There are a number of areas where the EU has lower animal welfare standards.
- Sow Stalls: The UK banned the use of sow stalls (cages for pregnant pigs) in 1999, 14 years before they were partially phased out in the EU . The EU still allows some use of these cages.
- Foie Gras Production: The production of foie gras by force-feeding is prohibited in the UK. The EU allows it.
- Fur Farming: Fur farming has been banned in the UK since 2000. The EU allows it.
- Live Exports: The UK has banned the export of live animals for slaughter or fattening from or through Great Britain. The transport and export of live animals is still legal within and from the EU, although some individual countries may have their own bans.
The UK should have high standards. It should not allow EU imports to undercut our farmers by relying on lower standards .The danger of the government’s new animal welfare proposals is it will stop some UK production to be replaced with imports from places where animals are treated worse.
December 23, 2025
This government will ban nothing from the EU however bad they treat us. The EU accepts equivalence in many areas with other countries with lower standards but not Britain. The EU still insists on giving us a punishment beating for leaving. Starmer is doing everything he can to tie us to Brussels and it is to be hoped that an incoming Reform government will repeal any such moves. The rejoining of the Erasmus scheme is a case in point.
December 23, 2025
Indeed. Back door rejoining is the agenda.
Dr Mary-Ann Stephenson has just been appointed by Two Tier as
Chair of Equality & Human Rights Commission seems totally mad and deluded.
A Dr. as she has some Phd degree in “equality” law which has done such vast harm to the UK resulting in diversity hires, the bankruptcy of Birmingham, vast discrimination against white males and lots of money for parasitic lawyers. Plus lots of people in jobs they should not be doing but cannot easily be fired from so we all suffer.
December 23, 2025
Spot On!
I wonder if our kind host might contact his good friends in the know, to find out how much money we are shovelling into the EU now, after a year of 2TK, compared with 202/4? And, how much more is on the horizon?
For a cash strapped nation, we do seem to still be splashing it around.
December 23, 2025
How do you get a Phd from Warwick University in Equality Law without even understanding how damaging it is?
Upton Sinclair — ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.’
Rather a parallel will the mad war on CO2 and indeed most red tape in general!
December 23, 2025
How too do you get two degrees one partly in “economics” and the other in economics like Rachael Reeves and yet still believe in Magic Money Tree Economics. Plus think that the way to get economic growth is vast increases in taxes, red tape, the state sector, net zero energy costs, the workers rights laws, talk the economy down then wars on motorists, farmers, the self employed, small businesses, large businesses, road users, energy users…
December 23, 2025
In some institutions you would not get the certificate without exhibiting and accepting that magical thinking.
December 24, 2025
+1
December 23, 2025
@IAN WRAGG – agreed the EU has more open agreements with the likes of China, India, the USA than it permits the UK to have. Those countries are not subject to EU controls and Laws, they don’t have to subscribe to the diktats of the ECHR and many more inside their own territory, they do not have to pay to have trade, they do not have to give their territorial fishing grounds away. What they do internally is their choice.
The extra billions for Erasmus is also a point, EU Students have left the UK taxpayer with a £5bn bill form last time around and there is no hope of it being paid. So although 2TK is just giving the EU upwards of £8bn towards joining their club he omitted to tell what the rest of the bill will be in actual student fees to be forced on the taxpayer.
December 23, 2025
Animal welfare is a tricky area. It’s somewhat subjective. Force feeding geese is probably cruel (i.e. causes animals excessive stress, and pain). But fur farming? We battery cage hens, which is deemed acceptable, yet is that much different in welfare terms from close confinement of furry mammals?
A major issue is slaughter (how, and where?). Is halal/kosher non-stunned killing ok? Should we drop EU regulations that ruined small local abattoirs (total abattoirs in UK dropped from about 1200 to 200, 1974-2024), and ended on-farm slaughter of red meat?
December 23, 2025
Many animals eat each other. A trophy hunter killing a tiger is regarded as cruel, yet is he not protecting the lives of many other animals? Vegetarians say eating animals is cruel. Others ask: If animals are not meant to be eaten, why are they made of meat? Excessive populations of some animals need to be maintained by predators or activities like foxhunting using hounds, for their own survival. Countries feed off each other. Our own farmers need to survive too.
December 23, 2025
On principle I would agree to such a ban as long as we ban all other Countries food which also has lower standards than our own, thus we have a level playing field for everyone.
