after our food!
April 11, 2022
Well they’re certainly after our free-range chickens. I bought another two dozen ‘pastured eggs’ today from a farm which really looks after its chickens. They just sell them as free-range but the birds are living an extremely happy life and the quality of the eggs reflects that. Supermarket ‘organic eggs’ even at Lidl are somewhat less good and cost 20% more.
But I despair, the government probably wants all food to come from ‘corporate’ sources which are standardised, i.e. a lowest common denominator approach to food.
April 10, 2022
Farmers with renewable have created a two tier system within the industry.
Doing the same work but able to purchase all the best stock and consumables and in their little groups they can control an auction market as they have much bigger buying power.
The adjoining farms in some cases just sell out to them and walk away from the industry as they cannot compete.
April 10, 2022
Everhopeful
Indeed, the problem is too many people, trying to ocupy too smaller space.
People require all the things we are short of, Housing, fresh water, power generation, land for growing food, schools, hospitals, roads, etc etc.
So why are we allowing/helping people just to turn up at will !
April 10, 2022
+1 EH. Whatever is the common sense approach and best for the UK, expect the opposite from this government! Boris would rather throw money at anyone and everyone, excluding the Brits.
I was shocked to hear Boris say that biological men should not compete in women’s sport! He is correct, which is what shocked me! Is he finally going to stand up for the rights of the majority instead of kowtowing to and appeasing tiny, but noisy, minorities? I doubt it. He should, but he won’t!
April 10, 2022
+1
Agree 100%
April 10, 2022
The fundamental flaw with JRās blog is how his proposals, which we would all want, is compatible with the Brexit sell out by his party and Govt. How is the aim to be achieved after his govt. agreed stupid level playing field shackles to prevent freedom and competitiveness with EU, namely: Environment, state aid etc. Johnsonās betrayal of N.Ireland a glaring omission in todays blog. N.Ireland protocol conspicuously left out by JR, why? This leads to the selling agri food products across our nation, which includes N.Ireland.
We were promised once rid of the cap help and money to farmers would flow. Not Govt. money to stop them farming and help EU farming competitors! When will the madness in govt stop, is this a covid bi-product that has infected all the socialist pro EU cabinet? Or are they all still drunkenly stupefied by partying?
First act to agriculture freedom: Goldsmith needs to be ousted from Carrieās appointed Environment minister role. Second act: Useless Eustice is beyond help. He needs to go ASAP as well.
After the former Education Secretary William destroyed the life chances of millions of children Johnson gave him a title! He did the same for remainers who defied democracy. Perhaps he could entice others with a title to leave office.
April 10, 2022
+1
April 10, 2022
Just wait a few weeks, the next interview he’ll say it okay for born men to compete in womens sports
April 10, 2022
Boris doesn’t mean it – there are elections on the way. He will change his principles on the subject afterwards.
April 10, 2022
That he had to qualify it saying it was “controversial” of him.
April 10, 2022
Just remember that it is not legislators -Parliament – which set the rules of sport.
It is the relevant sporting bodies.
Now, do you want Parliament to do that instead, by passing laws?
And if so, then how does that sit with deregulation and “cutting red tape”?
April 10, 2022
I agree ā keep politics and taxpayer subsidy out of professional sport
April 10, 2022
Parliament via existing laws could already be able to interfere.
April 11, 2022
Of course it can interfere in anything that it chooses.
It is supreme.
Do you want that for sport was the question?
April 11, 2022
You miss the point.
Sporting bodies have to follow the laws that impact them.
The Equality Act for example.
April 11, 2022
I predict many court cases being brought under existing legislation by athletes who might be refused permission to compete by the governing body of their sport.
April 11, 2022
Well the Act has been around since 2010.
How many such cases have been brought to date, compared with, say, property claims in divorce?
Should a heavyweight boxer be allowed to fight a lightweight because he self-identifies as skinny, or should the Court leave it to the boxing authorities to set and to keep their rules?
April 11, 2022
Missing the point yet again
The transgender men wanting to compete in women’s sport is a new trend.
The legal arguments are just beginning.
Give it time.
April 12, 2022
Wrong yet again, Peter.
For instance, way back in the 1990s a born-male worker in our firm came out as transgender and took part in – and won – certain women’s sporting competitions.
There were objections – valid in my opinion – and as far as I know the relevant body settled the matter without a court case.
As far as the Equalities Act goes I’d expect that it would only be engaged if a body banned transgender people per se from their sport. That is, so long as they set up biologically male, biologically female, but with “other” categories to include them then they’d be OK.
If there aren’t enough of such people to make up a viable selection of teams or competitors for that category then that is not the sporting authorities’ business or problem.
You seem to be getting very bogged down by a very minor and easily-solved issue.
April 12, 2022
Complete nonsense
Wait and see.
April 13, 2022
We’ve been waiting twelve years since the Act, Peter.
Life hasn’t ground to a halt.
April 11, 2022
ah…’The Legislators’ , the people who ran the corrupt FIFA, who let cyclists be drugged since I was a child, the football World Cup who bribed dozens to hold it in Qatar. The ones who ignored E.German,then Russian and Chinese drugged athletes, so that USA finally joined in too.
April 11, 2022
No, legislators are parliaments.
But who votes for all those other people that you describe?
April 10, 2022
+1
April 10, 2022
Please donāt keep assailing us with good common sense. We are growing more. Solar panels although I find them rather chewy.
Cabinet ministers of questionable quality. What do you expect?
