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Brexit: give me a positive effect... XII

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eternumviti said:
I rather enjoyed the empty austerity of lockdown V1.0. I took the Bentley out for a run, and was rewarded by endless miles of almost empty roads. It just made me want to keep driving.
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'Definately' (to quote a related thread) - one of the few times I've sincerely regretted the lack of a 'Lol' option on PFM :)
 
eternumviti said:
In all fairness to him, I don't think that Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski is quite as much of a zealot as many of his predecessors. He has expressed deep concern about the loss of small scale family farms - nearly 200,000 in the last decade - and concedes that the CAP is the likely culprit. Whether that will lead to reform or not, who knows.
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While you're on the "in all fairness" tack, how about recognizing that the CAP these days has almost nothing in common with the CAP of old?
 
i.j.russell said:
A 7.25% growth this year to offset the 9.9% fall the previous year. Whose to say that the growth wouldn't have been higher if we'd stayed in the EU?

I think that everyone is thankful that Brexit hasn't been a catastrophe.
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Precisely, not even the government’s own modelling showed any growth advantage scenario- quite the opposite and only one loon of an economist forecast a gain- he was some pickled octogenarian who shared his fags with Farage.
 
PsB said:
While you're on the "in all fairness" tack, how about recognizing that the CAP these days has almost nothing in common with the CAP of old?
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Who said that I didn't.

The CAP is a gradually moving feast, and on a 7 year cycle, so it is being rehashed again this year.

The most significant changes have been to unlink the payments from production to hectarage, and most recently to link a proportion of the Single Farm Payment (which is now called the Basic Payment Scheme) to environmental initiatives, I think to the tune of 30%. There's also a rural initiatives scheme to promote rural businesses and diversification, and money to bring young blood into what is an ageing profession. These are called 'Pillar 1' and 'Pillar 2', the former being the BPS, the latter the rest. Between them they account for about 45% of the EU budget.

Is that sufficient, or shall I start on how it isn't working - how the SFP/BPS means that 80% of the dosh goes to 20% of the farmers, without exception industrial scale 'linear' farms, further enriching some of the richest people in Europe, and causing environmental havoc - there has been massive loss of diversity even in the last decade - how only about a third of farmers paid for green initiatives are actually compelled to carry out those initiatives, how subsidiarity is permitting massive scale fraud in Bulgaria, Slovakia and most controversially Hungary, where Orban clambered to power on the backs of small farmers then annexed their land and gave it to his mates, family and government officials, earning them millions in EU subsidies. The loss of small scale farms to mafia and government run fraud probably accounts for a good percentage of the 200,000 small farms that the current EU Agricultural Commissioner is getting in a sweat about.
 
eternumviti said:
Who said that I didn't.

The CAP is a gradually moving feast, and on a 7 year cycle, so it is being rehashed again this year.

The most significant changes have been to unlink the payments from production to hectarage, and most recently to link a proportion of the Single Farm Payment (which is now called the Basic Payment Scheme) to environmental initiatives, I think to the tune of 30%. There's also a rural initiatives scheme to promote rural businesses and diversification, and money to bring young blood into what is an ageing profession. These are called 'Pillar 1' and 'Pillar 2', the former being the BPS, the latter the rest. Between them they account for about 45% of the EU budget.

Is that sufficient, or shall I start on how it isn't working - how the SFP/BPS means that 80% of the dosh goes to 20% of the farmers, without exception industrial scale 'linear' farms, further enriching some of the richest people in Europe, and causing environmental havoc - there has been massive loss of diversity even in the last decade - how only about a third of farmers paid for green initiatives are actually compelled to carry out those initiatives, how subsidiarity is permitting massive scale fraud in Bulgaria, Slovakia and most controversially Hungary, where Orban clambered to power on the backs of small farmers then annexed their land and gave it to his mates, family and government officials, earning them millions in EU subsidies. The loss of small scale farms to mafia and government run fraud probably accounts for a good percentage of the 200,000 small farms that the current EU Agricultural Commissioner is getting in a sweat about.
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I agree with a lot of that. Whenever there is money around, powerful connected people come up with schemes to try to get their hands on some of it. There have been several proposals in recent years to put a cap on payments. The last time this was attempted, it was defeated by vociferous opposition from the UK (NFU and CLBA) and Germany, among others. The idea will certainly come back.
 
So where was the Brexit backlash in the local elections?

Either the majority of the voting public feel Brexit was a success, which most on here deny almost daily, or they just don't care.

It's probably the latter IMO. The arrival of a worldwide pandemic has set everything in context. People will just be happy to get back to some kind of normality.
 
PsB said:
I agree with a lot of that. Whenever there is money around, powerful connected people come up with schemes to try to get their hands on some of it. There have been several proposals in recent years to put a cap on payments. The last time this was attempted, it was defeated by vociferous opposition from the UK (NFU and CLBA) and Germany, among others. The idea will certainly come back.
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The NFU is a perfect example of a powerful lobbying organisation which campaigns very effectively in the interests of its clients, themselves usually wealthy and who include, of course, donors to the conservative party, members of the HoL, and of the goverment itself. The government can then move against, for example, environmental initiatives that limit or ban the use of synthetic herbicides, pesticides and fertilisers, or antibiotics, or gene profiling, whilst hiding behind the opaque structures of the European Union's institutions.

Or, to bring it up to date, could.
 
eternumviti said:
... Europe also largely comprises a group of ex-empires, several of them considerably more oppressive than our own, particularly the most recent and short lived one. It is ironic that, given that chequered history, the EU itself is driven by aspirations of empire, and manifests as a mercantilist project not averse to its own streak of mindless ruthlessness.
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I think your mixing the EU up with the plot of Star Wars here, be careful you'll get a writ from George Lucas!

Wait until you find out Jean-Claude Junke is your Father, i can't wait to see the look on your face...
 
Thanks for the Star Wars comparison, I might yet use that.

I'm surprised for my part that the European Commission hasn't issued a writ to George Lucas for nicking it's intellectual property. If intellectual isn't too strong a word. Shall we say for breaching copyright law.
 
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“I must emphasise that in my view the surrenders of sovereignty involved are serious ones, and I think that, as a matter of practical politics, it will not be easy to persuade Parliament or the British public to accept them."

“I am sure that it would be a great mistake to underestimate the force of the objections to them. But these objections should be brought out into the open now because, if we attempt to gloss over them at this stage, those who are opposed to the whole idea of joining the Community will certainly seize on them with more damaging effect later on”.

Lord Kilmuir, Lord Chancellor, in response to a letter from Heath in 1960.
 
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