You do however realise that in doing so, much of our imported food may be banned, and thus prices will rise in our shops as a result.
Quality comes at a price !
December 23, 2025
Well said, Alan! I hear a lot about how Brexit has allowed us to ban this, that and the other which we couldn’t do before. In all cases that means simply that consumer choice in the UK is reduced and that consumer prices in the UK go up. That of course is the practical reality of Brexit – we have ‘freedom’ from the world’s biggest and best market and so our country is poorer as a result
December 23, 2025
What a load of nonsense. ‘the world’s biggest and best market’ are you suggestig the EU meets that description?
The most restrictive ‘market’ in the world.
We should aim for self sufficiency, if that means paying enough to support British food farming so be it.
December 23, 2025
Hear hear Mickey
December 23, 2025
Walpole
It has nothing whatsoever to do with Brexit at all, it simply is playing fair with the rules.
The EU is certainly not an example of playing fair, because they will only accept your products if you pay them huge tariffs, and even then goods can be rejected for almost any reason.
They allegedly refused to accept a large consignment of Lamb from the UK recently because there were tiny specks of wool on the skin , or course nothing whatsoever ever to do with their Farmers demonstrating in Brussels at the time about the import of foreign food !
December 23, 2025
@Walpole – we lost nothing in trade terms with the EU, we still import from them what we did before. We were never in a position that they took a reciprocal equal amount from us, it was always a one sided deal. The EU is ‘not’ and ‘never’ has been the world’s ‘biggest and best’ market – the costs to freedoms, democracy and enforced isolation from the World is the greater loss.
The UK’s biggest single trading country is the USA. The UK does not have the USA telling, no ordering the UK Parliament and its People how they should act inside their own Country. The USA doesn’t tell the UK people to take orders from the unelected or the unaccountable in foreign lands. The USA like the rest of the free World doesn’t subscribe or insist or allow its legislators to be over-ridden by a private off books court ECHR
Figures from the ONS
Export Trade to the EU before Brexit was £249bn now it is £366bn,
Imports form the EU before Brexit £323.9 now they are £459bn
A UK Loss of – £74bn then that is now a loss of – £93bn
Trade with the World pre Brexit £310bn now it is £526bn
Imports from the World £267bn now £459bn
UK gain of £43bn before now it is £67bn
There is no discernable difference in trade between then or now
UK Consumer prices have risen from bans, levies placed on the UK taxpayer by Parliament that have nothing to do with Brexit. The tax burden has risen to allow for more state employees and larger benefits to be paid.
From a working population of 34 million, 1.83 million unemployed, the State(read the Taxpayer) employs 6.18million people and the taxpayer pays benefits to 11million (excluding pensioners)
Brexit was never about Trade it was about Democracy, all the UK’s downsides emanate from a Parliament that is frightened of its people and its self, it refuses its job. It denies it was empowered and paid to manage.
December 23, 2025
Well said.
December 23, 2025
Brexit means the introduction of new barriers to our export trade with the EU, and makes no change at all to the terms of our trade with the rest of the world. So: you say export Trade to the EU before Brexit was £249bn now it is £366bn, well, without Brexit it would be more like £400bn. Trade with the World pre Brexit £310bn now it is £526bn – without Brexit it would be £526bn. This is very simple trade economics.
December 23, 2025
@Walpole – you don’t know that. Just because the Guardian Newspaper makes up stories it doesn’t make them true.
In the meantime the UK Parliament has deindustrialised the nation, meaning we have to import more, more of the things we used to make. That is nothing to do with Brexit its to do with the political ideology of nutters. We now have to buy the steel and electronics from France just to make submarines, that’s importing not exporting. And has nothing to do with Brexit.
Being in the EU means the unelected, unaccountable get to decide how we trade with and who we trade with. It was the EU that banned UK trade with Australia and New Zealand – they may one day forgive that.
We have yet to experience proper Brexit we are still governed, by the warped deal done by May, then Johnson get Brexit done that failed. The Sunak that chose to keep the EU in charge with the Windsor accord. Now recently Starmer has given away the fish in UK territorial waters then signed a no compete clause with the EU, the most recent ramification of that it is not the UK Government that choses our ability to have small nuclear reactors on our shores it is the EU Commission that get to write the ground rules and permit them – if at all. As the members of the UK/EU trade arrangements noted to the media the UK is now an EU Colony.