I see government ministers are accusing the travel of failing to plan thus causing the current problems. Anyone who thinks is is acceptable for them to wait 6 months for an employee to be security vetted has never run a business and shouldnāt be running ( I use the word comedically although not funny) government.
Presumably they think Ukrainian refugees would prefer to stay where they are rather than move to somewhere safer but āwithout a carpetā . The sheer bureaucratic incompetence beggars belief, yet HMG elected to reform the Civil Service does nothing.
I see diversity chiefs in the NHS seemingly all women, so hardly diverse, are refusing to implement a legal ruling from the Equality Commission. Javed is reduced to meaningless sound bites.
You have lost control.
April 10, 2022
Nigel, not lost control. The party and govt. has been Taken over.
April 10, 2022
But the civil Serpents want us to rely on imports. After all farming produces CO2 which is banned according to Carrie.
When we don’t have the money to pay for these imports we can starve to death just like when we can’t afford to heat our home.
The great reset continues.
April 10, 2022
After a week of reasonable output from the windmills today we are back down to 1.45gw or 4.8% in a quiet Sunday morning.
Can you explain to the boneheada in Parliament that they only work when the wind blows.
This is no way to power a 21st century power grid.
Latest wheeze from Kwartang is to charge us double to boil the kettle at peak times.
You really have a death wish.
April 10, 2022
Ian,
No, we cannot allow this useless govt. to pass the blame that easily. If they do not have the courage to sort our their juniors then they should not be in post.
April 10, 2022
The government for which you voted are in control, not civil servants.
Yes, they have made a terrible mess of many things.
So own the baleful results of your vote, eh?
Yet again.
April 11, 2022
you voted for who?
April 10, 2022
‘Instead so far the government has used its freedoms to pay farmers to leave farming, paid farmers to wild their land and stop growing crops, and paid them money for a range of environmental goods that impede or prevent food growing.’ That’s because there’s a zealot in No 10. He has already been brought, partly, to heel on the matter of energy, by back-bench pressure. We now need a Food Supply Resilience Strategy crafted.
Among the items in short-supply, right now, rape-seed oil. There are some fields put over to its production just a few miles from me. Predictably, some are now being built over.
P.S. I was disappointed to see Johnson making an unnecessary journey to Kyiv yesterday. He should have been in No 10, working on the food-supply problem here. Furthermore, I remain disgusted by his ANNOUNCING weapon supplies to Ukraine. His doing so is shocking ‘OPSEC’. Supply details should be kept classified.
April 10, 2022
Yes but going to Ukraine and announcing the weapons supplies is far better publicity for him on the ‘telly’ isn’t it.
All sitting round the propaganda box in the corner will see him do his great war leader act.
April 10, 2022
But he obviously left his pith helmet and cigar on the plane.
April 10, 2022
miami.mode and Michelle.
Quite agree. This is B.J.’s heaven sent opportunity to live out his fantasy of being the second Winston.
April 10, 2022
Even in Kyiv the people in the street laughed sardonically when they saw him conducting his photo op/walk.
April 10, 2022
Michelle,
Agreed. Boris the Great Poseur.
April 11, 2022
is that similar to bullshiter?
April 10, 2022
That trip to Ukraine was all about PR for Boris and a chance to escape the UK media…..he’s putting himself first before the nation
April 10, 2022
Why are the backbenchers not screaming for Sue Grayās report to get shod of the useless misfit in No.10?
April 10, 2022
Boris seems to be milking this to his maximum benefit. Another huge chunk of taxpayer money promised plus, reportedly, 120 armoured vehicles etc. What will our army use? And another huge chunk of taxpayer money to replace them?
I had not realised we had all this spare cash swilling about!
April 10, 2022
We’re loaded, money for arms to the Ukraine, money for coal to Russia, money for illegal immigrants to France….and loads of money for HS2
April 11, 2022
and waving away all that tax Non-Doms should have paid.
April 10, 2022
It’s a Bunter Boris promise, a bit like: ‘my cheque’s in the post’….etc.
Honestly Sir J. I find it gobsmacking that you are having to make this argument; it’s a bit like explaining to a 5 year old that peeing in the toilet is a better long-term social strategy than peeing in your pants. What kind of idiots do we have running this nation?
April 10, 2022
The money – and that needed to replenish MoD stocks – should come from the Foreign Aid budget.
April 10, 2022
All this money and help, yet Johnson abandoned Afghanistan just over a month ago! All those brave souls who lost theirs lives and those with life changing injuries must hold their head in despair. He preferred to save dogs than humans! Are the whistle blowers being lauded for coming forward? Why is the press so silent?
April 10, 2022
Tax and squander is a core value for Boris, as is subjecting our country to globalist rule.
April 10, 2022
I was greatly encouraged by Boris’s recent visit to Ukraine for told his hosts “we will provide support so that Ukraine will never be invaded again”. For now his thinking is running along those lines, is he not bound to make a comparable offer when he visits us to actually halt the invasion by dinghy?
April 10, 2022
+1
Shocking.
April 10, 2022
The worst thing is, he is such a pushover. Every time Ukraine is mentioned, he lobs another few million at it. No wonder he is popular.
He doesnāt seem to realise that every time he does things like this, the British public are even more sceptical when the Government says they have no money to do things in the UK.
April 10, 2022
The farming industry has moved on in the technology of the plant they use and electronic systems to be more efficient.
