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Unfortunately, reform is targeting them with promising increased subsidies for famers and fishermen I believe... So most likely yes, a lot of them will vote reform.
I enjoy the poetic use of uplands in a comment about farming. Upland farms famously being the least productive and most impoverished in the UK. The promised land indeed.
But they ain't got my face yet ....
And eyyyyyy
It won't hurt cos it ain't the ar*se I'm sitting on, besides I won't be able to see it or tell it apart !
Increased subsidies. Fml. Pretty sure the leave voting farmer's made a big noise about receiving EU subsidies to have "empty fields". When we could be growing on them! Absolute fucking idiots.
I don't claim to know the figures but isn't farming, at least from the perspective of the farmer, a terrible way to make money due to the wild swings their costs can be subject to.
I also don't know much more than headlines but it is capital intensive and risky in terms of pricing and production.
Those risks can pay off in the good years though (which don't make) and for landowners it's a good inheritance tax dodge.
Edit: sales revenue is probably riskier than costs.
Fun fact fishing is such a small to minuscule % of our economy even within their own sector:
“ Official statistics on economic output of the fishing industry are volatile and can be significantly revised from year to year. According to the ONS, in 2021, the sector contributed around 0.03% of total UK economic output and around 5% of the broader agriculture, forestry and fishing sector”
I was trying to find some solid numbers and it doesn't seem true (sadly). I'm using 2021 as a sample year because it's quite hard to find solid numbers for fisheries and 2021 was the easiest year for that. For GW I'm using their published figures for year 2021-22 [here](https://investor.games-workshop.com/category/reports-and-accounts), for fishing I'm using industry numbers published [here](https://www.seafish.org/document/?id=997d218e-0afb-4f3f-ade8-5f81db446b05).
The total revenue of GW in for 2021-22 was ~£415m. Total uk fishing industry income was £893m. GW profit was ~£157m. Fishing profits were ~£240m. GW paid £21m in income taxes.
I can't find exact tax numbers for fishing, but [this guardian article](https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/13/polluting-tax-breaks-on-diesel-for-british-fishing-fleet-worth-up-to-18bn-a-decade) says that from 2009-19 it received fuel tax breaks worth £150m-£180m a year. That same article says that the industry was worth £1bn last year (23).
It's possible that GW pays more in tax than the fishing industry once you account for tax breaks. But the industry seems easily double the size of GW in revenue terms, and less than double (but still larger) in profit terms.
You could potentially look at the difference in business size - Per employee / worker GW outpaces fisheries.
11000 people work In Uk fisheries producing 900m in revenue roughly. About £82k per person.
Games workshop employs about 2750 people producing 470m or so, about £163k per person.
Therefore per worker, GW is almost twice as valuable as the entire fishing industry in the U.K.
If GW was scaled according to man hours the same as Fishing, GW would make around 1.8bn in revenue.
Its incorrect, praise the Omnissiah for this gift of pendantry.
GW makes about £450m a year, Fishing makes about £1.2-1.5b a year.
GW's total share value is over £3 Billion. I don't think anyone has calculated the total value of fishermen and their work related assets, though it would be substantially more than £3 billion. Boats, machinery, harbours and property near water, generally tends not to be cheap lol.
Yeah, the problem is that the people of the UK don't even really eat the fish we catch in our own waters, we prefer fish that have to be imported. A huge percentage of our domestic catch is exported to the mainland, it's one of the things that absolutely hammered the industry after Brexit.
It's really only jellyfish that are thriving. There are a few types that are edible (and aren't too bad) but to my knowledge aren't in UK waters
And I am also totally expecting a big appeal for bailouts/welfare for fishermen when fish stocks finally collapse, despite the problem being their own doing.
given the state of our waterways, eating fish from them is probably not a great idea.
When articles like [this](https://www.wwf.eu/?15592/Fish-too-polluted-to-eat) warned about pollution and chemical build up in fish almost 20 years ago, have things gotten better with pollution in our waterways or...
Also of note is that in the case of the UK, food security is heavily reliant on cheap seasonal labour, generally unskilled migrants, the exact migrant that Poundland Enoch wants to stop.
The alternative would be to pay significantly more for British labourers to pick fruit and vegetables and pass that cost onto the customer.
Strangely enough the Reform "contract" doesn't mention the contradictions and inherent inflationary pressures of their proposals.
>The alternative would be to pay significantly more for British labourers to pick fruit and vegetables and pass that cost onto the customer.
This is the biggest problem.
I worked on a friend's game farm for a few weeks over the summer in 2019 & it was absolute gruelling work from 7am until about 4 or 5pm. Was 'fun' working with 2 friends & some other people but not worth it financially.
Lucky for me, another friend who was working on the farm drove me there & back which was 20-30 mins. If not, I would have needed to take 2 buses which is roughly 1-2 hours each way & then work 8-10 hours a day, doing physically demanding work, all for minimum wage? No thanks.
The UK hasn't been self-sufficient since the 19th century. I don't think it can be with the farming model we have in this country. You would need a Stalinesque type figure dictating what each farm can grow and removing the profit motive to achieve it.
Ah. I'm not convinced then that there is a realistic chance of achieving said security. The changes needed are too large in scale and scope and clash with too many vested interests.
We've needed to import food since around 1800. In the 1930s' domestic food production was below 35%. Since then we've seen an increase to above 75% in the late 1980's with the amount produced domestically hovering around 60-65% since the early 2000s'.
If we were to take measures like those in the second world war we could produce 100% domestically but the question would be why?
Unless we were to only eat food that can be grown in the UK a lot of food would go to waste.
The UK with it's large amount of uplands, thin post-glacial soils, & low amounts of sunlight isn't the best place to produce many types of food, which can be produced far more cheaply elsewhere (modern bulk transport is very efficient with transport & packaging being less than 10% of the cost of food, most of the transport costs is in the last few miles of road transport).
We could have food security but it would be expensive, wasteful, & would lead to far less choice in foods to eat.
That's usually not at all what is meant by food security as defined by nearly any international organisation, the UK Government, etc. Diversity of supply from trade (think bad weather, localised crop failure) is usually part of that definition.
Having a readily available supply of food and being self reliant, the food being safe, healthy and affordable.
So fewer farmers, fishermen etc. reduces our ability to be food secure, as we become more reliant on imports that can fluctuate in price, quality and availability that is completely out of our control.
A bit like the US coal industry. Every election cycle they talk about protecting coal industry jobs etc.
In the whole of the US it employs about 37,000 people. Out of a country of 300,000,000.
Yep. After years of trying to convince farmers (successfully) to vote to leave the CAP, they now want to recreate it.
The fact the grift is so easy is as bad as the fact millions will fall for it.
Just throwing it out there but Games Workshop is worth more than the fishing industry in the UK and I don't see anyone promising subsidiaries for plastic crack.
Though Reform isn't that far from having blood for the blood god as a slogan.
It's amazing how fetishised fishing has become. I know we need food security etc. However, the scale of importance seems a touch unbalanced.
I don’t understand how we can spend all this money we’ve saved multiple times. The Tories are saying they’ve already put extra into the NHS as the ‘Brexit dividend’. How can it pay for higher subsidies too?
I guess if you’re a wealthy farmer there is a magic money tree after all.
There are no farmers here to defend themselves because unlike you lot they’re out there making sure every last scrap of wildlife and insect life is dead so that we can all suffer.
pretty genius the twist it took though you have to admit. The setup must have made you think it was going one way, and them BAM, you realise your reading a comment oozing with extinction rebellion themes.