Brexit was never about Trade it was about Democracy
December 23, 2025
Walpole you have no idea what trade with the EU would have been. You omitted the vast sums payable annually to be a member of this protectionist club.
December 23, 2025
More like
Oh dear “more like” another guess, just like the 4% trade we have lost which is still being quoted by Remainer’s, when that calculation was an estimated calculation/guess before we even left !
December 23, 2025
But no barriers to our trade with the rest of the world! Better, cheaper food🥰
December 23, 2025
Agree
December 23, 2025
You know you sound just like a Whig. As confused as Hannon who also describes himself as a Whig.
December 23, 2025
Good morning.
Agreed. We should also regulate foreign fishing vessels for environmental harm. Any over fishing or damaging practices should result in fines or the seizure of their boats. And no compensation.
December 23, 2025
Good point.
December 23, 2025
Its a national disgrace that our government issues licences to 26 EU & foreign owned ‘super-trawlers’ in UK waters (UK has none)
December 23, 2025
But we did pay for theirs!
Ken Clarke said it was ‘so they could compete with us’.
What does he think needs to be done now so that we can compete with them?
Another Remainer (very limited).
December 23, 2025
The quality of our animal husbandry was undercut when we joined the EU. Also the pointlessly cruel halal slaughtering techniques are massively expanded in the U.K. to satisfy those who are not native to the U.K. and its humane practises especially in farming. Halal and Kosher killing must be banned in the U.K.
Our framers don’t only invest more to maintain our high standards, they also don’t spare themselves.
I am content with British produced meat, I have been through many abattoirs and our experts treat our animals with care and there is almost no stress. That’s why the quality of our home grown meat is so high.
We can’t trust labels because we know that the State redefines words, and British meat might mean anything. Therefore we should indeed ban the import of all meat from jurisdictions where they don’t meet our high standards.
I want to know that the food I consume is maintaining our farms and our high standards.
December 23, 2025
I agree regarding Halal and Kosher slaughter. It should be banned in the interests of animal welfare.
Faith-based violence against women is against the law; faith-based violence against animals should also be against the law.
December 23, 2025
Should faith based indoctrination and forced diets and sartorial coverings of young children especially young girls be outlawed too? Is it not a perhaps form of child abuse/indoctrination of immature minds? Should we have schools segregated heavily by religion – it did not go too well in Northern Island to have these cleavages in society as I recall.
December 23, 2025
Religious & faith organisation should not receive any beneficial nor faviable tax and legal treatment
December 23, 2025
Protestant Christianity should be supported as our national religion.
You are not obliged to join and can leave.
December 23, 2025
So Lynn, you want to ban things you don’t like, and because you are content with British produced meat, you want to impose that on the rest of us too. You’re doing what Geoffrey Berg so thoughtfully points out below – you’re dictating to the rest of us how to behave. That’s simple intolerance, and I don’t think it’s remotely the British way
December 23, 2025
I don’t impose British produced meat on you Walpole. You can paddle over the channel and eat the meat that has been produced in the most vicious way.
I seek to ensure that Christian British people are not forced to eat Halal slaughtered meat. Or do you think that we should be forced to purchase ‘British Turkey produced in Poland’ as reported today in the MSM?
If you don’t think we should impose our own standards in animal welfare, why should we impose our own standards in quality of gold or steel or medical degrees? Should we just allow a ‘doctor’ to cut into women’s breasts without any form of sedation as has been reported in Darlington?
December 23, 2025
Well said Lynn
December 23, 2025
No, we should lower our food animal welfare regulations to those in the E.U.and the U.S.A. which are themselves higher than those in the Third World (and most people are not concerned when they visit other countries). If individual people don’t like this they are entitled to become vegetarian or vegan (which I am not) but not to dictate to the rest of us.
December 23, 2025
The standards in the USA are higher than British standards. It is the EU that has descended to 3rd world status already, in many fields.
Indeed I can name some 3rd world countries whose animal husbandry is superior to that of the EU (South Africa).
But if you don’t mind the degradation of everything you are in the right place, Starmer’s Britain is as low as you can get.
December 23, 2025
Geoffrey loves Brexit, wants it to open us up to global trade. Lynn loves Brexit, wants it to close us off from global trade. And there, in a nutshell, is why Brexit was and is a fraud on the British people. You can have Geoffrey’s Brexit or you can have Lynn’s Brexit but you can’t have both, and Brexit is an incoherent mess because the referendum never specified which one applied. Far more people wanted to Remain than wanted any particular form of Brexit
December 23, 2025
DB: “Far more people wanted to Remain than wanted any particular form of Brexit.”