But the nature of the industry other than less manual labour required is the hours are long and for most sectors of the industry, they are a 24/7 operation of early starts and very long hours. Their siblings in the main do not want that type of life as there are more “sexy exciting jobs” in the outside world.
The industry has been badly damaged by abscent land owners who care not about the process just the return on their investment. It has taken the ownership responsibility out of the pride of doing the job.
Throwing subsidies at the industry is not the answer unless it is tightly regulated as to the where, who and how the money will be spent.
April 10, 2022
Farming is a calling and people do it because they love the life. Just watch the series This Farming Life and you will understand. The hard work and way they diversify to make an income is just amazing. It’s a pity we can’t have people like this working in our Government.
April 10, 2022
but their offspring is now saying ‘no thanks, not for me’.
April 10, 2022
Christine, +1. Youāre 100% correct. I was brought up on a small farm and totally recognise the truth in your comment. I loved the life but it was never for me. I qualified in a profession and left the farming to the devoted. The lessons of life from my parents remain unsurpassed for honest integrity and full understanding that the world owes us nothing.
I hope that my pride shows through.
April 10, 2022
Christine. Sadly many farmers are saying their children aren’t interested. Too much hard work and too many hours for not a lot of money unless you can get your hands on solar panels or turbines. Then many farmers see it as a reason to do less. A lot of the kids are at uni studying something completely different.
April 10, 2022
Christine I remember many farmers severely depressed having to get rid of their pedigree herds, built up over decades, because milking no longer paid because of CAP, where is the govt zest, like after the war, to secure food security for the nation? Who would Rely on Macron, RoI or EU!
Buy British food products and deliberately shun RoI and French agri foods.
Did Johnson learn anything after Macron threatened energy and food supplies held up lorries at Dover to force him into lockdown?
April 10, 2022
@Christine
But we have! There are plenty of muck spreaders and bullshit generators in the government.
April 10, 2022
If we liken the govtās adherence to bad counsel over farming to āThe Emperorās New Clothesā we need to make a slight adjustment.
Those tailors who made money by advising the Emperor that his ānew suitā was perfect need ( in this new version) to smear his naked body with honey and release several hives worth of bees.
That is what the govt is allowing.
Do they realise? Or are they really so dumb as to believe all the evil greencr*p?
Who the Hell benefits?
Those who want worldwide communism.
April 10, 2022
“Or are they really so dumb as to believe all the evil greencr*p?”
Surely not but it certainly satisfies Boris’ globalist mates at the WEF, UN etc.
April 10, 2022
Much to agree with here, and if government takes up these ideas people living in Wokingham borough will look forward to seeing them carried out. The sanctions disaster will need to end first, though, and quickly. Farmers who can’t afford to pay diesel prices and fertiliser prices may sell up to the local university/property investment business before government help arrives.
April 10, 2022
Richard 11
Farmers who cannot afford?
Exactly no may about it,when there gone there gone and all the land goes with them.
April 10, 2022
“Most countries use their powers and money to promote more domestic production, not to stop people farming. ”
That’s because those countries have common sense, and put their own country first. Boris is going in the opposite direction and preventing as much UK food production as possible! Good arable land (not the cheaper grazing) is disappearing in our neck of the woods under new housing and roads, farmers paid not to farm (rewilding), more farmland under solar panels or wind turbines. Boris even gave away much of our fishing and cannot, or will not, stop EU supertrawlers damaging our natural resources and fish breeding grounds. Why is Boris making us even more reliant on hostile neighbouring countries for such essentials as food and energy? WHY? BORIS MUST GO!
April 10, 2022
Shirley M
You are doing it again Shirley Mentioning the words common sense in relationship to what we can struggle to call a government. Its not in their DNA.
Very good post.
April 10, 2022
Any countries not tied at the hip to the EU. Johnsonās sell out not mentioned by JR today.
April 10, 2022
Adam Smith covered this in his 1776 Book ‘The Wealth of Nations’ where he considered ‘Cultivating and Improving’ farm land as a sure road to prosperity. For ‘improving’ read un-wilding, not Johnson’s re-wilding.
April 10, 2022
+1
April 10, 2022
Vegetarianismā¦love of animals? No ā¦the aim is to have no domestic animals at all and to rewild with animals that roamed thousands of years ago ( and ate sheep etc).
Windmillsā¦to tackle ā pollutionā? Noā¦.because of a barmy vendetta against capitalist-enabling coal mining.
No home food production, no planes or boats plus sanctions = no food!
And what will the proponents do when they realise how they too have been played?
This is all about asset transfer.
April 10, 2022
Meat will disappear. Have you noticed how many packets of Jerky (Dried beef) there are in the supermarkets ?
Ā£3/Ā£4 per tiny packet. This will gradually change to vegetarian Jerky, then insect jerky.
April 10, 2022
Why any jerk would want to eat jerky is anyoneās guess.
April 10, 2022
E h
A rifle (or crossbow) will have to be acquired, illegally no doubt, to hunt the odd deer or wild boar, for those of us who have learned these skills……. š
April 10, 2022
It’s a mistake to think this Government is incompetent. Having wrecked the economy; systematically weakened our currency with excessive QE, and ruined the mental health (and therefore potential resistance of millions) it is now very competently destroying our resilience; energy and food security;
I’m sure the WEF is very grateful.
April 10, 2022
+many and Johnson parroting the WEF is so obvious.
April 10, 2022
I’m sure you’re right Donna.
April 10, 2022
Donna
Agreed.
