Far right attempting to subvert the farmers protests in London.

One silver lining to possibly focus on with this weird UK culture war we seem to be in is that many of the leading lights are typically gammony old men who will probably be 6ft under in a few years. They represent the past not the future.

I fear they will pass the torch to their inbred offspring.

And they wont even pay tax on the torch

Next time your down the pub and some apathetic soul starts banging on about there being no point in voting and that all parties are exactly the same, you can point to this example of closing down tax avoidance loopholes to prove that there is a difference even if its quite small. The tories wanted to get rid of IHT all together.

While we all know that “the left” is a pretty self flagellating entity, maybe there is a small opportunity to smile a bit every now and then.

That’s a tragedy for their family. However, I think it’s more to do with severe mental health issues than the budget.

I expect the lies spread by the daily heil etc about how he would be having to pay inheritance tax wouldnt have helped.

So best them and the landlords wanting to dodge tax should stop pushing lies.

Tenant Farmer on TV complaing about the IHT? Unless he has £2 million quids worth of Tractors he’s fighting someone else’s battle.

it should be fairly obvious why farming is a special sort of business that needs to be handled differently

It is, that’s why they receive massive subsidies for their businesses from the tax payer.

And now they get to pay half the IHT and a much higher starting point than those same tax payers.

Tenant Farmer on TV complaing about the IHT? Unless he has £2 million quids worth of Tractors he’s fighting someone else’s battle.

Radio 4 were doing vox pops with people protesting. It seems that cap-doffing serfdom is alive and well in  farm workers, probably earning minimum wage, defending the interests of rich landowners

Radio 4 were doing vox pops with people protesting. It seems that cap-doffing serfdom is alive and well in  farm workers, probably earning minimum wage, defending the interests of rich landowners

Beat me to it…

One silver lining to possibly focus on with this weird UK culture war we seem to be in is that many of the leading lights are typically gammony old men who will probably be 6ft under in a few years. They represent the past not the future.

So you have seen the Victoria Derbyshire and Jeremy Clarkson exchange then?

Another one saying we will have to sell 6 farms from the estate???

multi21Free Member
FuzzyWuzzy

How many small-medium size farms are worth over £1.3m though (assuming there’s a farmhouse on it, rising to £3m allowance inc. spousal etc.)? The BBC Verify article says only 35% of UK farms are valued at over £1m, I’d assume then they’re mostly medium-large farms (and likely just large farms once you get to £3m).
I’m dubious of that figure from the BBC.  In a lot of the country, the farmhouse alone is probably £500K, and I bet a lot are closer to a million. Then there is equipment (tractor alone can be £100K plus drills sprayers etc), working buildings, livestock + the land itself at £10K an acre (average farm size 217 acres). You can be over 1.3 million very easily.

An old friend bought his farm in a remote part of Devon thirty years ago this year, iirc. He paid something like £100,000 for 60 acres and a run-down grade2 thatched cottage. At the time it was two and a half times what my parents large 4 bed terraced house in a scruffy city was worth. He now has about 100 acres, and the farm is worth over a million. It is still run-down.

He farms sheep and anything else that will make some money – crops for biofuel, etc – doesn’t make a huge amount of money from it, but is never short of money. But then he did come from a well off family in the first place. He can afford unusual cars, leases new 4x4s, goes on more foreign holidays than I do. A lot of equipment is shared between the community, so he doesn’t need to buy massive amounts of expensive kit, and there is a lot of barter-type trading going on, off the books. (Help me with the spraying and I’ll help put up your barn. Do you fancy a lovely joint of venison? Can’t tell you where it came from…) If he could, he’d rewild the farm – he’s got good intentions but that’s often at cross purposes to actual farming.

It’s a very different lifestyle to my townie life and I wouldn’t want to do it, but that’s not because he’s living in penury. In fact, none of the friends I met in agricultural college in the 90s are doing any worse for themselves than the desk workers I’m sitting among now.

Tenant Farmer on TV complaing about the IHT?

Baroness Batters was on Radio 4 this morning – she was head of the NFU from 2018-2024, hence the interview. This is her wiki entry:

Batters was born on 28 May 1967.[1] She was brought up on a tenant farm near Salisbury and always wanted to be a farmer. She attended Godolphin School, an independent school in Salisbury.[2] As a teenager she worked with horses for David Elsworth, including riding over 30 winners in races. Her father encouraged her to develop a career instead of becoming involved in farming, so she attended catering college and then ran a catering company.[3] In 1998, when her father retired, she took over the farm’s tenancy.[4]

She has been a member of the House of Lords since 2024.

I suspect that ‘tenant’ may have a few more meanings in the countryside than ‘tenant’ when you’re being evicted from your house because you can’t pay the rent. I have a friend who grew up in a tied cottage near Bristol. She was very posh!

That would be the Harry Metcalf with the warehouse full of fancy cars, that also works as a motoring journo?

So you have seen the Victoria Derbyshire and Jeremy Clarkson exchange then?

I did like his opener which can be summarised as “I was lying three years ago but now you can trust me, honest”.

Although his ranting about six form politics reminded me of someone else.

Did he show Derbyshire any Monty Python images?

mrhoppy
That would be the Harry Metcalf with the warehouse full of fancy cars, that also works as a motoring journo?

I don’t think it’s any secret whatsoever that he’s minted.

But I suggest you go and look up how long he’s been farming, and how he came to be rich and involved in cars if this is supposed to be a gotcha.

Tenant Farmer on TV complaing about the IHT? Unless he has £2 million quids worth of Tractors he’s fighting someone else’s battle.