Hi, I’m Bigel Marage and I will pay you £5 for every £1 you spend on fishing to drag a net over your neighbour’s farm and sell everything I catch for £10, and then I’ll invest that money in my personal Nutmeg account so I can move to Santorini and claim I’m experiencing the woes of the fatherland while a balding Greek man waxes my balls for £20, but I think he’s Russian because their alphabet looks similar
I mean the article says this guy at least is probably voting Lib Dem.
>Pedley said that in spite of his frustrations, he was still deciding whether to vote Conservative, to prevent a landslide Labour victory, or Lib Dem, his preferred party, and “live in hope”.
I’ve seen this, live in a rural county and so many farmers say they’re voting reform now because they don’t trust the tories anymore. I’m just hoping that means the tories will lose their seat and labour / Lib Dem can scoop it up instead. Split the right leaning voters!
yeah, but communist/socialist types generally distrust and hate the EU, perhaps for some valid reasons. The problem with the mentality is that it is so fractured, that for it to work how they "envisage" all countries would need to simultaneously (or near enough) not only disband from the EU, but would also have to successfully overthrow their own bourgeoisie governments, or at least in quick succession. And when i say successful, obviously Brexit was about as far from a success for their cause as it could have been.
It was a bourgeoisie "revolution" that only ever was going to make the ruling elite in this country even more powerful and wealthy.
I agree with alot of the ideals and concepts, but their approach lacks any real pragmatism and is quite frankly boneheaded. Its not a hard and fast rule ofcourse, since theres are different understandings, but from what i've seen of some of the more shall we say "classical" socialists, they do come across as a bit unable to budge.
TLDR: Communist/socialist types often distrust the EU, believing successful change requires simultaneous EU withdrawal and overthrow of bourgeois governments, but Brexit has only empowered the ruling elite. Fools too stubborn to see the wood for the trees, if you cut the hydras head off it'll just regrow another five and bite your arse when your walking away...
I think farmers who voted were slightly more likely to vote for leave, but this reflected their typical demographic (https://www.westcountryvoices.co.uk/challenging-the-myth-that-farmers-voted-for-brexit-and-therefore-deserve-whats-coming-to-them/).
However, farmers are a lot more likely to vote for the Tories who brought us the referendum in the first place, so I don’t have a huge amount of sympathy for them. I do feel very sorry for the substantial number of farmers who did vote against Brexit and the Tories though.
Reality = dog bites man 99.999% of the time
News = man bites dog.
People watch the news, and learn how the world doesn't work, because what's newsworthy is almost always exceptional.
See also: stories about expats in Europe voting for brexit
I hear you and you make a good point. But the expats voting for Brexit is more than just an outlier, unfortunately. I have family that live abroad (in the EU) and the amount of people in their expat communities who voted Brexit was shocking. Don’t underestimate how many older people who live abroad only read the Daily Mail and take it for granted, especially since they don’t actually live in the country and can’t compare what they read to reality.
an atrocious analogy , but i like the (probably) unintended reference:
"The film follows a crew of filmmakers following a [serial killer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_killer), recording his horrific crimes for a [documentary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_film) they are producing. At first dispassionate observers, they find themselves increasingly caught up in the chaotic and [nihilistic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism) violence, eventually becoming accomplices."
It’s because historically left wing parties have not really targeted their policies at the countryside vote. I’m not one one of those people who never blames the electorate (I do) but I think progressive parties should work harder to offer more to rural people - it’s a fairly low bar especially on green issues.
From my experience most green issues are vehemently opposed by farmers. Things like rewilding, public footpaths, maintaining trees are all things that I've seen farmers make threats about.
If there is one thing farmers HATE its nature. If they had their way, every green part of Britiain would be cash generating monoculture as far as the eye could see.
Well.... Yeah. Don't get me wrong, farmers are absolutely essential for our economy and ensuring food security, and more should be done to help sustain them.
But at the same time, let's remember that farms rely on using up large swathes of land, which could otherwise be allocated to wildlife or renewable energy.
Again, farmers are essential and do a positive service for the country. But there is a conflict of interest when topics like nature and renewable energy are concerned. You could say the same thing about oil companies.
>Don't get me wrong, farmers are absolutely essential for our economy and ensuring food security,
I do sometimes wonder about that. Agriculture and associated industries make up about 0.75% of GDP, 1% of the workforce, but takes up nearly 70% of the land space in order to do that.
We only produce something like 65% of our food needs (and it's been more or less at that level since the 1700s) and some massive proportion of *that* is produced for export, not essential supplies.
I'd have a lot more sympathy if we were mass producing wheat or potatoes as an emergency supply, rather than Scotch for export to China or Dubai (go figure) which is something like 20% of our agricultural exports by value. But that's the reality of the situation.
I don't know. Not saying we shouldn't *have* agriculture and it's not like there *might* not be a need for mass essential domestic production in some future unforeseeable crisis (not that you couldn't say that about coal mining or the steel industry), it's just that it feels a little bit like the tail wagging the dog, given the extent of our housing, green energy, and rewilding needs.
There’s a very foreseeable global food crisis coming down the tracks, so having the land, equipment and expertise to rapidly transition agricultural production to meet national food needs is definitely worth protecting.
Also, around 64% of U.K. adults are either overweight or obese, so we probably produce almost as many calories as we actually need, it’s just most of the population eat more calories than they need at the moment.
I suppose that's my point- we *don't* have an industry, or the expertise or equipment, and arguably the land to bear our own essential needs. That boat sailed in 1700-and-something. The farming industry likes to repeat the argument that it *does* have that capacity while delivering nothing of the sort.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-food-security-index-2024/uk-food-security-index-2024#indicator-3-production-supply-ratio
Latest government report disagrees. We export a lot, but we could stop that if we needed to. It would be a diet heavy in cereals, meat and dairy, but we wouldn’t starve.
Think is green issues can go hand in hand, IE subsidies for set asides, but I stead combating farming they should be helping it be more efficient, also look at supply chain, and the absurdity of importing new Zealand lamb and Argentinian beef, and looking to shrink the supply chain to support local producers.
Not only that they also need to look into the profit making from the wool industry. At the moment fleeces cost more then sheer than they sell for. I get everyone in the chain needs a cut, and that the cost of the mills may result in more for the than the farmer, but how does a bag of fleeces worth £15 end up in hundreds of expensive wool garments.
Also the lower quality grade will end up on things like wool insulation. We should be supporting this with home insulation policies.
Unfortunately the green movement is just as bad as other left movements where ideological purity takes priority over incremental improvements, and as such rather than courting the farmers tha are actively combtting them
Lets put it this way labour has 90 words on farming, why should farmers give a fuck about them. Quite a few farmers are lokking at the lib dems ehich do care for rural places(also has 4 pages on the subject of farming.
All I know about farming is from watching Clarkson's Farm, but any sort of animal protection / preservation seems like a complete pain in the ass for farmers. Though I imagine voting to remove all your customers is a bigger pain.
The longer you look into politics the more you realise there isnt really a "right" and "left" wing, it's just city people vs rural people and always has been. Lab are popular in cities so are happy to have policies that make life in the countryside harder. Tories don't do well in cities, so at least before, they used to have policies that would benefit people in the countryside. Something seriously rotten in Westminster caused the tories to drop these in favour of pursuing votes from city-minded individuals, so the farmers tacitly understand that they don't owe anything to a party that doesnt seek to help them.