“Remain” was and is totally undefinable because it depends upon the decisions made by governing elites we cannot elect and cannot remove. Remain remains the ultimate a pig-in-a-poke choice with no way of knowing who is making the decisions and what these decions will be.
Reply Far more people wanted Brexit than any version of Remain.
December 23, 2025
You are ridiculous.
Brexit is all about deciding what our own standards are in our own Parliament and trading freely with anyone who meets our standards.
Don’t you know that the EU imposes standards unilaterally which nobody wants but everybody has to accept?
You are NOT a ‘disillusioned Brexiteer’ you are a very limited Remainer through and through. Who are you? Johnson?
Next you will be telling us that ‘Britain regrets Brexit’ – tell that to Reeves, even she has the wit to comprehend that her Brexit voting constituency is more staunchly in favour now than then.
December 24, 2025
The EU doesn’t “impose” any standards. All its rules are freely and fairly agreed by elected politicians in the Council and the Parliament. In this country we have a government with a massive majority which only one in three voters wanted. The UK imposes, the EU doesn’t
Reply Try and stop an unwanted rule as a Minister! The rules are drawn up and proposed by the unelected Commission and pushed through on a qualified majority.
December 24, 2025
@Serena – the EU parliament of MEP have no say, they can debate but have no say in the Laws and Rules passed down to them. That’s the point they are just told approve, that is then classed as democracy. See Claire Fox MEP’s a pure socialist left winger’s views on it, she couldn’t believe that as a member of that parliament there was nothing she could say or do to effect/cause change to what the technocrats decreed she had to approve.
December 23, 2025
Off topic but has been discussed on this site at length before.
I see it is reported on the BBC news, Business website this morning, that it has just come to light, that the Post office may have had a written contract and agreement in 2006 with Fujitsu, that Fujitsu would correct all errors and bugs in the Horizon Software, or pay the Post Office £150 per accounting error.
It reports that this agreement was in place BEFORE the first prosecution of any Postmaster.
The ramifications of this alleged statement if proven should be massive !.
Not a good look for Big Brother Government control of anything.
December 23, 2025
@ Berkshire Alan
The end result of the lengthy public enquiry into the Horizon scandal should be that those involved in persecuting the unfortunate postmasters should be prosecuted for perjury and/or corporate manslaughter. And given lengthy, deterrent, prison sentences.
And we need to establish who, exactly, got away with the missing money
December 23, 2025
And the Ministers who failed to do their duty? I very much look forward to Ed Davey, who refused to even listen to the Sub-Postmasters’ side of the story, being banged up for a very long time.
December 23, 2025
There was no missing money, that’s the point.
However the State should be charged with Corporate Manslaughter.
December 23, 2025
Lynn
Agreed, there was no missing money, just wrongfully recorded numbers on a dodgy computer programme, and then covered up by those who were supposed to be in charge, by blaming the “little people”.
December 23, 2025
Lynn, what about the money that postmasters (can I get away with that?) paid to cover the non-existent short fall? Didn’t the post office just trouser that?
December 23, 2025
They were paying money in to match the false numbers.
There was no money missing.
December 23, 2025
Surely the books or at least the bank statements cannot have balanced? Didn’t the accountants or auditors spot that the accounts and bank statements didn’t balance or match?
December 24, 2025
OR
That’s the actual excuse used for blaming and shaming the postmasters.
The postmasters were putting in the right figures for the money, but then the Computer system manipulated/transposed them to give a wrong final figure, some postmasters said they even saw the figures change on the screen from the original entries.
December 23, 2025
I agree with you Sakara,
Then we could also do the same for the net harm Covid “vaccines” pushers and then the pushers of the Climate Alarmist exaggeration hoax which is freezing & killing thousands too.
December 24, 2025
@Berkshire Alan – and Ed Davey the man that aspires to be our PM and was in charge of the Post Office on behalf of the electorate at the time. Apparently he was told of the problems and informed of the persecutions taking place and did nothing. His inabilities to manage has to date cost the UK Taxpayer north of £1bn and it is says cost lives – now having demonstrated his abilities want to be PM and use his skills to manage the UK.