April 10, 2022
Indeed Donna. No longer “our” government; simply a puppet.
April 10, 2022
Donna. That is the conclusion I am forced to make.
April 10, 2022
@Donna
Why do you think they are doing this? Is it a cunning plan to get re-elected?
April 10, 2022
Our leadership from top to bottom is useless – completely deranged, unable to make a sensible decision even if it saved them and their families their lives.
April 10, 2022
Kit Malthouse casing today for the next episode of āin the thick of itā
April 10, 2022
We appear to be governed by numbskulls and knuckleheads. That is the conclusion I have reached when reading the succession of sensible policies which you clearly feel the need to articulate in your daily Diary. Unfortunately they are either too thick to understand or they are zealots driven by a lust for power that demands they impose their views on the rest of us on how we must live our lives, what we can and cannot say or think, what we can and cannot drive and who specialise in spending and wasting other people’s (tax payers) money. There needs to be a revolution and it needs to replace the zealot currently in charge.
April 10, 2022
+1
April 10, 2022
oldtimer
+1
April 10, 2022
oldtimer.
You have said that dreaded word ‘revolution’.
That is how I feel too.
April 12, 2022
Beware, a full revolution goes 360 degrees and brings one back to the starting point š
April 10, 2022
Why must the taxpayers taxes spent on grants?
If farmers wish to expand production they need to make a case to their banks for finance.
April 10, 2022
@ Bob Dixon – a fair point. I think the answer is that farming is often too uncertain a business so far as outcomes are concerned to meet the risk appetites of banks and without the backstop of subsidy and grant a good number of farmers would not see their endeavours as worthwhile at all.
April 10, 2022
The farming and renewable sectors are the only two parts of our economy that the taxpayer actually pay you to do nothingā¦.utter madness
April 10, 2022
@Bob Dixon
Food production is too important to be left āto the marketā. If, for whatever reason, food becomes unaffordable for a lot of people- revolution will follow. If subsidies are needed, cāest la vie.
April 10, 2022
Your suggestions are ignored and your questions in parliament go unanswered. Why do you give support to this rotten government which is working against the best interests of the people of the UK?
Reply Energy policy has just changed
April 10, 2022
Reply to reply
Aye, but too little too late and at great cost to everyone, especially the taxpayer.
April 10, 2022
+1
April 10, 2022
a bit like slashing a six inch gash down your arm – watching the blood gush and thinking ‘I need an elastoplast to fix that’
April 10, 2022
J Bush. Yes and only talk at the moment.
April 10, 2022
Right to Reply
I see no evidence of recent energy policy change, in fact the recent report confirmed the targets for ‘net-zero’, the green revolution and the investment in wind-turbine (with nuclear (now deemed renewable) a decade away)
April 10, 2022
@ Reply “Energy policy has just changed” – indeed it has! š
And although we Redwoodistas bask in reflected glory, it is of course not ours your triumph and those of your colleagues who worked with you. What fate awaits us though when you retire? The government is not on our side, fails to recognize the obvious and to do anything sensible unless pushed hard and remorselessly.
April 10, 2022
New energy policy will be reversed after the May elections.
April 10, 2022
Just like the manifesto pledges and HS2
April 10, 2022
Energy policy has just changed…….
Has it really, more useless windmills and no fracking.
Nuclear power if it happens just covers loss of todays plant and no mention how we’re going to power all these heat pumps and electric cars.
April 10, 2022
Reply yo reply.
So we will be building new coal and gas power stations and begin large scale fracking ?
No ! More windmills and solar panels do not a change in energy policy make. And nuclear does not solve the immediate problem. +10 Years that will take.
April 10, 2022
And VAT has just changed on the particular products Sir John suggested it change on.
April 10, 2022
Do you think that is down to you? And that is not intended in any way sarcastically. I donāt agree with all your views but on many things you appear to be a lone voice of sanity in Parliament. Has your beating the ācommon sense drumā been heard? If so, please keep up the pressure on the economic migrant situation.
Your government appears to be making it as difficult as possible for refugees from the war in Ukraine – who will tell us who they are and where they are from – to enter this country, but welcomes with open arms young men who turn up in boats who refuse to say who they are and where they are from.
April 10, 2022
So the PM has paid a surprise visit to Mr Zelenski. Bringing gifts of more money and more arms. Well, would he kindly desist from pouring more fuel on the fire, between him and the out of control Biden all I see is a steady ramping up of an already bad situation.
He was elected to serve this country, not pour UK tax payers money and resources into Ukraine for a war they cannot win.
April 10, 2022
And by trying to keep the war going, Johnson may be considered complicit in the slaughter. Zelensky should be allowed to go back to the position he was taking a few weeks ago, when he indicated his readiness to adopt some form of future neutrality from big power blocs. This war is costing Russia too, and they will have to drop their most extreme demands. But I have a feeling that Johnson sees his task as preventing a settlement negotiated between Ukraine and Russia, and going for an out-and-out Russian defeat. This is no more realistic than trying to eliminate a cold virus, which Johnson has at least learned by now. When is realism going to break out about Ukraine, I wonder?
April 11, 2022
Putin has threatened me and my family personally with nuclear weapons, along with much of the world.
I don’t take too kindly to that.
You seem a bit more forgiving, which is a pity, I think.
April 10, 2022
@ BOF – so there is a sound moral case is there for withholding aid to an aggressor’s victim in the expectation the aggressor will then crush resistance sooner and so end the conflict?