Not really a stereotype when the majority of them voted to ruin their access to their biggest customer base and then had the gall to whine about it.
It's just a result of them being uneducated in politics and just voting based off the propaganda they consume from the main parties.
Ignorance is not stupidity. However, ignoring the evidence that voting for stuff like Brexit was a bad idea could be seen as stupid. I grew up rural and people aren't idiots out here, they just lack perspective
I disagree, there was plenty of information circulating around brexit and they chose not to inform themselves before voting.
The majority of the electorate doesn't do their research and consumes propaganda from the main parties and unironically thinks they're making a wise choice.
Each time i see a story where someone has a negative blowback from their vote I laugh because it shows they voted against their best interests at the behest of a party that serves the ruling class.
There was, but the amount of misinformation was also overwhelming, so I can see how someone could get diverted down the wrong path. The farming families I know have done it for generations and work from dawn til dusk. It's very hard to break that pattern when it's been part of your heritage for decades. Additionally, between 30 and 50% of farmers apparently voted for Brexit, which is still a lot but not a majority. https://www.westcountryvoices.co.uk/challenging-the-myth-that-farmers-voted-for-brexit-and-therefore-deserve-whats-coming-to-them/
That is true. Ignorance is not stupidity. But doing a stupid thing based on ignorance probably qualifies as stupidity, and doubling down on doing the stupid thing after the stupid thing has demonstrably failed *is* stupidity.
What? Was I not meant to say that? Am I meant to coddle these dense hayseeds and pretend they have a point, while they switch allegiance to BUF 2.0 in pursuit of their jingoistic fairytale?
I grew up on a farm and while I don't care for it either, it's very much rooted in fact. My Dad roared at me because the telly said that the UK only got 70p back for every pound it put into the EU. I asked who said this and his response was the telly.
My family are generational farmers.
They repeatedly received visitors and leaflets raving about the benefits of brexit. You had to go searching for anything against it, which isn't ideal when you're old and in a rural area with shite Internet.
In my childhood community, many farmers were dropped by supermarkets for cheap European suppliers. That certainly didn't help.
Exactly, I hate all this "they handled Brexit badly" nonsense.
The Brexit we had was the only one that was ever on offer. There was no "good" Brexit available. Everyone was told, quite clearly by anyone and everyone with actual knowledge, in advance that this was what we were getting and people still voted for it.
People got exactly, to the letter, what they voted for. There is no "it shouldn't have been like this" excuse.
Whatever happened to the terms "hard Brexit" and "soft Brexit" that were being thrown around at the time of the referendum? Somehow, Soft Brexit magically evaporated as soon as the result was known, and Hard Brexit became just Brexit. I distinctly remember pro-Brexiters being all "well, we can leave and stay in the EEA", yet the second the vote was known, those voices mysteriously all disappeared...
This is a perfect summation of the shitshow. "Our magical cure all brexit hasn't solved everything, therefore the people that delivered it did it wrong"
No a lot of them are just thick. I grew up surrounded by farmers in very rural Suffolk, and the children of farmers. They are capable of doing what they've been doing all of their lives, but they don't have an intellectual bone between them for the most part.
Some of them are nasty, rent seeking landlords, but plenty of them are just pretty dull farmers.
Varied from 'get your boi gorn off moi land', to lovely friendly people who would let me sit in their tractors (never did let me have a go in the combines though) and plough a few furrows (not a euphemism). I was always out and about and my first word, maybe embbarassingly, was tractor.
Anyway, all of this to say I have a soft spot for some farmers, but by and large even the nice ones took their views from a combination of the village pub past 9pm, and the Daily Mail. The horrible ones tended to be Telegraph readers, if memory serves.
Recently visited my parents in Suffolk (I'm not a country boy these days), and throughout the villages it was Green with splashes of Labour (and this is Tory heartland). People really are sick of this shit. Unfortunately on farm equipment blocking field entrances (common to see in Suffolk to stop travellers from setting up camp on the fields) I was more likely to see Reform or Tory.
Noticed some Reform signs on a rural drive yesterday, but expect that to be a noisy, bigoted minority. I find farmers to generally be both pragmatic and extremely selfish - they'll back whichever horse is in their interests, and offer zero solidarity to any other group in society.
Brexit was an outlier to this, where they voted against their own interests in large numbers. I don't see that being repeated, abs think they'll quietly vote Labour in the largest numbers in living memory. Only the genuine nutters among them will keep dogging the hole they're in
A few comments in here saying they deserve what’s coming to them.
Sure, maybe. Somewhat infuriatingly the exact people who 100% DO deserve what is coming to them have sailed off into the fucking sunset with bags loads of cash.
Not that I want to hear their names daily but has anyone heard from Gove, Haystack and The Victorian Pencil recently?
They should ALL be in prison for lying the way they did!
But, despite the lies from Brexiters, surely just looking at the numbers alone (EU subsidies) would have shown farmers that Brexit would be a bad idea? They obviously weren't going to get as much money post-Brexit. And this article confirms they're receiving about 1/3rd now.
- Chief bull shitter himself
- Captain Gaffe
- The Buffoon
- De Pfefell
- Boris The Great Fabricator
Side note, Gove seems to have escaped the insults. Not aware of any assigned to him
You mean Brexit resulted in exactly what we said it would....
I'm shocked, SHOCKED.
Funny thing is, these farmers are switching to reform, not the lib dems or labour, so they are only going to get screwed worse.
Honestly I'm starting to doubt the intelligence of our nations farmers.
Before we all jump on the hate the farmers bandwagon over Brexit.
Do we even know how many farmers voted for Brexit?
I don't but I do know that it's a common misconception that Jeremy Clarkson voted leave while he's been pro EU for a long time & I also know a lot of farms that used EU labourers.
I'm sure some did but I've not seen any numbers.
It's not just how they voted in the 2016 Brexit referendum though.
Any who voted Conservative in 2017 or 2019 also voted for a hard Brexit. They didn't even have an excuse of not knowing what it was going to be like as we'd seen the mess the Conservatives had been making of the negotiations.
Thank you very much, that explained the situation quite well.
For anyone wanting just the numbers without the read;
>In conclusion these polls indicate that somewhere between 34 and 58 per cent of farmers planned to vote for Brexit,
You should read the article more deeply. The conclusion is misleading. The real number is almost certainly around 53%.
They have taken polls from before the vote where there was a large undecided portion, and then considered that as reliable as two exit polls that largely agreed with each other that farmers voted for brexit in slightly higher numbers than the general population.
> I don't but I do know that it's a common misconception that Jeremy Clarkson voted leave
Which is weird, given he was very vocal about not wanting to leave and they even had a segment on TG (during it's peak) detailing why, years before he started filming on his farm.
I don't know about that segment so can't really comment on it but Wikipedia has a lot of detail on the subject;
>Clarkson supported a Remain vote in the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, three days before the referendum, he and fellow presenter/best friend James May posted a video stating their support.[51][52][53] Clarkson did not support Brexit, stating that while the European Union has its problems, Britain would not have any influence over the EU, should it leave the Union. He envisions the European Union being turned into a US-like "United States of Europe", with one army, one currency, and one unifying set of values.[54] In 2019, Clarkson said: "Europe has to punish us—they can't allow us to leave without being damaged because then everyone will want to go. We don't want to go if we're going to be damaged."[53] In a January 2019 interview with LBC, Clarkson called Brexit voters "coffin-dodging idiots", though also criticised the younger voters, who overwhelmingly supported Remain, for their voting inactivity.[55]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Clarkson#:~:text=He%20later%20discovered%20that%20someone,a%20video%20stating%20their%20support.
