The Brexit Arms (temporary till the licensee get here)

[BoredofBrexit]

Noise enforcement squad!
Where's the landlady? Surfer?
We've been advised of a a lock in and it's reported that the jukebox has been stuck playing Pulp - Common People - all night.

Lego can spend their money how they like.

Then why did the vile and ever political Alastair Campbell get involved in this?

Lego can spend their money how they like

Clearly not. Now the bullying left are making companies feel guilt over fuck all.

They want total domination over everything, and the more power they lose the more bullying & desperate they become.

Alastair Campbell has commented on it, same as you southallgirl. I very much doubt he had any influence over Lego's decision.

Lego, as a family owned Danish company, is always going to be conservative (with a small c).

www.cbsnews.com/news/commentary-the-unbearable-smugness-of-the-press-presidential-election-2016

Cut and pasted from another thread

Now the bullying left are making companies feel guilt over fuck all.

Yeah, because there's fuck all wrong with hate-filled headlines about immigrants, fuck all wrong with calling judges 'traitors' for upholding the law. Lego are quite right to reconsider their association with a hate-filled, sexist rag. Good for them. Do you also think it was the 'bullying left' who were responsible for news outlets refusing to stock the Sun in Liverpool? It's called having principles and fighting hate with any small means at your disposal.

The Don't Fund Hate campaign is long overdue. Some newspapers have got along with their rabble-rousing for far too long and their readers don't even understand they're being manipulated. No wonder this country is divided.

Lego has already shown that it's very aware of its advertising relationships - Lego ended a deal with Shell over Greenpeace's campaign against drilling in the Arctic.

Mind you, with Trump now going to be in control, I suspect Shell will be revisiting its plans for the Arctic.

I see lego have succumbed to the fascist left's

Deciding not to advertise in a newspaper is now fascist?

(Whilst newspapers actually calling for the life imprisonment of dissenters, and personally attacking the independence of the judiciary, is not?)

I am pretty sure Lego's decision is almost entirely commercially driven given its buying demographic. Not even going to start on the elasticity of the supposed high minded principles of Campbell/Blair etc etc etc.

I am far more interested in the position of the Dane who is the biggest landowner in Scotland mopping up millions in EU "farming" subsidies. He apparently prefers repopulating the Highlands with wild lynx to looking at investing in agricultural businesses. It is an absolute scandal that Scottish hillsides are covered in sheep but the lack of support for the wool industry is such that I cannot afford a locally produced ball of wool to knit my own jumper. We have much to learn from New Zealand.

Come Brexit, Lego (the treacherous running dogs of the EUrocracy) will be hit with a 1000% tariff and all patriotic British children will play with Brego blocks manufactured in a factory in Huddersfield by British workers using entirely British raw materials (for this reason instead of being plastic they will be carved out of potato).

Or Lego could just relocate all manufacture and design of products for the UK and international market to a certain Highland estate.

howabout Polsen received £140,000 in EU subsidies in 2014 (mainly for reforestation and wildlife conservation on Highland estates from what I know).

I think you need to look at people like Frank Smart first when it comes to CAP subsidies - he raked in £3 million by buying farms and their subsidies and then renting out those farms without the benefit of the subsidies. That's why many farmers are struggling.

www.greenpeace.org.uk/media/press-releases/greenpeace-investigation-exposes-agricultural-subsidies-linked-tax-havens-and-billionaires-20160929

www.bratach.co.uk/bratach/archive/Apr16/Apr16_rocket-range-could-affect-hundred-million-plus-investment.html

www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/editors-picks/1044382/meet-danish-billionaire-now-biggest-land-owner-scotland-8million-estate-swoop/

Not going to bother to argue the toss over the historic levels of subsidy and whether the current land grab is money driven or not.

The more central point is about whether I want a Danish businessman or the Scottish government setting policy on management of the Highlands. Makes Trump and his golf courses look positively benevolent.

Same argument applies to foreign investors buying up empty apartment blocks in central London to use as wealth store hedges, but the solutions to that may well be more complex.

Would you rather that the RSPB and the National Trust didn't claim EU subsidies for land management?

The Scottish Government has been happy for the British aristocracy to manage Highland sporting estates for their own benefit (hunting, shooting, fishing) so I'm not sure why a Danish landowner looking to do similar would require sudden intervention?

Or would you rather Povlsen followed Sir James Dyson's lead - buying agricultural land to avoid inheritance tax and raking in £1.5 million of EU subsidies, whilst artificially inflating land prices?

If Povlsen was in it purely for EU subsidies then I think he's buying the wrong land.

Nothing will ever make Trump's Menie estate look benevolent ...

Interesting read Bored 're journalists the media in general seem to have lost the plot

On a related topic: Paul Dacre, the editor of the Daily Mail, owns a Scottish country estate for which he claims EU subsidies.

Typical liberal lefty hypocrite.

Trumps interior design arousing a fair bit of debate on the other political thread.

NotDavidTennant

Daily Mash today: Everyone to blame for twats like Trump 'except the people who vote for them'

Informal read the Greenpeace link for my broader view and you are correct in asserting this is not just about non-UK citizens. However if Sean Connery, Jim McColl and others lived and paid taxes in Scotland I might take their well meaning interventions in the political sphere more seriously.

I am not a fan of The Highland Clearances all over again.

I am not aware of anyone claiming EU agricultural subsidies do not lead to misuse of land, misallocation of funding and price distortion?

On a lighter note I have 2 teenage daughters raiding my wardrobe and looking impossibly hip and glamorous in all my favourite threads. I fear I may be over the hill never mind the mountains.

Where is the bar lady?

Simon Pegg ‏@Simon_Pegg
After Lego cuts ties with The Daily Mail, it releases new minifigure in time for Christmas.
Openly Gay Olympic Fencer Judge.

howabout I have read the Greenpeace report - I'm a bit lost as to what your point is?

The old single payment scheme was calculated on the amount of cultivatable land - which is going to be pretty low in Highland estates.

So is your point about a Dane buying Scottish land to get millions in EU subsidies (which isn't going to happen because of the nature of the land he's buying - if that was his aim he'd be doing what Dyson has done), or that you don't like the fact it's a Dane that has a large land holding in Scotland?

The Scottish Land Reform bill seems very focused on who owns what rather than how the land is best managed (although the move to make ownership more transparent is a positive step given the complicated offshore trusts that have been involved, plus taxation reform). How would you rather see Highland estates managed?

Haha Red. Love it.

“It is untenable for the Government to justify keeping a farming policy which allows a billionaire to breed race horses on land subsidised by taxpayers. It’s clear that there cannot be a business-as-usual approach to farm subsidies after we leave the EU. One look at where these eye-watering sums are ending up is enough to show that the CAP system is kaput, and continuing in the same vein would be a costly mistake,” said Hannah Martin of Greenpeace UK’s Brexit Response Team. “Some of the recipients of these subsidies are doing great work which benefits our environment - but others are not - and it makes no sense that the CAP’s largest subsidy payments don’t distinguish between the two. That can’t be right. All landowners should be encouraged to help with things like conservation, sustainable food production, building thriving rural economies, maintaining healthy soils and reducing flood-risk.”

I am not seeing what is not clear about this?

www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/Bills/90675.aspx

The Land Reform Bill is about far more than a land ownership register. The register is what will help to make the other provisions on management and interaction with communities and tenants enforceable.

However I feel we are digressing into minutiae once more.