April 10, 2022
Yes. All to protect Uktaine’s border form the invaders. Or is it to put all them Russian’s in 4 Star Hotels complete with spending money and free services ?
April 10, 2022
+1
April 10, 2022
Has he BOF? I’ve been ‘tuned out’ for a week or more.
Has someone actually, genuinely, found out where Zelenski is hiding?
Basically, surely the main point is that Ukraine and Russia are nothing to do with us. Even less to do with U.S.A. or NATO.
You are quite right to be angry about our very limited resources being given away.
April 10, 2022
This wont be the end. When this conflict is over, Boris will insist that the UK must contribute to the rebuilding of Ukraine.
April 10, 2022
One would have to conclude it is all part of an ideological agenda. There is no other conclusion that can be drawn from such apparent self-defeating decision making.
The voter is voting for politicians whose purpose is rework a system that seeks to promote control and influence rather than promote national self-interest and practical requirements
What can one do when the idiot voter votes for the Tory-Labour stasis. You’d think they’d have woken up by now to these two parties games, but no.
April 10, 2022
Dom. What you say is so true. People must start thinking outside the box and realise that we need to try an alternative. For Christ’s sake it can’t be any worse than we have now. For all the years I’ve been voting we’ve lived with successive failures of government and yet even though there are alternatives and a couple I can think of who are proud of this country and want to see it succeed and are more Conservative than this government ever will be, people just aimlessly put their cross next to the usual idiots. All the main parties just languish in the knowledge that one or maybe two parties in a coalition will be free to wreak carnage on the country again. I have not voted for any main party for years now and I wish the country would wake up and see what is happening.
On the subject of farming. Sussex is being totally decimated by housing on many large agricultural fields. Even new vineyards are being ripped up for housing. One field which has had crops planted on it since I was a child and is renowned for flooding at certain times of yhe year is now earmarked for 457 new houses. All the ancient woods and fields nearby are now ugly housing estates where all the homes are crammed in and the roads are really narrow with no parking facilities. Shropshire where I live now is going the same way with building in all the villages and solar farms for many hundreds of acres planned. We read your sensible well thought out posts John on all kinds of issues and know this government won’t implement most of it. It won’t be long before we get a Labour government in and everything will be back to the drawing board throwing money at the usual quangos and big union led institutions like the NHS while disregarding sensible approaches to energy and immigration etc. It seems to me Johnson talks a good act but never actually does anything. By the way, much of the problem of farming and building on green fields is immigration. What do you expect when Johnson and all our stupid leaders want to invite the world here? We are just the dummies who have to put up with long queues for the NHS and housing. Well I’m not impressed and will not vote for this anymore.
April 10, 2022
I have been banging on about it for years. And we are no nearer the solution. Maybe if people are forced to eat rats we can then start to see them change. Until then, we will just have to put up with them and their mask wearing virtue signaling.
April 10, 2022
What can you do when the idiot voter votes Leave?
April 10, 2022
That’s 17.2 million voters NHL dismisses as idiots.
They are listening.
How are you going to overturn an 80 seat majority when you Labour supporters keep saying things like this about half the electorate?
April 10, 2022
and quite a few of those leave voters where ‘labour’
April 11, 2022
No, Dom claimed that Tory voters were idiots.
Since most of the Leave vote were also Tory ones then he also meant them.
There were some Labour voters amongst them but far fewer.
April 11, 2022
No
He didn’t say that
He said “when the idiot voter votes for the Tory-Labour stasis”
April 11, 2022
emigrate?
April 10, 2022
I live in farming country and my neighbour has been a farmer all his life, loves it, but he has been offered such a generous offer by the Government to retire that he canāt refuse. He has now put all 1,000 acres up for sale. How many more like him? How many billions is it costing us the taxpayer to stop them from producing food. Utter madness by an utter clueless Government.
April 10, 2022
JoolsB +100 … and more!
April 10, 2022
Indeed Shirley.
April 10, 2022
+1
April 10, 2022
I feel another housing estate build coming on – do you?
April 10, 2022
Jools. Correct!
April 10, 2022
Why ? Is it so they can sell the land to a developer or something ?
April 10, 2022
Even if he did want to continue farming, where would he get the farm labourers from? School leavers don’t want to do that kind of work, and even if they did, there’s nowhere they can afford to live in the country.
The thing is, they don’t even seem to want to do regular hours work either. We put up a job for an electronic engineer, and all our applicants are foreigners.
April 10, 2022
It is the CAP phase 2.
April 10, 2022
Boris and the Tory leadership are not clueless, they are dangerous and subversive. They are destroying our society and nation, certainly England.
April 10, 2022
The land will find a ready market. Agricultural land is exempt from Inheritance Tax, and is attractive to those not interested in farming but preserved wealth which can be passed on tax free…
Of course, John Major promised to abolish IHT so wealth could “cascade down the generations”…
April 10, 2022
What offer has your farmer neighbour been made?
April 10, 2022
Government doesn’t want UK farming. It wants more houses with tax-paying occupants, with a much higher return to the Treasury per acre. It wants to fill this country with more and more people, to do the jobs the UK population doesn’t want. It wants this country to import all its food. It wants country cottages not to be occupied with farmworkers, but holiday lets and second homes so the cost of housing shoots up (beyond the means of local people), returning more stamp duty to the Treasury.
The only thing the government wants from farmers is their vote.