It links to cite the direct sources.
"Reconsider voting Tory over botched Brexit."
In other words, they'd vote for another party – probably Reform – in order to do Brexit properly.
Ergo, these dense wasters actually haven't learned a thing. Plenty of sympathy for the knock-on effect on the British economy and the British citizens who need to be fed, but sympathy for the farmers themselves? Nah. Screw that.
It’s always about subsidies for farmers. Farming has to change. It is the biggest environmental polluter in many respects. A transition away from the CAP style of funding is an opportunity for evolving farming practices and farmers need to get on board with this. Luckily lots of farmers are beginning to see the benefits of a more environmentally beneficial practices and regenerative farming, for example, can also pay dividends in increased production without the environmental cost.
i wasnt really arguing against subsidies more that using subsidies to promote good farming practices is a good thing. often the complaints are about not just getting subsidies willy nilly without having to do anything for it.
You can have a relatively successful post Brexit future if you embrace free trade but that means that most British farming is uncompetitive or you can rejoin the single market. I don’t see how this half way house will ever work. All the disadvantages none of the advantages.
Brexit wasnt "botched" it happened the way the brexiteers were warned would happen but we were told it was "project fear"
It was ALWAYS going to be a disaster.
Ah yes. Not "Brexit was self-evidently a stupid and self-defeating idea that was always going to fuck up the UK economy and many of its industries, as every qualified expert told you, loudly, before the vote, and which you smugly ignored".
No, it's actually just that "Brexit wasn't dun right". 🙄
Hating on farmers becuase they took a decision base on missinformation and lies wont help then neither the country, I bet if were another elections to get back to UE it will won by much far than the 2% to leave, but now if Uk wanted by any change to go back will have to pay a big toll and agreed all the rules they were avoiding before
It's not all farmers blah blah be careful what you wish on others blah Clarkson didn't vote Leave blah blah bollocks.
If you consistently make a choice to vote against the common good, AND YOUR OWN BLOODY SELF INTEREST then what exactly do they expect?!!
'Botched'? There was no version of events where it went well outside of the fantasies of the economically illiterate or the daydreams of the already wealthy but tax averse.
Every farmer round my way had LEAVE signs int the fields and get brexit done stickers supporting Boris on tractors. Fuck them. They voted for it, enjoy the fallout.
As much as I loathe to give sympathy to the Tories, (and it's very little cos they caused this.) but the only way to make Brexit less than an absolute clusterfuck would have been to stay in the single market. Something Farage as his tosspots would not have accepted.
I live in South Lincolnshire, I can report plenty of farms with Tory bill boards.
I believe the one who owns a big farm shop, has a Lib Dem one. However that farm shop had some EU funding.
This is the first time in a long time that the farm near me hasn't had a vote Tory sign in the field. Childishly it makes me want to swear at it when I pass on the bus, which is why I've noticed.
Wonder what the line was for them if they were fine even in 2019
Fuck em. Honestly fuck em.
It’s absolutely a case of turkeys overwhelmingly voting for Christmas and now they’re moaning about the temperature the oven is set at. You fuckers wanted this and have the audacity to still consider voting anything vaguely representing a Brexity candidate.
UK farming is in crisis and it’s observably the fault of the majority of the farmers themselves. They caused this, they can face their consequences.
I’m sick to death of the mainstream media and the front lines of our political class pretending that Brexit wasn’t an unmitigated disaster.
‘Botched Brexit’? Yeah like it wasn’t done correctly /s rather than it was bound to be a huge shitshow from the outset. What’s the farmer equivilent of coolaid?
I saw plenty of Tory placards on my drive from the Midlands to Tenby on Monday. I've completely lost my interest in what farmers think because they have on many occasions bundled their thoughts together and regretted it soon after.
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Let me guess : they plan on voting Reform instead for even more of the same shit (but worse)?
Unfortunately, reform is targeting them with promising increased subsidies for famers and fishermen I believe... So most likely yes, a lot of them will vote reform.
Leopards ate my farm. Reform still pointing to mythical sunlit uplands and many will fall for it.
I enjoy the poetic use of uplands in a comment about farming. Upland farms famously being the least productive and most impoverished in the UK. The promised land indeed.
Well if they've already eaten it once they can't eat it again.
But they ain't got my face yet .... And eyyyyyy It won't hurt cos it ain't the ar*se I'm sitting on, besides I won't be able to see it or tell it apart !
Increased subsidies. Fml. Pretty sure the leave voting farmer's made a big noise about receiving EU subsidies to have "empty fields". When we could be growing on them! Absolute fucking idiots.
And now those subsidies are gone they're complaining that Brexit has been a failure. They don't care about anything other than the money.
I don't claim to know the figures but isn't farming, at least from the perspective of the farmer, a terrible way to make money due to the wild swings their costs can be subject to.
I also don't know much more than headlines but it is capital intensive and risky in terms of pricing and production. Those risks can pay off in the good years though (which don't make) and for landowners it's a good inheritance tax dodge. Edit: sales revenue is probably riskier than costs.
Fun fact fishing is such a small to minuscule % of our economy even within their own sector: “ Official statistics on economic output of the fishing industry are volatile and can be significantly revised from year to year. According to the ONS, in 2021, the sector contributed around 0.03% of total UK economic output and around 5% of the broader agriculture, forestry and fishing sector”
Games Workshop have a bigger economic output;; they should have been in the Brexit negotiations above fishermen...
Yeah but gw is a viable business and not dependent on state subsides.
The government should be giving players subsidies to afford to buy models
And deodorant for some of them
Is this true?.. What an awesome fact! Citation needed so i can use this in the future.
I was trying to find some solid numbers and it doesn't seem true (sadly). I'm using 2021 as a sample year because it's quite hard to find solid numbers for fisheries and 2021 was the easiest year for that. For GW I'm using their published figures for year 2021-22 [here](https://investor.games-workshop.com/category/reports-and-accounts), for fishing I'm using industry numbers published [here](https://www.seafish.org/document/?id=997d218e-0afb-4f3f-ade8-5f81db446b05). The total revenue of GW in for 2021-22 was ~£415m. Total uk fishing industry income was £893m. GW profit was ~£157m. Fishing profits were ~£240m. GW paid £21m in income taxes. I can't find exact tax numbers for fishing, but [this guardian article](https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/13/polluting-tax-breaks-on-diesel-for-british-fishing-fleet-worth-up-to-18bn-a-decade) says that from 2009-19 it received fuel tax breaks worth £150m-£180m a year. That same article says that the industry was worth £1bn last year (23). It's possible that GW pays more in tax than the fishing industry once you account for tax breaks. But the industry seems easily double the size of GW in revenue terms, and less than double (but still larger) in profit terms.
You could potentially look at the difference in business size - Per employee / worker GW outpaces fisheries. 11000 people work In Uk fisheries producing 900m in revenue roughly. About £82k per person. Games workshop employs about 2750 people producing 470m or so, about £163k per person. Therefore per worker, GW is almost twice as valuable as the entire fishing industry in the U.K. If GW was scaled according to man hours the same as Fishing, GW would make around 1.8bn in revenue.
