To support UK Farmers

[TheHateIsNotGood]

And due to KS's inability to face them in Wales today they are now thinking of going on strike. Because the govt are being too stubborn to reconsider how they apply IHT on working family farms. By all means close the loophole that allows the 'landed gentry' to take advantage of the agricultural exception but not with so blunt an instrument.

I was hoping to add a post to an existing thread but there isn't one despite it being headline news today.

There is a growing movement for rejoin.
Someone upthread mentioned about fruit and veg having to be perfect when we were in Europe - have you never shopped in a french supermarket or shop where things are all shapes and sizes. It was Boris coming out with this crap about straight bananas

Indeed, I do remember. But no system is perfect, and it is a question of advantages and disadvantages. For £100bn pa gain we need to pay certain prices in regulations. Thinking it would be worthwhile is why we left.

I think just possibly Boris (whisper it) may have exaggerated. I know the idea is shocking to some.

Misshapen food can be diverted to food banks; even some well known restaurants make a point of using such produce for soups and stews. EU countries are also changing attitudes to food waste.

OH the french dance to their own drum. Shopping in France for food is an experience of commonsense, wonky vegetables and fruit. Cheese that isn't in chillers. Meat hanging from hooks in shops.

They import a lot of Welsh lamb, Scottish beef. Their chicken is scrawny looking but tastes so much better than ours. Their guinea fowl is excellent.

In full agreement.

If our economy hadn’t been losing £100bn a year thanks to Farage and co, the IHT for farmers issue wouldn’t have arose. However, we now need every penny we can get.

Seeing farmers complain about IHT whilst walking alongside Farage and former members of Vote Leave all dressed up in brand new Barbour looks foolish. He is the reason they are in this mess. They should be chasing him away!

I wonder if he even bothers to reply to the Fishermen’s (or his constituents) messages anymore.

Many people would take them more seriously if they accepted they are part of the reason for being in this situation, chased away the professional trolls and troublemakers like Farage and asked to work with the government to be part of the situation in improving our working relationship with Europe to the benefit of all industries negatively impacted.

We've already discussed that the UK when issued rules from Brussels obeyed to the letter. Take British apples. Our orchards failed because we had the wrong apples, wrong size shape. The EU provided us with golden delicious instead.

Our beef they refused imports for years because of mad cow disease,, our lamb because of Chernobyl. Well newsflash they had CJD, Chernobyl fall out rain also landed in their fields.

We were weak, tugging our forelocks, whereas other European countries wisely turned a blind eye in a subtle FU move and got away with it.

You can see it now with immigration in Europe they've put up barriers, threatening Brussels with leaving the EU.

The Greeks called their bluff and won.

They're not some utopian we're all in this together group of countries.

But we were the losers

Blame the uk consumer and govt for a: not buying UK produce and b: for having so many unnecessary regulations.

We used grow flowers and toms, neighbours similar, all but one have gone to dust, south facing valley, perfect for growing but no one does, across the valley was a fruit farm.... several holiday lets now,

We have huge input costs, not least energy, we tried wood chip, bio fuels any but in the end, it was all too expensive.

Thats all on the UK, nothing to do with with the EU.

I can buy Whiting in France, caught in UK waters, can't get it here but i can buy Basa imported from SE Asia.... its on us and greed by the unregulated supermarkets.

France is over 100% self sufficient in food, the UK is around 65%.

In Wales we can get decent fish, because we're on the coast, lots of one man bands. They catch, whiting, cod, dogfish, sea bass, mackerel, lobster, crab, whenever they're around. Sell to the local fishmonger. Their biggest threat here are the Dutch and Spanish who scrape along the sea beds smashing up a delicate eco system.

We're 8 years out of Brexit, little has changed fishing wise for us

This is not really much of an argument.

I know the EU is deeply flawed and am not advocating going back in as it’s currently run. I was a reluctant remainer because I care more about money than passport colours and emotions. However, the current situation is untenable economically.

We need to have proper discussions about a proper trading relationship which will involve some compromises without the likes of the Daily Mail and Farage screaming and yelling. It’s deeply unhelpful to us.

Tomatoes, only this morning husband was talking to a Spanish woman who lives and works here. At home her family, friends, neighbours farmed huge valley which grew tomatoes. The government offered all the business to North Africa to produce tomatoes for Spain. It's put the whole area of Spain out of business re tomato growing. All because I suspect someone in government decided to support North Africa and damn the unemployment in Spain.

Next time you're shopping, check country of origin if you can

And most of this is based on misconceptions, but even taking it all at face value as true, it did not justify the self-harm of terminating our membership of a hugely lucrative union. It reads like a response to the cognitive dissonance of seeing where the leave vote got us.

But all irrelevant because the decision to leave is realistically irreversible! We have made our bed. We will become worse of unfortunately, along with various other consequences, so some uncomfortable decisions need to be made.

The TCA is not bad at all for a third country FTA. There can be some minor tinkering around the edges, but the only significant upgrade would happen by entering into a customs union, joining EFTA (and thereby the single market) or a full accession to the EU, and none of those is going to happen in the foreseeable future. We have to work with what we've got.

"EU-Mercosur trade deal: Winners and losers in Europe | Euronews" https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/11/19/eu-mercosur-trade-deal-winners-and-losers-in-europe

Saviour or Chinese stranglehold?

This thread is almost done. Pity there have been some intelligent illuminating posters.

If anyone wishes to roll it over feel free

Someone on Instagram just said that it's taken two generations to lose our skills. Catching fish, shooting for meat for the table. Growing vegetables, fruit, knitting, sewing, cooking from scratch, chopping wood, lighting fires, etc.

We're so vulnerable. In fact we're done.

We're not good at strategic decisions.

Brexit which the thread has been digressing onto, has not proved to be a good strategic decision, but it gave us a short term political feel-good factor.

Shutting down parts of the agricultural and manufacturing sectors (and coal and steel before them) may come back to bite us in future. But if we can import more cheaply it makes sense in the short term.

Maybe we shouldn’t mention that on the thread about War with Russia 🥴

Am I right in saying it affects farms worth over 1M, then it's taxed at 20%?
So for every million over a million is £20k tax?

No your out by a factor of 10. Every million would be taxed at £200k

@notanothernamechange24

Sorry I was missing a zero.
I meant £200k

@poetryandwine you must have missed be multiple wildfires in the last few years here in the UK. Including one just outside london that burnt down houses.
No it's not on the scale of Australia or Canada but it still poses a risk to life.

It would be a far bigger problem if our landscape here in the UK wasn't managed as well as it currently is

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5214000-to-support-uk-farmers-part-ii

I thought the IHT limit was £million so surely your IHT bill is still £0?

I believe an awful lot of todays problems are incorrectly laid at the door of brexit. The biggest thing that caused UK and the rest of the world's economies to tank was covid. Paying millions of people to be non productive for two years has left us with a bill we and our children will be paying until we die.

The current issues like rising food prices is affecting Europe just as much as it us.