April 10, 2022
I agree with much of what you say except the bit about UK Citizens not wanting to do the jobs foreigners now have to do. It has always been the case since the industrial revolution that people will seek better paid jobs for less work. Foreigners come into lower paid jobs because they are the ones available and they can earn more here than back at home. A few generations later, their offspring too seek better jobs. And so the cycle goes on.
April 10, 2022
Thank you Sir John for raising this very important subject. We as a country need to have a plan for food security. We need to take back control of our fishing. Look at ways to increase production of fertiliser. Remove any EU rules that stop us producing more food. Remove the Green zealots from the Cabinet, including the Prime Minister. Increase our livestock numbers. Give tax breaks for investment in farm machinery. Stop the ever increasing growth in our population. And most of all stop throwing tax payers money at utter nonsense.
April 10, 2022
+10
April 10, 2022
+1
April 10, 2022
Christine
Hard hitting post, the ball is in their court but they don’t want to play.
Like the national yesterday for most they are backing all the wrong horses.
April 10, 2022
If only Christine, if only we could do as you say.
April 10, 2022
So HMG have exchanged one inane set of EU policies for one even more moronic based on their devotion to Net-Zero.
It’s at times like this when people recognize that democracy has failed us – When the people we thought we were putting into power to make our lives better are doing the exact opposite.
Even when things are going from bad to worse, they ignore our protests, leaving us with the choice of rioting or accepting our fate at the effect of a government gone bad.
We should have another mechanism in place to make sure parliament and HMG could be censored mid-term when they continue to impose dogmatic solutions to things that are not broken. Untold damage can be done while we wait for another GE.
It would be nice if the Queen had such powers to ‘make HMG think again’, but I fear nothing would happen as she appears to be very much a part of the establishment that is turning us into brainwashed chattels.
April 10, 2022
My opinion of the Queen has done an about turn, a result of her inane scoldings re: experimental gene therapy and her WEF communistic prating.
April 10, 2022
BH
Hammer, nail, headā¦..
+ hundredsā¦ Bunter has received his instructions and nothing will change his course
April 10, 2022
Bryan. Yes even the monarchy is not what we all thought it was with all that’s going on within it. I am sorely disappointed with the government and the monarchy right now.
April 10, 2022
+1
April 10, 2022
Iām afraid this is another example of a policy area where people will ask increasingly what was the point of Brexit? The good arguments on the Brexit side were that we would have the freedom to do things differently and better when out of the EU and itās policies such as CAP, CFP (also MIFID2, GDPR, solvency2 etc, though thatās a separate area). But in one area after another the Johnson govt is doubling down on EU-style dirigisme, green zealotry (as defined by zealots, not actually very green), high taxes etc.
We must rely on the uselessness humbug and absurdity of starmer, sturgeon et al to hang on at the next election. Not very inspiring.
April 10, 2022
Richard. We may as well still be in tge EU. We seem to still be under their thumb.
April 10, 2022
And that is exactly what they want, it’s all organised so we go back in on worse terms. I have said before this government does not like governing, it finds it irksome to make decisions and take the blame. They must be got rid of even if it is just to show them we won’t have it. Only trouble is, Labour will not be an improvement, they are all EU fanatics, but what really is the difference? Toryism especially one nation Toryism is no more.
April 11, 2022
talking of ‘under my thumb’.
Lyrics from Rolling Stones….apply to a certain Cabinet Minister?
The way she talks when she’s spoken to
Down to me, the change has come
She’s under my thumb
Ah, take it easy babe
Yeah
It’s down to me, oh yeah
The way she talks when she’s spoken to
Down to me, the change has come
She’s under my thumb
Yeah, it feels alright
Under my thumb
Her eyes are just kept to herself
Under my thumb, well I
I can still look at someone else
It’s down to me, oh, that’s what I said
The way she talks when she’s spoken to
Down to me, the change has come
She’s under my thumb
Say, it’s alright.
(we’ll let the voters decide).
April 10, 2022
The point of BREXIT was to be self governing, to make our own mistakes and learn from them. The fact we have useless politicians is a direct consequence of being rule takes for nearly half a century. We have lost many skills and being part of the EU has meant that mediocre politicians and CS’s can effectivly carry on with out any proper scrutiny.
As I have said here many times, this process, although painful, is necessary and we will over time come to beenfit from it.
April 10, 2022
Richard1. No way will I vote for any of the main parties next time.
If all else fails it will have to be N.O.T.A.
April 10, 2022
Trouble is, if they got in by even one vote they’d declare a great victory and a vindication of their policies. They must go, they’ve been in too long. It happens to all governments in the end.
April 10, 2022
Not only are they curtailing food production they are at the same time expanding demand with their reckless mass immigration policy. If we do have a food shortage problem it will be one created in Westminster. No doubt they will attempt to use it to ‘reset ‘ us just like they are trying to force us down the Net Zero path, the fuel shortages another crisis created in Westminster.
With the fuel shortages we have you might have thought the Government would be hypersensitive to any restrictions to the supply, but no, the economic eco terrorists are allowed to blockade refineries, and the police and state look on . If a Right wing group had threatened the state the police would have gone in with boots and truncheons, instead we get softly softly policing, so we can only presume this terrorism is sanctioned by the establishment.
April 10, 2022
+many
And we have at least one MP who claims car ownership is “so 20th century” (now she has 2 homes over 200 miles apart – one of course funded by the taxpayer, just how is she going to get between properties, tax funded jet?) and globalists who want us to eat bugs.