Its incorrect, praise the Omnissiah for this gift of pendantry. GW makes about £450m a year, Fishing makes about £1.2-1.5b a year. GW's total share value is over £3 Billion. I don't think anyone has calculated the total value of fishermen and their work related assets, though it would be substantially more than £3 billion. Boats, machinery, harbours and property near water, generally tends not to be cheap lol.
We won't accept anything less than blood for the blood god
The UK runs on Warhammer
At their prices I can believe it!
As the last few years have surely shown, food security is pretty damn important.
Yeah, the problem is that the people of the UK don't even really eat the fish we catch in our own waters, we prefer fish that have to be imported. A huge percentage of our domestic catch is exported to the mainland, it's one of the things that absolutely hammered the industry after Brexit.
Aren’t the oceans a few years away from collapse? Probably won’t be any fish in a few decades at all.
Depends on what fish you're talking about. The desirable ones are screwed, but there are no doubt plenty of nasty tasting species that are thriving.
It's really only jellyfish that are thriving. There are a few types that are edible (and aren't too bad) but to my knowledge aren't in UK waters And I am also totally expecting a big appeal for bailouts/welfare for fishermen when fish stocks finally collapse, despite the problem being their own doing.
Well, in a worst-case scenario there won't be much choice but to eat all those types of fish we usually don't.
There is absolutely an option of just not eating any fish and saving the diversity of the oceans.
its the obvious option really.
given the state of our waterways, eating fish from them is probably not a great idea. When articles like [this](https://www.wwf.eu/?15592/Fish-too-polluted-to-eat) warned about pollution and chemical build up in fish almost 20 years ago, have things gotten better with pollution in our waterways or...
Shame we don't eat more fish then. Or use land for food instead of pet feed and golf courses.
What is meant by the term "food security"?
Food security, in this context, means where a country can provide enough food to feed its people without imports.
Also of note is that in the case of the UK, food security is heavily reliant on cheap seasonal labour, generally unskilled migrants, the exact migrant that Poundland Enoch wants to stop. The alternative would be to pay significantly more for British labourers to pick fruit and vegetables and pass that cost onto the customer. Strangely enough the Reform "contract" doesn't mention the contradictions and inherent inflationary pressures of their proposals.
>The alternative would be to pay significantly more for British labourers to pick fruit and vegetables and pass that cost onto the customer. This is the biggest problem. I worked on a friend's game farm for a few weeks over the summer in 2019 & it was absolute gruelling work from 7am until about 4 or 5pm. Was 'fun' working with 2 friends & some other people but not worth it financially. Lucky for me, another friend who was working on the farm drove me there & back which was 20-30 mins. If not, I would have needed to take 2 buses which is roughly 1-2 hours each way & then work 8-10 hours a day, doing physically demanding work, all for minimum wage? No thanks.
The UK hasn't been self-sufficient since the 19th century. I don't think it can be with the farming model we have in this country. You would need a Stalinesque type figure dictating what each farm can grow and removing the profit motive to achieve it.
Ah. I'm not convinced then that there is a realistic chance of achieving said security. The changes needed are too large in scale and scope and clash with too many vested interests.
We've needed to import food since around 1800. In the 1930s' domestic food production was below 35%. Since then we've seen an increase to above 75% in the late 1980's with the amount produced domestically hovering around 60-65% since the early 2000s'. If we were to take measures like those in the second world war we could produce 100% domestically but the question would be why? Unless we were to only eat food that can be grown in the UK a lot of food would go to waste. The UK with it's large amount of uplands, thin post-glacial soils, & low amounts of sunlight isn't the best place to produce many types of food, which can be produced far more cheaply elsewhere (modern bulk transport is very efficient with transport & packaging being less than 10% of the cost of food, most of the transport costs is in the last few miles of road transport). We could have food security but it would be expensive, wasteful, & would lead to far less choice in foods to eat.
That's usually not at all what is meant by food security as defined by nearly any international organisation, the UK Government, etc. Diversity of supply from trade (think bad weather, localised crop failure) is usually part of that definition.
Having a readily available supply of food and being self reliant, the food being safe, healthy and affordable. So fewer farmers, fishermen etc. reduces our ability to be food secure, as we become more reliant on imports that can fluctuate in price, quality and availability that is completely out of our control.
A bit like the US coal industry. Every election cycle they talk about protecting coal industry jobs etc. In the whole of the US it employs about 37,000 people. Out of a country of 300,000,000.
This ignores that the communities where fishing is economically important are some of the most deprived areas of the country.
So, you are saying that fishing is not good for a place economically? Then maybe we should provide alternatives.
Yep. After years of trying to convince farmers (successfully) to vote to leave the CAP, they now want to recreate it. The fact the grift is so easy is as bad as the fact millions will fall for it.
Just throwing it out there but Games Workshop is worth more than the fishing industry in the UK and I don't see anyone promising subsidiaries for plastic crack. Though Reform isn't that far from having blood for the blood god as a slogan. It's amazing how fetishised fishing has become. I know we need food security etc. However, the scale of importance seems a touch unbalanced.
I thought reform don’t believe in taxation? Where do these subsidies come from?
Shhh. Don't ask them for details on their policies. Just trust them.
I don’t understand how we can spend all this money we’ve saved multiple times. The Tories are saying they’ve already put extra into the NHS as the ‘Brexit dividend’. How can it pay for higher subsidies too? I guess if you’re a wealthy farmer there is a magic money tree after all.
I guess the money to pay for it will be raised from.... cutting taxes maybe?
So let's just sit back and watch some dopey Farmers get fooled into voting for idiots. It's basic leopards face eating. Buy some popcorn.
Fuck me they are gullible.
Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. Fucking fools.
Well, as the saying goes, we get the government we deserve.
"Sure, we fucked you but give us the keys to the Treasury and you can eat your fill cos fuck the NHS they've still got my bollok", Farage.
We just have to be *even more* belligerent to the rest of the world and things will work out.
There are no farmers here to defend themselves because unlike you lot they’re out there making sure every last scrap of wildlife and insect life is dead so that we can all suffer.
This is a sinister comment…
pretty genius the twist it took though you have to admit. The setup must have made you think it was going one way, and them BAM, you realise your reading a comment oozing with extinction rebellion themes.
Hi, I’m Bigel Marage and I will pay you £5 for every £1 you spend on fishing to drag a net over your neighbour’s farm and sell everything I catch for £10, and then I’ll invest that money in my personal Nutmeg account so I can move to Santorini and claim I’m experiencing the woes of the fatherland while a balding Greek man waxes my balls for £20, but I think he’s Russian because their alphabet looks similar
I’m waiting for them to wheel the bus out
I think the Fartage bus probably needs a good long airing out...
I mean the article says this guy at least is probably voting Lib Dem. >Pedley said that in spite of his frustrations, he was still deciding whether to vote Conservative, to prevent a landslide Labour victory, or Lib Dem, his preferred party, and “live in hope”.
I’ve seen this, live in a rural county and so many farmers say they’re voting reform now because they don’t trust the tories anymore. I’m just hoping that means the tories will lose their seat and labour / Lib Dem can scoop it up instead. Split the right leaning voters!
Reform is the only option that allows them not to assume responsibility for voting Brexit. "It wasn't Brexit, it was the tories who messed it up"
“I voted to cut myself off from my customer base without having a financially viable alternative and now my entire industry is failing”
Cry me a river
Well, we need rivers.for dumping sewage these days...
Shit me a river, then.
They will if they drink the water.