December 23, 2025
Food from low husbandry sources is but one burdon inflicted on our farming industry. A government whose thinking is generated around guardianista Islington diner tables has little affinity with anything outside the M25.
We have a high capitally invested farm industry predated upon by a greedy supermarket industry free to exploit both farmers and a public largely ignorant about food. It allows supermarkets to profitably sell junk at the expense of the consumer. Ask yourself how much Cheddar Cheese has any relationship to Cheddar. Or for that matter Olive Oil to an Olive tree. When did you last see a mature Seabass or Cod on a fish counter waiting to be portioned according to user needs.
Most of the deficiencies in our food industry can be laid at the door of government either as ignorance, incompetence or vindictiveness.
December 23, 2025
Chicken farming
The UK generally has stricter chicken farming rules than the EU, with lower stocking densities (39kg/m² vs. EU 42kg/m²), mandatory lighting, and required cleanouts for intensive farms, plus new UK laws banning enriched cages and farrowing crates by 2030, while the EU still permits enriched cages. Key differences lie in stocking density, enrichment, and the UK’s independent push for higher standards, even exceeding some previous EU ones, like mandating natural light where the EU does not. Our chicken farmers are at a competitive disadvantage.
December 23, 2025
Nobody should disagree with keeping our animal welfare standards high.
The usual howls of protest from country folk who object to Labour’s ban on trail hunting. Which, right across the country, is used as a cover to flush out foxes so that they can be pursued until they are exhausted and then torn apart by packs of howling dogs.
It’s a shame that we are still shooting badgers by the thousand because the NFU thinks that it’s cheaper than introducing proper husbandry of the national herd to prevent transmission of bovine TB. Badgers have effectively been eradicated from Gloucestershire – yet the county still has one of the highest TB rates in the UK
December 23, 2025
Eat British Lamb, 100,000 foxes can’t be wrong.
Where are the howles of these townies for the 100,000 fluffy lambs half eaten (foxes kill for pleasure and NOT to feed, they do not devour an entire carcass) and not even killed first?
Do you know that ‘cub hunting’ used to occur when the fox cubs were fully grown?
Of course there is no foxhunting in the U.K. anymore, we drag-hunt because the horses love it and get fit by running and jumping for pleasure. It’s also a excuse to keep hounds alive (they consume all the corpses half eaten by foxes and other road kill, also horses) and for employment of all of those involved in hunting/racing, which is allied.
But kind Starmer who defends child rapists has no stomach for drag hunting 😂🤣
December 23, 2025
The problem will be that if Starmer negotiates this with the EU he will agree to send £billions to those countries with lower standards to achieve the necessary upgrades or compensation for loss of business etc..
December 23, 2025
Yes, we should insist that food imports have to meet the same standards demanded of our farmers, (or change/lower our standards) or what is the point? But we won’t, especially where the EU is concerned.
December 23, 2025
I agree. A merry Christmas To you and your readers Sir John.
December 23, 2025
Having laws and enabling others to break the law would generate lawlessness. If we have welfare standards in the UK, accepting imports from countries with lower standards reduces our own. We should ban food imports from the EU that fail to comply.
December 23, 2025
Off topic: I hope our kind host will allow me to mention The Conservative Woman (TCW) website and an article titled ‘How to destroy a country’. It’s a four-part series in TCW with part 1 published yesterday. Part 2 today.
December 23, 2025
Agreed, but Two-Tier intends signing us up (again) to the EU’s Agri and Food Standards so he won’t be able to block EU products which are produced to a lower standard than ours.
That was the whole point of leaving the EU and “taking back control” which the Establishment (under a Not-a-Conservative Government) REFUSED to implement.
So, thanks to the weak BRINO we were permitted, the subsequent Windsor “deal” which made it even worse, and now Two-Tier’s so-called Reset, WE are not allowed to compete with the EU but they ARE allowed to compete with us by using cheaper and often less humane systems of production.
Heads they win / Tails we lose.
We needed a Trump to get a decent deal from the EU or the courage to go with NO DEAL. With the NaCP we got a bunch of cowardly idiots who couldn’t negotiate their way out of a paper bag and with Labour we have people who are working in the EU’s interests, not ours.
December 23, 2025
Donna
No Deal was ruled out by Parliament with the Ben Bill, hence thereupon we could never get a proper Brexit, because the Remainer’s with that Bill passed made us accept what ever the Eu offered as terms.