April 10, 2022
Yes, I believe the Eco Extremists ARE sanctioned by the Establishment. They are effectively the Provisional Wing of the Eco Loons who infest the Government/Civil Service/Quangocracy who use them to “soften up” public opinion before then advancing/imposing their aims.
We’ve seen a very clear example of it recently with Insulate Britain.
April 10, 2022
Agreed Iain Moore. Particularly about the (illegal) immigration.
I don’t believe that immigration is the Home Secretary’s fault. It is almost as though our wonderful (NOT) government is deliberately undermining every aspect of our country for some purpose.
And I can therefor, only suspect, that we are being led into some form of whole World Government.
April 10, 2022
Boris and Rishi:
I feel your pain……not.
April 10, 2022
As you mention the Netherlands. “Trade benefits of the EU and the Internal Market The Netherlands in the top of countries with the largest trade benefits due to the European Union.” https://www.cpb.nl/en/trade-benefits-of-the-eu-and-the-internal-market
April 10, 2022
Very sensible comments today again Sir John, but common sense is in short supply. Expect, instead of crops to feed the people, fields of houses, wind turbines and solar panels, all blighting the countryside and sucking up tax payers money in subsidies to benefit mostly foreign interests.
But what of fishing and help to get UK fishing industry back in good shape? Is there any quota left for our fishermen after A. Johnson generously handed licences to the French?
April 10, 2022
The PM will chase any crisis to stop him dealing with the problems of the UK. The 2024 question for the Tory party will be “what did we do wrong”
April 10, 2022
It looks like we left the EU common agricultural policy only to rejoin EU common agricultural policy in all but nameā¦.brexit wasnāt suppose to be about just leaving the EU it was about doing thing differently
April 10, 2022
Today ‘s post is copied onto Facebook.
That should get a lot of comments.
April 10, 2022
12 or more years ago one of my clients was a very big sheep farmer and at a social farming evening got into quite an arguement in that what he was saying in that :- Removal of all subsidies would drive out the absent owners and leave the market that those who could and did run more efficient and effective operations. His arguement was if it works in New Zealand it will work here it is all about quantities of scale.
April 10, 2022
Boris will know people who own land, but only many tens of thousands of acres each through companies and who often live abroad.
Anyone else who farms land to him are covered in mud and probably have small strips, and they don’t matter.
I wonder where Boris gets his food from, I bet he and Carrie don’t really care, although have preferences for foreign products and food eating and drinking styles – fits perfectly into their one world belief.
April 10, 2022
Off topic, I have just sent a letter to our local newspaper, the Maidenhead Advertiser, as follows:
“In an unprecedented step the EU has agreed to temporarily allow UK-approved medicines into Northern Ireland even if they have not yet received approval from the EU regulator, but with special conditions to ensure that they do not cross the border into the Irish Republic.
Thus in this case the EU has tacitly accepted the principle of “parallel marketability”, whereby only goods destined for the EU Single Market must conform to EU standards, while for goods that are staying in Northern Ireland it is enough that they conform to UK standards.
A principle that was mentioned in a letter published on January 24 2019 under the heading “Scotland’s answer to Northern Ireland border”, because it had been mooted in a Scottish government plan entitled āScotland’s Place in Europeā published on December 20 2016.
So the question now is whether Boris Johnson cares enough to extend the application of the principle from this narrow class of goods to all goods in Northern Ireland, if necessary acting unilaterally without the consent of the EU and invoking Article 16 of the protocol.
No doubt the EU would cause a fuss if he did that, which is why it would be wise to first get on and pass the UK laws to protect the EU Single Market that were envisaged in the government’s Command Paper on the protocol published last July, over eight months ago now.”
April 10, 2022
Traditional diary farming disappearing as the 1500+ head milking carousels take over where the cattle are never fed on grass.
Chicken farming in barns 20k birds in a barn all fed automatically, never see natural light.
Demand is greater than supply so it is understandable why traditional farmers sell up and the farm is broken up into business parks, housing whatever.
With it goes all the skills and knowledge about land management learnt the hard way and passed down through the generations.
April 10, 2022
Absolutely
April 10, 2022
Dear Sir John, I think this Government, and any other Government for that matter , will never listen to what you propose. Parliament is now just a tool of the Establishment which does not have the interests of the ordinary citizen foremost. Just making money and running the country down, until there is no more money to make. Leading the Country to war now appears to be the current virtual signalling fashion after failing to implement Brexit, not slowing down the Covid virus spread, increasing taxes, food cost, energy cost etc. etc. etc. The real advice from Government and most Politicians – don’t do as I do, do as I tell you.
April 10, 2022
“It is easier to be assured of the safety of our food and of the humane treatment of animals and birds reared for the table if the work is done at home under UK regulations”
How many dinghy invaders turned up yesterday, all needing somewhere to live, and demanding free everything ?
How long before the private school lard**** in 10 Downing street is kicked out ?
April 10, 2022
Good morning – or what is left of it š
It seems that I was wrong in my belief that we are going back to the 1970’s. It seems that, given the current state of deliberatly reducing supply of many things, we are in fact heading for the 1940’s and rationing.
Cue, Glen Miller
April 10, 2022
šŗ
Cheer up ducksā¦at least weāll be āappy.
Errrrā¦.
April 10, 2022
O/T People in this country, due to the utter incompetence of this Government, will soon have to choose between heating and eating. However, I see that the Chief Clown is pledging another Ā£100 000 000 to Ukraine.