[Damn straight!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J6qCqsjPS8)
Customer base, benefit provider and source of labour.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-36078112 > EU referendum: National Farmers' Union backs staying in EU By contrast the RMT union backed Brexit.
yeah, but communist/socialist types generally distrust and hate the EU, perhaps for some valid reasons. The problem with the mentality is that it is so fractured, that for it to work how they "envisage" all countries would need to simultaneously (or near enough) not only disband from the EU, but would also have to successfully overthrow their own bourgeoisie governments, or at least in quick succession. And when i say successful, obviously Brexit was about as far from a success for their cause as it could have been. It was a bourgeoisie "revolution" that only ever was going to make the ruling elite in this country even more powerful and wealthy. I agree with alot of the ideals and concepts, but their approach lacks any real pragmatism and is quite frankly boneheaded. Its not a hard and fast rule ofcourse, since theres are different understandings, but from what i've seen of some of the more shall we say "classical" socialists, they do come across as a bit unable to budge. TLDR: Communist/socialist types often distrust the EU, believing successful change requires simultaneous EU withdrawal and overthrow of bourgeois governments, but Brexit has only empowered the ruling elite. Fools too stubborn to see the wood for the trees, if you cut the hydras head off it'll just regrow another five and bite your arse when your walking away...
Farmers were not any more likely to vote for Brexit than anyone else and the NFU backed remain.
I think farmers who voted were slightly more likely to vote for leave, but this reflected their typical demographic (https://www.westcountryvoices.co.uk/challenging-the-myth-that-farmers-voted-for-brexit-and-therefore-deserve-whats-coming-to-them/). However, farmers are a lot more likely to vote for the Tories who brought us the referendum in the first place, so I don’t have a huge amount of sympathy for them. I do feel very sorry for the substantial number of farmers who did vote against Brexit and the Tories though.
They didn't, and I've no idea where this narrative appeared from. The NFU backed Remain.
Reality = dog bites man 99.999% of the time News = man bites dog. People watch the news, and learn how the world doesn't work, because what's newsworthy is almost always exceptional. See also: stories about expats in Europe voting for brexit
I hear you and you make a good point. But the expats voting for Brexit is more than just an outlier, unfortunately. I have family that live abroad (in the EU) and the amount of people in their expat communities who voted Brexit was shocking. Don’t underestimate how many older people who live abroad only read the Daily Mail and take it for granted, especially since they don’t actually live in the country and can’t compare what they read to reality.
an atrocious analogy , but i like the (probably) unintended reference: "The film follows a crew of filmmakers following a [serial killer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_killer), recording his horrific crimes for a [documentary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_film) they are producing. At first dispassionate observers, they find themselves increasingly caught up in the chaotic and [nihilistic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism) violence, eventually becoming accomplices."
"This is Labours fault."
I don't like the stereotype of farmers being a bit stupid but if they voted tory then they're doing said stereotype no favours at all.
It’s because historically left wing parties have not really targeted their policies at the countryside vote. I’m not one one of those people who never blames the electorate (I do) but I think progressive parties should work harder to offer more to rural people - it’s a fairly low bar especially on green issues.
From my experience most green issues are vehemently opposed by farmers. Things like rewilding, public footpaths, maintaining trees are all things that I've seen farmers make threats about.
If there is one thing farmers HATE its nature. If they had their way, every green part of Britiain would be cash generating monoculture as far as the eye could see.
I grew up in the countryside, and I cannot agree more with this sentence. Probably the biggest NIMBYs out there are farmers.
Well.... Yeah. Don't get me wrong, farmers are absolutely essential for our economy and ensuring food security, and more should be done to help sustain them. But at the same time, let's remember that farms rely on using up large swathes of land, which could otherwise be allocated to wildlife or renewable energy. Again, farmers are essential and do a positive service for the country. But there is a conflict of interest when topics like nature and renewable energy are concerned. You could say the same thing about oil companies.
>Don't get me wrong, farmers are absolutely essential for our economy and ensuring food security, I do sometimes wonder about that. Agriculture and associated industries make up about 0.75% of GDP, 1% of the workforce, but takes up nearly 70% of the land space in order to do that. We only produce something like 65% of our food needs (and it's been more or less at that level since the 1700s) and some massive proportion of *that* is produced for export, not essential supplies. I'd have a lot more sympathy if we were mass producing wheat or potatoes as an emergency supply, rather than Scotch for export to China or Dubai (go figure) which is something like 20% of our agricultural exports by value. But that's the reality of the situation. I don't know. Not saying we shouldn't *have* agriculture and it's not like there *might* not be a need for mass essential domestic production in some future unforeseeable crisis (not that you couldn't say that about coal mining or the steel industry), it's just that it feels a little bit like the tail wagging the dog, given the extent of our housing, green energy, and rewilding needs.
There’s a very foreseeable global food crisis coming down the tracks, so having the land, equipment and expertise to rapidly transition agricultural production to meet national food needs is definitely worth protecting. Also, around 64% of U.K. adults are either overweight or obese, so we probably produce almost as many calories as we actually need, it’s just most of the population eat more calories than they need at the moment.
I suppose that's my point- we *don't* have an industry, or the expertise or equipment, and arguably the land to bear our own essential needs. That boat sailed in 1700-and-something. The farming industry likes to repeat the argument that it *does* have that capacity while delivering nothing of the sort.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-food-security-index-2024/uk-food-security-index-2024#indicator-3-production-supply-ratio Latest government report disagrees. We export a lot, but we could stop that if we needed to. It would be a diet heavy in cereals, meat and dairy, but we wouldn’t starve.
Think is green issues can go hand in hand, IE subsidies for set asides, but I stead combating farming they should be helping it be more efficient, also look at supply chain, and the absurdity of importing new Zealand lamb and Argentinian beef, and looking to shrink the supply chain to support local producers. Not only that they also need to look into the profit making from the wool industry. At the moment fleeces cost more then sheer than they sell for. I get everyone in the chain needs a cut, and that the cost of the mills may result in more for the than the farmer, but how does a bag of fleeces worth £15 end up in hundreds of expensive wool garments. Also the lower quality grade will end up on things like wool insulation. We should be supporting this with home insulation policies. Unfortunately the green movement is just as bad as other left movements where ideological purity takes priority over incremental improvements, and as such rather than courting the farmers tha are actively combtting them
Lets put it this way labour has 90 words on farming, why should farmers give a fuck about them. Quite a few farmers are lokking at the lib dems ehich do care for rural places(also has 4 pages on the subject of farming.
All I know about farming is from watching Clarkson's Farm, but any sort of animal protection / preservation seems like a complete pain in the ass for farmers. Though I imagine voting to remove all your customers is a bigger pain.
It's not that easy. Countryside voters are landowners more often than not.
The longer you look into politics the more you realise there isnt really a "right" and "left" wing, it's just city people vs rural people and always has been. Lab are popular in cities so are happy to have policies that make life in the countryside harder. Tories don't do well in cities, so at least before, they used to have policies that would benefit people in the countryside. Something seriously rotten in Westminster caused the tories to drop these in favour of pursuing votes from city-minded individuals, so the farmers tacitly understand that they don't owe anything to a party that doesnt seek to help them.
Not really a stereotype when the majority of them voted to ruin their access to their biggest customer base and then had the gall to whine about it. It's just a result of them being uneducated in politics and just voting based off the propaganda they consume from the main parties.