Strong echoes of the anti-ULEZ hysteria stirred up by R/W media outlets looking for a stick to beat Sadiq Khan with when the vast majority of vehicles people actually drive are exempt anyway.

There’s going to be some variety of this tactic every time Labour tries to raise more money to fund the public services the Tories left in ruins, get used to it.

Of course, the most blindingly obvious way to alleviate the current financial squeeze, get the economy moving again and massively help farmers in the process would be to rejoin the European single market, wonder how Big Nige and co feel about that?

I don’t think it’s any secret whatsoever that he’s minted.

But I suggest you go and look up how long he’s been farming, and how he came to be rich and involved in cars if this is supposed to be a gotcha.

Not supposed to be a gotcha, only vaguely aware of him so wasn’t sure it was the same fella.  But as it is he has multiple other income streams which take his time so I don’t imagine he’s slaving away to eke out every penny from his farm, if not for the fact he’s doing other things instead of working it. So I’m leading to question the validity of his £60k figure, given his other commitments I’m assuming he needs to have staff within his overheads some of which he would t need if he was working dawn til dusk like we’re told is needed.

He’s also not a typical farmer for the purposes of drawing positions as to where things should be.

Tenant Farmer on TV complaing about the IHT? Unless he has £2 million quids worth of Tractors he’s fighting someone else’s battle.

If the last decade has shown anything it is that people are very susceptible to lies.

A few raised eyebrows in Kingscross today as the hard up Farming communities stepped out of First Class.

Interesting to see Davies, Farron and the LibDem party position on this. Very much lining themselves up as the new Conservatives (but without the foreigner obsession). Their other “pro farming” policies are pretty joined up, but jumping on opposing these meagre wealth tax changes risks putting them on the side of the landowner, rather than everyone else that lives in their rural seats (where the behaviour of the larger land owners towards the wider community is well understood).

And this inheritance tax change fixes that how exactly?  In fact i bet this tax change causes family farmers to sell up and actually increase the amount of land that’s in the hands of “big agribusinesses”.

According to local Facebook page, Bill Gates is waiting in the layby ready to pick them all up for a song 😉

According to local Facebook page, Bill Gates is waiting in the layby ready to pick them all up for a song

Blimey, first his plandemic now this!

Am I wrong or do the farmers just have to do is sign the farm over 7 years before death? Just like the rest of us plebs

Dan Hodges, of all people, has just pointed out on Twitter that Kemi Badanoch has now committed to only 2 policies since her leadership election

1. Abolishing inheritance tax for landowners passing on land valued at over 3 million quid

2. Abolishing tax on private school fees

That’s the Tory party really addressing the issues that concern most people in this country.

Finger on the pulse there Kemi

Correct 7 years, limited company, trusts.

So I’ve got a video from the protest of Clarkson…..turns out it was the interview with Derbyshire! I’d just started filming when he asked how many folk would be impacted by iht. I also got very close to Farage….. he’s very short.

Crowdsize was huge though tbf…..saw 10k on BBC, then upped to 13k…..it was way more than that!

Vids of a tractor driving through a bollard, very slowly, but straight at a police officer are circulating on Twitter. Also, rather bizarrely, a couple of folks from JSO turned up!

I’m tired, really don’t care for London and am still 90 minutes from home.

I found this an interesting take on IHT

Clarkson still thinks he’s on Top Gear using the audience to put shit on Richard Hammond. When he asks his farming disciples how many are affected yeah it’s true most of them are – they just need to do some tax and succession planning. Do these people all honestly think they’re on the hook for loads of money from the get go just cos they wear wellies all day?

At the risk of derailing the thread back to where it started, any sign of the far right getting involved?

do the farmers just have to do is sign the farm over 7 years before death? Just like the rest of us plebs

If you hand over an asset as a gift, you must live seven years, but cannot continue to derive benefit from the asset – otherwise you have not given it away.  For the case of a house, for example, your parent gives you a house and lives in it. To avoid IHT they must pay market rent for the property. That could just be a means of them “gifting” you further wealth, but it must be paid.

The problem with farming is the farm has been the pension. So forward planning of income after, say 65, was not a thing. That planning requires pension contributions or future savings to avoid deriving benefit. whilst more young farmers, and farm workers, will be paying into pensions, this has not always been the case. Hence elderly farmers have assets but no future income after gifting the asset.

Old MacDonald and Clarkson need to get home soon as they’ll be sod all milk in the shops tomorrow.

If you hand over an asset as a gift, you must live seven years, but cannot continue to derive benefit from the asset – otherwise you have not given it away. For the case of a house, for example, your parent gives you a house and lives in it. To avoid IHT they must pay market rent for the property. That could just be a means of them “gifting” you further wealth, but it must be paid.

The accountancy press and HMRC have been stressing this quite a bit in the last week or two.

I found this an interesting take on IHT

It’s all been said in this thread, but with less hand waving.

It’s all been said in this thread, but with less hand waving.

Conversely, the video is more concise and has less of the usual tedious sniping..?

You didn’t watch it then? It’s full of sniping. And not at all concise.

it was way more than that!

people in large crowds alway seem to overestimate the numbers

the Met have a lot of experience so I think it’s likely that their numbers are there or thereabouts

And not at all concise.

And yet still more concise.

I started out from the perspective of the changes being a bad thing and this thread, being largely a load of shouting down and the usual, had done nothing to convince me otherwise. The video has me now considering the opposite viewpoint.. at they say – it’s all in the delivery.

Its sure this isn’t representative of all farmers but the small family owned ones I’ve noticed where I walk doggo are dumping slurry straight into the local river (seen the tankers with hoses discharging)

I find this hard to believe, especially that you’ve seen multiple. Are you sure they’re discharging rather than taking water?