April 10, 2022
Ed – you surely didn’t expect Boris to throw away a virtue signalling opportunity, did you? He wants the world to see his shiny halo, and to hell with democracy and the UK. We are just his cash cows. Boris has learned well from the EU!
April 10, 2022
ED – The Chief Clown who is very dangerous openly wears the WEF New World Order badge on his lapel.
April 10, 2022
I agree but how are we to do this when āweā are busily building over all our prime agricultural land?
April 10, 2022
Talking about value for money – I attach a comment from TPA on the way we are all being ripped off by high spending councils, where they look after themselves first:
Shouldn’t HMG be doing something about excessive overspend on council and quango salaries – because for sure we are not getting value for money!
April 10, 2022
Bryan. I highlighted this the other day. Disgusting isn’t it?
April 10, 2022
The Government apparently doesnāt want us to have food security and in fact is determined to make the situation even worse by increasing our population through mass immigration, even including inviting men of fighting age with no ID into the country with promises of 4 star accommodation, Ā£40/week pocket money and the freedom to roam our streets.
In addition the Government doesnāt want us to have economic and hence military security and is therefore pursuing the policy of Net Zero.
Not only will Net Zero ensure we reduce our living standards and become economically dependent upon those countries who are not following this policy but it will also ensure, through the electrification of everything, that we will be militarily weak and unable to assist other nations when they are invaded.
The Russians know it is not possible to travel to Ukraine in an ev and it is not a coincidence that XR and JSO are targeting oil depots in the UK.
April 10, 2022
You are talking sense again today Sir John. Well, except you haven’t mentioned the ridiculous wind farms, preventing our limited supply of land, from producing food.
Isn’t it time your idiotic leader sacked the minister in charge? The one that is, who has NOT encouraged farmers to produce food?
Or would doing that, be against the Carrie Johnson policy?
April 10, 2022
A month ago, Parliament’s Public accounts committee reported that ‘the government has unveiled a plan without answers to the key questions of how it will fund the transition to net zero, including how it will deliver policy on and replace income from taxes such as fuel duty, or even a general direction of travel on levies and taxation. The Government has no reliable estimate of what the process of implementing the net zero policy is actually likely to cost British consumers, households, businesses and government itself.’ It is hard to imagine a more devastating critique of government policy than this. Governmnet in the past have fallen for less. The Conservatives – supposedly the party of sound finance – do not know what their net zero policy will cost and do not know how how much they will get in tax revenue. As with the Covid response, they stumble into decisions, they do not cost their policies and they have not done their sums on taxes. Any half-decent opposition in Parliament should have been making mincemeat of Tory ministers by now. But the opposition shares the same ideological obsessions as the government. As with Brexit before 2016, only a small number of MPs, usually Conservative, stand up to debate the dominant narrative, and in the end they must remember they belong to the party of government.
Wherever democracy is to be found in Britain today, it does not seem to be in Westminster.
April 10, 2022
It is all part of the globalist plan. Wake up people, your government does not care about you.
April 10, 2022
I completely agree with your ideas on farming Sir John, but it’s Useless Eustice you need to convince! As a senior backbencher (former minister, etc) surely you can have a personal meeting with him, at which you can put these ideas forward and see what he has to say? Or are ministers too unwilling to listen to even their most senior party colleagues?
April 10, 2022
Blimey! They’ve forgotten to mention Brexit!
https://news.sky.com/story/dover-crossing-delays-mean-that-british-hauliers-lose-800-per-lorry-as-products-go-off-12587111
“Long delays at the Dover terminal are being caused by the suspension of P&O services, as well as Easter traffic, IT issues and bad weather.”
April 10, 2022
The blindingly obvious is generally considered to be poor journalism.
April 10, 2022
Is it?
Where the proof as you pal bill keeps saying?
April 11, 2022
We’re talking about Sky News here.
April 10, 2022
Gosh, gosh, gosh.
Our brave Boris has flown ( Icarus styleā¦no carbon involved but solar heat a bit of a prob) to Ukraine to meet its globe-trotting leader.
Dodging shells, leaping land mines in that war-torn country!
Letās hope the poor soul gets back in one piece.
April 11, 2022
we’ll be treated to him arriving at Notholt airport with camouflage paint still smeared on his cheeks.
April 12, 2022
šš
April 10, 2022
You have kept all my othert posts in moderation.
None of them were that long. They had no links. No names. Not long. And there were other posts that came some way after mine that were posted.
As someone once said to me – The older people get, more childish they become š
April 10, 2022
Well it looks as though power shortages will be followed by food shortages. Itās all quite bizarre. Is Johnson a plant to kill the Tory Party from inside?
April 10, 2022
All to the good.
The more Tory MPs sacked at the next election the better.
April 10, 2022
The real reason for increasing the home grown proportion of our agricultural consumption is military. If war breaks out, we need to be able to survive. Perhaps the MoD should have a say on farming subsidies, tariffs and quotas. If we want ‘green’ farming, how is that defined? More hedgerows will help wildlife but increase costs. Lower use of pesticides will reduce river pollution but result in lower yields.
April 11, 2022
So much written about subsidy – it appears that due to the CAP, and US farming subsidies, prices for food are not representative of the costs incurred.
Time to wean farmers off subsidies and consumers of cheap food?
If that is not possible then any subsidies we issue should be to offset the direct costs of sale to encourage production and not for environmental or fallow purposes. No goods – no subs.
April 11, 2022
Sir John, did you finally decide enough was enough from the Amersham/Chesham ‘elderly hater’?