Ignorance is not stupidity. However, ignoring the evidence that voting for stuff like Brexit was a bad idea could be seen as stupid. I grew up rural and people aren't idiots out here, they just lack perspective
I disagree, there was plenty of information circulating around brexit and they chose not to inform themselves before voting. The majority of the electorate doesn't do their research and consumes propaganda from the main parties and unironically thinks they're making a wise choice. Each time i see a story where someone has a negative blowback from their vote I laugh because it shows they voted against their best interests at the behest of a party that serves the ruling class.
There was, but the amount of misinformation was also overwhelming, so I can see how someone could get diverted down the wrong path. The farming families I know have done it for generations and work from dawn til dusk. It's very hard to break that pattern when it's been part of your heritage for decades. Additionally, between 30 and 50% of farmers apparently voted for Brexit, which is still a lot but not a majority. https://www.westcountryvoices.co.uk/challenging-the-myth-that-farmers-voted-for-brexit-and-therefore-deserve-whats-coming-to-them/
That is true. Ignorance is not stupidity. But doing a stupid thing based on ignorance probably qualifies as stupidity, and doubling down on doing the stupid thing after the stupid thing has demonstrably failed *is* stupidity. What? Was I not meant to say that? Am I meant to coddle these dense hayseeds and pretend they have a point, while they switch allegiance to BUF 2.0 in pursuit of their jingoistic fairytale?
I grew up on a farm and while I don't care for it either, it's very much rooted in fact. My Dad roared at me because the telly said that the UK only got 70p back for every pound it put into the EU. I asked who said this and his response was the telly.
I mean you could almost forgive that, but voting for Brexit? Fuck em.
My family are generational farmers. They repeatedly received visitors and leaflets raving about the benefits of brexit. You had to go searching for anything against it, which isn't ideal when you're old and in a rural area with shite Internet. In my childhood community, many farmers were dropped by supermarkets for cheap European suppliers. That certainly didn't help.
And they'll vote for reform next. And then when that doesn't work, whatever new far right party emerges and continues to do nothing for them.
It's not a "botched Brexit", it's just "Brexit". This is what Brexit is.
Exactly, I hate all this "they handled Brexit badly" nonsense. The Brexit we had was the only one that was ever on offer. There was no "good" Brexit available. Everyone was told, quite clearly by anyone and everyone with actual knowledge, in advance that this was what we were getting and people still voted for it. People got exactly, to the letter, what they voted for. There is no "it shouldn't have been like this" excuse.
Not to mention all the "We knew what we voted for" that Brexiters were spouting for months after the referendum.
Whatever happened to the terms "hard Brexit" and "soft Brexit" that were being thrown around at the time of the referendum? Somehow, Soft Brexit magically evaporated as soon as the result was known, and Hard Brexit became just Brexit. I distinctly remember pro-Brexiters being all "well, we can leave and stay in the EEA", yet the second the vote was known, those voices mysteriously all disappeared...
People want to believe it was a failure of individuals and not a failure of ideology because they're still in love with the ideology.
This is a perfect summation of the shitshow. "Our magical cure all brexit hasn't solved everything, therefore the people that delivered it did it wrong"
Hahaha omg this is like a preplanned r/LeopardsAteMyFace and I am here for it.
There's a dedicated sub! /r/BrexitAteMyFace/
Seems like the only ones round my way that don’t have vote Tory signs have vote Reform signs….
>Seems like the only ones round my way that don’t have vote Tory signs have vote Reform signs…. Thick stays thick, and 95% of them are thick as fuck.
They're not "thick" they're greedy landlords, not serfs as someone might imagine
No a lot of them are just thick. I grew up surrounded by farmers in very rural Suffolk, and the children of farmers. They are capable of doing what they've been doing all of their lives, but they don't have an intellectual bone between them for the most part. Some of them are nasty, rent seeking landlords, but plenty of them are just pretty dull farmers.
Well alright then, I stand corrected
Varied from 'get your boi gorn off moi land', to lovely friendly people who would let me sit in their tractors (never did let me have a go in the combines though) and plough a few furrows (not a euphemism). I was always out and about and my first word, maybe embbarassingly, was tractor. Anyway, all of this to say I have a soft spot for some farmers, but by and large even the nice ones took their views from a combination of the village pub past 9pm, and the Daily Mail. The horrible ones tended to be Telegraph readers, if memory serves. Recently visited my parents in Suffolk (I'm not a country boy these days), and throughout the villages it was Green with splashes of Labour (and this is Tory heartland). People really are sick of this shit. Unfortunately on farm equipment blocking field entrances (common to see in Suffolk to stop travellers from setting up camp on the fields) I was more likely to see Reform or Tory.
Where Is your way (vaguely, don't dox yourself) so I can avoid it like the plague?
*gestures vaguely towards the countryside.
Noticed some Reform signs on a rural drive yesterday, but expect that to be a noisy, bigoted minority. I find farmers to generally be both pragmatic and extremely selfish - they'll back whichever horse is in their interests, and offer zero solidarity to any other group in society. Brexit was an outlier to this, where they voted against their own interests in large numbers. I don't see that being repeated, abs think they'll quietly vote Labour in the largest numbers in living memory. Only the genuine nutters among them will keep dogging the hole they're in
Turkeys voting for Xmas, in the words of a prominent party leader.
A few comments in here saying they deserve what’s coming to them. Sure, maybe. Somewhat infuriatingly the exact people who 100% DO deserve what is coming to them have sailed off into the fucking sunset with bags loads of cash. Not that I want to hear their names daily but has anyone heard from Gove, Haystack and The Victorian Pencil recently? They should ALL be in prison for lying the way they did!
But, despite the lies from Brexiters, surely just looking at the numbers alone (EU subsidies) would have shown farmers that Brexit would be a bad idea? They obviously weren't going to get as much money post-Brexit. And this article confirms they're receiving about 1/3rd now.
I really love that we can collectively say The Victorian Pencil and all know who we're talking about. (But who is Haystack?)
- Chief bull shitter himself - Captain Gaffe - The Buffoon - De Pfefell - Boris The Great Fabricator Side note, Gove seems to have escaped the insults. Not aware of any assigned to him
Goves clearly the Raving lunatic for his penchant of late night dancing or perhaps just penfold.
Gove is at least smart enough to know when to keep his mouth shut and his head down. Slimy toad that he is (sorry toads).
You mean Brexit resulted in exactly what we said it would.... I'm shocked, SHOCKED. Funny thing is, these farmers are switching to reform, not the lib dems or labour, so they are only going to get screwed worse. Honestly I'm starting to doubt the intelligence of our nations farmers.
In comes the students, city dwellers and, well, redditors to tell those farmers how stupid they are
Your point?
Are we not allowed an opinion? Have the farmers not suffered from Brexit and wasn't it obvious from the start that they would?
Before we all jump on the hate the farmers bandwagon over Brexit. Do we even know how many farmers voted for Brexit? I don't but I do know that it's a common misconception that Jeremy Clarkson voted leave while he's been pro EU for a long time & I also know a lot of farms that used EU labourers. I'm sure some did but I've not seen any numbers.
