Body & Soul3 mins ago
Food Shortage Plan Being Drawn Up To Thwart A Farmers’ Strike
//A senior minister has revealed that plans are being drawn up to deal with food shortages if farmers go ahead with their threat to strike over the controversial family farm tax....Farmers are set to descend on London in their thousands on Tuesday to protest against plans to impose a 20 per cent inheritance tax on farms worth £1m or more. They have warned that the policy will destroy family farms across the country or see them broken up....But more worrying for the government are the plans by farmers to go on strike and stop food production to give ministers a taste of what it would be like if the UK food-producing sector were no longer operating.//
A grim prospect heralding a grim winter. When will the stockpiling begin?
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If the farmers wish to shoot themselves in the foot and distroy their own businesses so be it. They flood the market with far to much produce anyhow, and in turn dumped. The French have tried many times to bring its government down or change a policy and have failed many times, Keir not for u turns.
It will be short lived if they do strike anyhow, because their income will dive to no income at all, plus supermarkets will just increase their orders from other countries.
The inheritance tax will only affect a small number of farms each years. The government should stand its ground against them. So many people demand better public services. The money has to come from somewhere. Are we at a state of such selfishness whereby every tax incease however modest has people screaming and shouting?
What is more serious for food production is the poor harvests this year caused by the rubbish weather this Spring and Summer
Nicebloke @ 13:27...I'd not blame the farmers for flooding the market as you call it. They grow and supply according to the demands of the supermarkets that buy from them. The same supermarkets that have...in the recent past at least...rejected misshapen vegetables. Tons of them iirc. Because that's what consumers want.
In just over 4 months this omnishambles excuse for an adult Goevernment has take the UK from being on the cusp of a period of increasing industrial strength and business prosperity, with benefits for all, to a wrung out shadow of the society that come through the covid pandemic worry and concern. Instead, and despite our stoic perseverance and optimism, we now have the certainty of food shortages and power cuts brough about by the politics of greed and envious spite that is the left wing stock in trade.
//A grim prospect heralding a grim winter. When will the stockpiling begin?//
It is happening already. People are already stocking up their freezers and making ready for shortages and cold spells with no power. Look at the buying patterns in you local supermarkets and you will see the beginings of a rush to survive instinct kicking in. All caused by putting a financial illiterate in charge of the Country's finances. Pretending to be an experienced economist when in reality just working a in a small complaints team within HBOS which managed administration processes. They all live in a pretend World that only exists in their heads.
“They flood the market with far to much produce anyhow, and in turn dumped.”
Do they?
The UK produces about 10m tons of food waste each year. Almost 70% of this comes from households, 15% from retailers ordering too much and around 10% being rejected for being of unsuitable quality or shape/size. This doesn’t leave too much scope for the market to be flooded by over-production.
“The inheritance tax will only affect a small number of farms each years.”
Although the Farmers’ Union disputes the number, the government’s own figures suggest around 500 pa. So that’s 500 farms annually that will need either to find many thousands of pounds or they will have to be sold and the family that worked them possibly for generations will lose them. But it’s only 500 a year (I.e. ten a week), so no need to worry.
There is simply no justification for imposing a tax on the value of assets that are not to be sold, simply because the owner of them has died. Capital Gains Tax captures any profit made from their increase in value, but only if and when they are sold.
The reason this has become an issue for a Labour government is that many wealthy people are buying farmland as a way to avoid inheritance tax. They have no intention, in many cases, of farming the land; it is simply a tax haven. Encouraged by the ridiculous “rewilding” scheme, wealthy people will still take advantage of buying farmland because the subsidies provided by that scheme and the fact that, at 20%, the tax charged is still 50% less than if the money was kept in the bank, it’s still a good deal. They may well buy some of the family farms that have to be sold because the family cannot raise the IHT.
It should not have been beyond he government’s wit to devise a system which captures tax from these avoidance schemes but leaves alone family farms which will simply be passed down the generations.
“So many people demand better public services.”
Yes they do - as well they should.
“The money has to come from somewhere.”
The money is already available. Around 40% of the country’s earnings is spent by the government. What people really want is better use made of that money instead of simply throwing more and more of it at things which don't work, in the belief that they will if more £50 notes are thrown at them.
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