I'm a country boy at heart, and am generally more interested in bucolic life than urban.
When possible I try to watch the BBC Sunday TV show 'Countryfile'. It keeps one up to date with country matters, and the farming year in general.
This last Sunday's edition was really depressing. Farmers, big and small, were ruing the prospect of Labour's new disastrous Inheritance Tax for farms. There was talk of suicide and despair. One small farmer was facing a tax bill of £1 Million on the imminent death of his father.
Farmers have a difficult enough job. They spend their lives improving and investing, and growing our food, only to find that some 'class war' urban lovies want to bleed them dry, and force them to sell their farms. How crazy is that!
Country people are so angry that words cannot describe their feelings. I just hope that, after seeing that programme, both The Tories and Reform UK will declare that they will immediately reverse this destructive policy. This poor man below, who was on Sunday's programme, was typical of the interviewees.
Our problem in the UK is that we have a Socialist government with little or no business experience, absolutely no knowledge of farming life, and a hatred of hard-working farmers who they mistakenly see as being 'Hunting Shooting Fishing Wealthy Country Squires'. I think it's about time that Reeves or Starmer spent a few days on a working farm.
This is without doubt the most disastrous Political Policy of recent times. Tragic.
I spent my early life living on a small mixed farm, one now that Rachel from Complaints would force to be sold to pay the IHT that would become due under her changes. It would almost certainly be incorporated into other surrounding farms, and the net result would be a loss of 4 jobs, and the owners family futures. Small beer in the rarified lives of Rachel Theeves, but disastrous for the individuals concerned.
ReplyDeleteNormally, I find Countryfile a poor reflection of real country life - too "into" current left wing gimmickry like rewilding etc, but in this case they seem to be right on the money.
As for the Labour party in general, they have long since abandoned any meaningful relationship to the countryside, at least Blair did belatedly recognize the folly of his vandalism over fox hunting. I am sure that 99% of Labour MPs think that food magically springs into existence on a Waitrose supermarket shelf, and that farmers have no input into it at all, otherwise why is Mad Ed Milibrain so determined to wipe out all agriculture by replacing food growing land with his useless solar panels and bird-eating windmills?
I could go on, but my blood pressure is already dangerously high!!!
Starmer and Reeves, and many more of the senior Labour MPs need to spend real time (months, not days) in the country -on a Scottish croft, a Dales or Welsh hill farm, a Lincolnshire or Fenland vegetable farm, a dairy farm.... They might then realise that there is a whole other life outside their cosy gold plated Westminster bubble.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is, that we can all see it but they can't. It would be informative for them to spend a week in a High Street shop Accounts Dep't too, so they could see with their own eyes what effect their policies are having on business. And maybe another week in the home of an ordinary working family to see where the money goes.
DeleteThey haven't got a bloody clue. And just wait till the next budget; things will get even worse.
That's so true that politicians really need to experience Farming life. But then many of our politicians don't really have much life experience anyway. There was a time when Lawyers and Doctors left their practices to become politicians. They were well read and well lived, unlike that David Lammy.
ReplyDeleteI suspect many of today's lot have probably never had a proper job. I think it all started with 'Blair's Babes' in 97. Straight out of College to get a job as a local Councillor and then off to Westminster.
So will this very unpopular Labour Government do a U turn on the Inheritance Tax, to stave off more voters leaning towards Reform UK?
Can't wait for next month's Autumn Budget.
I wonder if Rachel Reeves studied Economics?
I keep hearing that the U.K may soon be heading with a begging bowl to the I.M.F, just like we did when Dennis Healy was Chancellor back in the 1970's.
Rachel from Accounts has written a work of fiction in place of a genuine CV, so it's anyone's guess whether she has ever studied economics, whatever she may claim.
DeleteMany people and especially career politicians have no knowledge of farming and land management. They see fields as somewhere to build houses or put solar farms.
ReplyDeleteThe tax will mean the end of many family farms- it's a tragedy. I'm glad I won't be around to see the collapse of food production but I fear for my grandchildren.