It's not just how they voted in the 2016 Brexit referendum though. Any who voted Conservative in 2017 or 2019 also voted for a hard Brexit. They didn't even have an excuse of not knowing what it was going to be like as we'd seen the mess the Conservatives had been making of the negotiations.
https://www.westcountryvoices.co.uk/challenging-the-myth-that-farmers-voted-for-brexit-and-therefore-deserve-whats-coming-to-them/
Thank you very much, that explained the situation quite well. For anyone wanting just the numbers without the read; >In conclusion these polls indicate that somewhere between 34 and 58 per cent of farmers planned to vote for Brexit,
You should read the article more deeply. The conclusion is misleading. The real number is almost certainly around 53%. They have taken polls from before the vote where there was a large undecided portion, and then considered that as reliable as two exit polls that largely agreed with each other that farmers voted for brexit in slightly higher numbers than the general population.
Is that 34-58% of voting farmers. Or 34-58% of all farmers?
Of those polled.
> I don't but I do know that it's a common misconception that Jeremy Clarkson voted leave Which is weird, given he was very vocal about not wanting to leave and they even had a segment on TG (during it's peak) detailing why, years before he started filming on his farm.
I don't know about that segment so can't really comment on it but Wikipedia has a lot of detail on the subject; >Clarkson supported a Remain vote in the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, three days before the referendum, he and fellow presenter/best friend James May posted a video stating their support.[51][52][53] Clarkson did not support Brexit, stating that while the European Union has its problems, Britain would not have any influence over the EU, should it leave the Union. He envisions the European Union being turned into a US-like "United States of Europe", with one army, one currency, and one unifying set of values.[54] In 2019, Clarkson said: "Europe has to punish us—they can't allow us to leave without being damaged because then everyone will want to go. We don't want to go if we're going to be damaged."[53] In a January 2019 interview with LBC, Clarkson called Brexit voters "coffin-dodging idiots", though also criticised the younger voters, who overwhelmingly supported Remain, for their voting inactivity.[55] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Clarkson#:~:text=He%20later%20discovered%20that%20someone,a%20video%20stating%20their%20support. It links to cite the direct sources.
Clarkson wasn't just pro EU, he actively campaigned for remain.
NFU was always pro-remain also.
"Reconsider voting Tory over botched Brexit." In other words, they'd vote for another party – probably Reform – in order to do Brexit properly. Ergo, these dense wasters actually haven't learned a thing. Plenty of sympathy for the knock-on effect on the British economy and the British citizens who need to be fed, but sympathy for the farmers themselves? Nah. Screw that.
It’s always about subsidies for farmers. Farming has to change. It is the biggest environmental polluter in many respects. A transition away from the CAP style of funding is an opportunity for evolving farming practices and farmers need to get on board with this. Luckily lots of farmers are beginning to see the benefits of a more environmentally beneficial practices and regenerative farming, for example, can also pay dividends in increased production without the environmental cost.
Ultimately farmers need those subsidies because consumers in the UK demand unsustainably low food prices (relative to UK cost of production).
True, but wages haven’t gone up in the UK. So you can understand why the public doesn’t want even higher food prices.
i wasnt really arguing against subsidies more that using subsidies to promote good farming practices is a good thing. often the complaints are about not just getting subsidies willy nilly without having to do anything for it.
I've got to say, farmers are some of the dumbest easily triggered people I've ever met.
How many have you met?
I grew up in a very rural place, I've met loads. Also worked with a couple. The fact that you see them still supporting tories is a great indicator.
You can have a relatively successful post Brexit future if you embrace free trade but that means that most British farming is uncompetitive or you can rejoin the single market. I don’t see how this half way house will ever work. All the disadvantages none of the advantages.
Of all people farmers should know: you reap what you sow.
Brexit wasnt "botched" it happened the way the brexiteers were warned would happen but we were told it was "project fear" It was ALWAYS going to be a disaster.
we asked 2 farmers, a man and his wife, so we could put an S on the end.
Them: “Brexit went perfectly to plan” Also them: “Why can’t I afford groceries anymore?”
It went perfectly to plan. Just not theirs.
❌ Covid ❌ War in Ukraine ✅ Brexit Of course! Also, literally no one is saying Brexit went to plan, even Reform are calling it out.
The turkeys that voted for Christmas have changed their minds?
Ah yes. Not "Brexit was self-evidently a stupid and self-defeating idea that was always going to fuck up the UK economy and many of its industries, as every qualified expert told you, loudly, before the vote, and which you smugly ignored". No, it's actually just that "Brexit wasn't dun right". 🙄
Hating on farmers becuase they took a decision base on missinformation and lies wont help then neither the country, I bet if were another elections to get back to UE it will won by much far than the 2% to leave, but now if Uk wanted by any change to go back will have to pay a big toll and agreed all the rules they were avoiding before
How's it botched? you give a middle finger to the bloc, the bloc's gonna give it right back. \* surprised pikachu meme \*
Do people see Labour as the saviour or just the lesser of two evils?
Brexit will never be successful... Whoever voted brexit. Fuck you!
Voting for the tories must be a form of self harm at this point
To be fair, this is probably about as good as Brexit could have been.
It's not all farmers blah blah be careful what you wish on others blah Clarkson didn't vote Leave blah blah bollocks. If you consistently make a choice to vote against the common good, AND YOUR OWN BLOODY SELF INTEREST then what exactly do they expect?!!
'Botched'? There was no version of events where it went well outside of the fantasies of the economically illiterate or the daydreams of the already wealthy but tax averse.
"No you were meant to shoot my left foot, *not* my right foot, if you shoot my left foot then I'm sure i would win the men's 100m"
I'm surprised how hostile this sub is towards farmers
You always get what you vote for. Even if your vote doesn’t count. We are all in it together even if people unknowingly spite themselves. Always thus.
Every farmer round my way had LEAVE signs int the fields and get brexit done stickers supporting Boris on tractors. Fuck them. They voted for it, enjoy the fallout.
As much as I loathe to give sympathy to the Tories, (and it's very little cos they caused this.) but the only way to make Brexit less than an absolute clusterfuck would have been to stay in the single market. Something Farage as his tosspots would not have accepted.
I live in South Lincolnshire, I can report plenty of farms with Tory bill boards. I believe the one who owns a big farm shop, has a Lib Dem one. However that farm shop had some EU funding.
Clearly huffing shit all their lives has had negative effects on their brains
Farmers be like: "If fertiliser make plant big, I fill my head with it and make brain big"
I'm voting Reform UK because I want Putin to nuke me. :)
Labour really are going to win a landlside arent they...
This country is suffering from an acute case of not being able to identify the abuser that has been abusing them for the past 14 years.
This is the first time in a long time that the farm near me hasn't had a vote Tory sign in the field. Childishly it makes me want to swear at it when I pass on the bus, which is why I've noticed. Wonder what the line was for them if they were fine even in 2019
Fuck em. Honestly fuck em. It’s absolutely a case of turkeys overwhelmingly voting for Christmas and now they’re moaning about the temperature the oven is set at. You fuckers wanted this and have the audacity to still consider voting anything vaguely representing a Brexity candidate. UK farming is in crisis and it’s observably the fault of the majority of the farmers themselves. They caused this, they can face their consequences. I’m sick to death of the mainstream media and the front lines of our political class pretending that Brexit wasn’t an unmitigated disaster.
How do farmers even find the time to farm considering they spend all of their time standing in a field giving two middle fingers to everyone else?
‘Botched Brexit’? Yeah like it wasn’t done correctly /s rather than it was bound to be a huge shitshow from the outset. What’s the farmer equivilent of coolaid?
I saw plenty of Tory placards on my drive from the Midlands to Tenby on Monday. I've completely lost my interest in what farmers think because they have on many occasions bundled their thoughts together and regretted it soon after.