UK and the EU

My FiL is a retired farmer and he moaned about having to pay a 30p street car parking charge to attend our wedding.

 

Farming is clearly such a lucrative business. That's why so many farmers who own rather than rent, are turning their farms into campsites and caravan parks instead.

I've done the sums a few times, trying to figure out if I could make a living from my, albeit small, piece of land. I worked out that it is theoretically possible to make a half decent living out of it, if I put in an insane amount of work, and if I'm blessed with a long run of good luck. In most realistic scenarios the numbers don't work.

We shouldn't really mock the profession that feeds us.

 

Just saying they are cheaper to run.

While I agree with what you are saying @clueless1 , I do sometimes wonder how a lot of them actually carry on, bearing in mind how they say they are all running at a loss.
Not many businesses could carry on with the loss figures that I have heard many quotes of, from farmers, I can only guess the loss is before any subsidy.

Bear that in mind with the fact that not many around these parts look to be on the bread line, I tend to think we all moan about our lot, farmers included.

 

On the whole I agree.
However....................... speaking from our customer list I can also make the previous joke as he was sat in the £65k Rangie that we replace every fifteen months! Another one blew £120k on a whim at a classic car auction a few weeks ago and then had to sell something back to us at a five grand loss so that he could fit it into the barn that he has turned over to his collection.

On the whole though I do agree that it is a hard way to make a living.

 

You have to have a good accountant
there is good tax breaks and if you make any profit it is pure profit all your living expence's go againest the farm

 

Yeah, 6 bob. To park a horseless carriage.

 

Comedy gold
What made it so funny though was that it was about as true a reflection on the way that Westminster works and the power of the senior civil servants as you could get. You couldn't make it up! I mean, look what happens when George Osborne has the cheek to deliver a budget that he actually thought up himself

 

Seen the news?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35911401

So, we have the 'in' campaign saying we're safer in Europe, something about a week ago a former MI6 boss publicly disagreed with.

Then shortly after that we get some chap (can't remember who he was, but some figure to do with security in the EU) whinging that information sharing between member states is not as good as it needs to be.

Then this, you get a bloke that is still actually charged with terrorism offenses, being released. Now I'm all for "innocent until proven guilty" but I thought the rules on detaining a suspect were slightly different when the charges were terrorism related. And in any case, they announce this the day after the news that an extreme right violent group of protesters showed up and demonstrated their frustration with the way this threat is being handled. I thought it was a farce before. I didn't think I'd have to redefine my definition of what becomes a farce. In a few decades there'll be very popular comedies written about the EU circa 2016.

 

We're talking about the country that hosts the EU parliament.

 

Hosting the EU parliament is not the same thing as being the EU parliament.