I remember well Remainer MP’s going over to Europe to plead with them to not give us good terms, in the hope that we would change our minds.
I agree with you, can you imagine Trump putting up with that sort of nonsense unfortunately we had ditherer May in charge (well in name only) !!!!
December 23, 2025
They say we eat too much meat, and the industry is an inefficient and environmentally damaging method of food production.
So let’s ban all meat imports, and rely solely on UK production. No more Irish beef, German pork or Danish bacon. Tell the EU we’re thinking of the environment.
December 23, 2025
‘They say we eat too much meat’ –who the hell are ‘they’?
Diet should be a person’s own choice within affordability.
December 23, 2025
I recommend the Youtube videos:- David Starkey and Jacob Rees Mogg respond to Trump’s plan for Europe
Taken from ‘Starkey & Mogg Episode 2: The technocracy, Trump and tragedy at Bondi Beach’
and Mogg’s “Starmer is maliciously destroying rural England”.
Sir Two Tier Kier is surely an evil & malicious vandal for the whole of the UK.
December 23, 2025
Starmer announced this morning that the £1million Agricultural and Business Property Reliefs threshold will be increased to £2.5million from April 2026.
We can and must put enormous pressure on these bullies.
December 23, 2025
Lynn
Still not enough, IHT should be scrapped for everyone.
December 23, 2025
No argument from me.
But we have got them on the run. That’s important. Psychologically.
December 23, 2025
Gold nearly hit $4,500 this morning although it’s fallen back a little since.
Forgetting how happy SG will be with his ‘Stacks’ and simply taken as a “Fear” index instead, people are clearly getting worried. I must admit to feeling some misgivings last night myself as Trump announced his new ‘Super Battleships’ – although I was impressed that he’s going to try to bring some commercial ‘nous’ to their procurement and delivery.
December 23, 2025
All very good Sir JR. Yet no government has grown the cojones to ban Halal slaughter, nor force such meat to be labelled as such. It’s long overdue.
Of course Starmer won’t be the PM to do so. He relies on the Islamic vote.
December 23, 2025
They should but it would come back to hurt us if we did.
The UK has consistently raised standards in all areas connected with food – those standards took a dip when we were in the EU. Now if HMG would just leave our farmers alone, allow them the means to a living wage without that insane inheritance tax our farmers would be only too happy to provide healthy food on the UK’s front steps.
The reality is that with farmers going bust on a regular basis if we don’t import from somewhere we don’t eat!
December 23, 2025
What! Farmers go bust due to several reasons – crazy increase in costs, energy, animal foods, husbandry rules, the simple truth that taking animals to market with no timing choice can result in a loss. Then we have labour costs and family workers below minimum wage in 24/7 conditions that are awful. Then of course weather can dictate profit or loss for a whole year. Finally too much of their output has to be sold via supermarkets who drive down pricing with no morals about treating British farming abominably.
December 23, 2025
+1
December 23, 2025
Infect you appear to be suggesting returning to the food production standards we had in the UK in the time before we got involved with the EU. That statement could be miss interpreted as being derogatory, far from it, the UK had to be the ones to lower its food standards because EU member’s found them to hard to comply with.
A lot of our farming was lost due to joining the EU. Abattoirs, milk and so on, The EU’s propensity to hand out money to the small ‘part-time’ farmer alone helped to undermine UK farming with artificial cheap prices in the market place through subsidies. It isn’t just the UK that was punished the rest of the World, the growing part of the World had their agriculture damaged before it was able to get going because the EU was dumping food in their markets at below their own costs of production.
The EU is not an open market playing on the World stage, it is a closed protectionist market weaponising trade against the World
December 23, 2025
Exactly, and a failing one. Only a madman would want to hitch his wagon to that sinking ship.
December 23, 2025
In fact, not infect
December 23, 2025
O/T ft.com 22/12/2025 ‘Britain’s bargain takeover market’: ‘Overseas bidders agreed £142bn worth of takeovers of British firms in the 11 and a bit months to 17 December this year, a 74% increase on the same period in 2024’. Mainly bought by US and private equity groups.
And with an interesting BTL debate …
December 23, 2025
When you are being bankrupted, Hefner, you have to sell everything to pay the bills.
Could you not find a paper printed in black and white to quote to us along those lines?
God forbid you should have to think anything through on your own.
