buctootim

You're missing the point. Sheep are not economically viable without subsidy. Take away the subsidy and there will be no sheep. What you say about cattle is changing very quickly as intensive factory farming increases, currently 20% of cattle are zero grazed and the number of pasture days for most of the rest are being rapidly reduced . Pigs and poultry have always roamed, its only recently they have been brought indoors. Surely you remember the corrugated tin pig shelters which used to cover Hampshire? https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/17/uk-has-nearly-800-livestock-mega-farms-investigation-reveals https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/28/free-range-milk-asda-dairy-farming-cows-in-fields-pasture-promise

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/06/26/farmers-leader-seeks-government-subsidy-equal-to-support-given-b/

Animal welfare issues aside if you keep animal indoors you dont need hedges and walls and small fields. So you will also need to employ an army of people scrub clearing in aesthetically sensitive areas, a job the sheep and cattle currently do

Yeah but there are only 375,000 British civil servants. Not like the bloated EU bureaucracy which has 48,000 split between 28 countries

Simply not true. Food fit for consumption is not destroyed, its not the 1980s with its production led subsidies anymore. 55% of British farmers income comes from the CAP and less than 40% from actually selling produce. You think that isnt enough? you think it will be more after Brexit?

Efficient pig farming in china 'Barn' raised chickens in Britain Britain with farm subsidy Britain without farm subsidy

The CAP attempts to balance the competing priorities of food security for Europe, the environment and biodiversity, employment, animal welfare, rural development and tourism value. There are many ways to structure the CAP depending on the weight given to each priority. Its an area of valid debate. What irks me is the simplistic and dishonest approach of some that its all the French farmers fault. In farming efficiency means huge factory farms with subsidies going to massive agri-businesses. It means keeping animals indoors in confined spaces where they cant waste energy by moving. It means massive prairie style arable crop and silage fields, aesthetically ugly with no dry stone walls or hedges. The irony is that this is the antithesis of what many Brexiteers say they want - a return to the idyllic England of the 1950s.

They have - but it doesn't change the fact that the CAP has been radically reformed several times despite that opposition. If you want to see inefficiency look no further than British hill farmers, 70% of whose income is from subsidy. It all depends if you want to see the tourist landscapes of the Lake District, Brecon Beacons, Scottish Highlands etc disappear and have them covered by trees if the sheep are no longer there.

The deal has always been since WW2 'you get to be the leader of the West because you are writing the cheques'. If the US guarantee of European safety no longer applies then they don't get to be leader. The French farmers is just another Brexit red herring. It was Britain who led reform of the Common Agricultural Policy and moved it away from volume of production subsidies to a stewardship payment based on number of acres / hectares farmed. Guess what? French farmers get exactly the same level of subsidy per hectare as the British, its just that because France is bigger and has twice the amount of agricultural land then the French get more in total. If you want to blame someone, blame British politicians.

Yep sounds well based and credible. I've no reason to doubt it and seen no evidence to contradict it.

The EIB loan made no real difference to the Southampton plant. The writing had been on the wall for it since Ford opened the Turkish plant to make transits in 2002. It was business decision by Ford which doomed it, not the EIB - although I agree the loan shouldnt have been made. http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/10026411.Focus_on_Ford__The___80m_EU_loan_for_Ford_s_Turkish_Transit_plant/

So you've only lived in two countries. I've lived in four. Im sure other here have similar experiences. I repeat, why do you think your experience of living in a minor EU country makes you better informed?

Lived in New Orleans according to him

Why do you think your experience of one part of Portugal is any more typical of the EU than living in Shirley?

Personally I wouldn't allow any private sector recipients of EU and UK government subsidies to vote

I used to work in health services planning. We experimented with Citizens Juries to decide NHS funding priorities. After a fairly short while they were scrapped. Why? Because consistently although 'ordinary' people frequently expressed different opinions and priorities initially, once they had spent a month learning about an issue, hearing evidence and asking questions of medical specialists they invariably came to the same conclusions and priorities as the professionals. People change their mind once they have full information. Ask them if they want to save pre-term babies born at 22 weeks the answer is yes. Ask them if they want to save pre-term babies born at 22 weeks even if 85% will have a major lifetime disabilities, likely be blind and severely mentally disabled and cost the NHS / Social Services c£3m over their lifetimes, you get a different answer.

Yep. The whole of the past 8 years would have been different

Carl Bildt @carlbildt Tragic to see how the UK is lost in the post-referendum chaos. This used to be a nation providing leadership to the world. Now it can’t even provide leadership to itself.

Depends when May goes. Davidson could easily get to Westminster in a by-election before then

Ruth Davidson has surprisingly strong backing to be the new Tory leader. I can see it being between her and Rees-Mogg with the main issue being leave or remain https://yougov.co.uk/news/2018/07/09/leave-voting-conservative-party-members-are-starti/?utm_source=website_article&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=tory_members_july_2018

Leaving the EU is a major constitutional change. The original vote should have required a 60:40 majority tbf

Jeez I always assumed it was a total clusterf#ck because leavers hadn't given any serious thought to what happens after. I had no idea it was a carefully planned clusterf#ck

Not really. Its been clear from the outset that they wont, can't, allow countries to pick and mix the bits they want and leave the bits they don't. You cant have a members club with all the members on different benefits and different commitments. You're either In, in the EEA and the Customs Union, or an external third party. Those have always been the choices and the idea sold by Leave politicians that we could cherry pick from the EU and also get super duper easy deals with the rest of the world was always a lie.

I think there should be a second referendum but its hard to see how it would work with effectively three options - accepting the deal as the best achievable; leaving with no deal or staying in.

We still have a budget deficit ten years after the crash, despite almost full employment and growth is petering out. Debt is monumental, especially once you include pension liabilities and PFI. The slightest knock the house of cards, I dunno like for example no longer being able to trade as easily - would be a major major problem.