Farmers Hard-Done by the Budget?

No, I haven’t seen it. If you mean Jean Yanne, I am surprised. I haven’t seen him for some decades, but he used to be a great, extremely natural actor. His performance in Chabrol’s Le Boucher (and others) was regarded as exemplary. He got Best Actor at Cannes, and all that.

 

Well it just goes to show that uninformed impressions are not necessarily the same as knowledgeable ones

 

It makes for good viewing, but it is specious inasmuch as it takes no account of the fact that the farmer in question is performing one financial operation whilst the government is raising revenue from multiple ones. In fact, the video could have gone further, because some of those whisky bottles will have been stored in bond for some years (raising more tax) and then sold at auction (more tax) and, if not delivered, stay in bond (even more), and eventually taken out of bond, raising even further revenue, plus duty, plus the tax raised from the delivery company (wages, vans, road, etc.) etc.

I have no objection to the government raising taxes, due to an awareness of what they provide and without which life in modern society would immediately seize up, what I DO object to is the waste, the mismanagement, the arrogant profligacy of it all, the HS2 imploding catastrophe, the vast, futile — but sadly inescapable — bottomless pits of defence, the devasting and expensive misconduct, the ridiculously luxurious wallpapers, the £650 folders tucked under the arm of holier-than-thou politicians who, just a few weeks earlier, had been clambering about how they were going to reduce unnecessary expenses … but, of course, there is another side to this as well, because those ‘peripheral activities’ also raise revenue for the public good; when Mrs Lao broke her wrist in three places on New Year’s day (2023), by gum were we glad of the incredible attention she received at A&E, and which involved highly trained staff using sophisticated machines and equipment paid for by … the Inland Revenue! When we want to go somewhere, aren’t we pleased that there is a mind-bogglingly complex network of steel rails for trains to roll on (even if they are late!), and on, and on, and on. Same on the roads; how much do we think ONE traffic light costs? It’s got to come from somewhere!

But all that is nothing new; since we are on a forum here talking about farming, listen to this (Shiney will know, even though I trust he wasn’t there): in Ancient Rome, veterans would go to their Forum, complaining that their farms had fallen into states of dilapidation during their military tours overseas. Upon their return to Italy, they would have found themselves too poor to repair the farms and were thus forced to sell their property to rich corporate landowners, being left without their livelihood, whilst the government did nothing to help them … because they were the rich citizens buying the land at exploitative prices! … Plus ça change … indeed!

 

You said it 'here, here'! And I say 'Hear, hear!!' indeed!