December 23, 2025
But what happens if the things I would think through on my own are just bonkers?
You know, things related to WEF, Shula&Ott, Climate Fools Day, Covid-lockdowns, Trump-class battleships, …
December 23, 2025
Well hefner we realise you are just being your natural self.
December 23, 2025
same goes for eggs, we import eggs from countries which keep chickens in conditions which would not be allowed in the UK.
it is madness.
we need to ban all slaughter where the animals were not pre stunned. as does New Zealand which exports most of its meat to Arab countries…
December 23, 2025
And please stop all kosher and halal animal slaughter
December 23, 2025
I am surprised Sir John advocates such measures. The Right is supposed to be 100% free trade fanatics – no tariffs, no NTBs under any circumstances. The Right did not understand Trump’s tariffs. They were a means to an end. Sir John’s suggestion, likewise.
December 23, 2025
John Redwood is not a ‘right wing’ politician. He is a radical capitalist Conservative.
I believe I right in this JR?
Reply I believe in wider ownership, prosperity coming for the many from promoting free enterprise, greater personal freedoms, choice and competition driving better quality and provision, generous supports for those who are seriously ill and disabled who cannot work.
December 23, 2025
john, your philosophy would only work if legal and illegal immigration was far far smaller. it can only work if national intellectual property is protected much more. it can only work if tarrifs equalise the costs of things imported from countries which approach anti pollution, safety, animal welfare, IP protection, differently.
December 23, 2025
Yep. Nothing ‘right wing’ there.
All popular policies for which we see British people fighting every day, on their tractors, on the beaches of France, in their shops …
December 23, 2025
I realised how cruel Irish animal exports are when driving down the motorway near Barcelona when the outside temperature was 37C. A convoy of open Irish cattle trucks was on the way to a Spanish abattoir. Now that they are banned from driving through the UK, they have a longer journey by sea to Cherbourg. That said, I have just bought a joint of Irish beef reduced from £32 to £8.50 as they had a fridge full that no-one could afford and had to sell it by tomorrow. I wonder how much the farmers made from it.
Regarding halal, some of it is pre -stunned. NZ has a bloke bless it afterwards and the Arabs are happy with that. There’s no reason why the UK shouldn’t make non stunned slaughter illegal.
December 23, 2025
The number of foreign owned kebab style takeaways has increased tenfold in my high street …..and we no longer have ‘trading-standards’ visits to protect us
December 23, 2025
I see one of the immigration officers that the CPS is prosecuting for stealing from immigrants is himself an illegal immigrant. the public sector is a joke.
December 23, 2025
Poacher turned gamekeeper perhaps because the money and opportunities were better ?
December 23, 2025
yea but an illegal immigrant working as an immigration officer? its hilarious
December 23, 2025
The country is that mad, you can now buy (unknowingly) a takeaway from the kitchen in a migrant hotel ?
December 23, 2025
Agree we should ban food imports from countries with lower standards than ours. But with Starmer as PM, there is no chance he will ban imports from the EU.
We need to up UK food production to be as close to self-sufficient as we can be, in these uncertain times.
At least, a modest concession to Farmers, increasing the IHT threshold to £2.5 million. It is a start, but it needs to be at least double that to protect family farms.
December 23, 2025
Whilst the increase is welcome, there needs to be 100% exemption for UK businesses that are passed on to children as a going concern.
It hardly gives any confidence to anyone in business in this country, where no one can be sure where the next tax rise or legislation hit will come from.
I’ve just been reading the new legislation regarding employee rights. Even for a mature business such as ours they are concerning. For someone considering whether to expand and start employing anyone they will be prohibitive. Only the naive would become an employer.
December 23, 2025
I couldn’t agree more.
December 23, 2025
17 ‘unknows’ invaded the UK yesterday 22nd Dec 2025
December 24, 2025
so the US is to build two new full sized battleships, and France is to build a new nuclear powered aircraft carrier (that doesn’t rely on vertical landing planes).
something tells me UK defence policy is a mess.
December 24, 2025
and the UK have spent 15 years and £6 billion trying to build the new army recce small tank ….that still doesn’t work and is about to be scraped
December 27, 2025
Agree entirely on all areas of importation. We should also look closely at methods of animal treatment in this country, ie I am referring to immigrant practices which have imported themselves with the humans that have come to this Island. No good not looking at problems here caused by human immigration whilst tackling other animal welfare problems.