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<h3>Pete does agriculture... Are the cows coming or going home?</h3>As you probably know, I warmed considerably to the SDP during the election, but that was by finding my way to overlooking their horror show of an agriculture policy. The more you research the subject, the more it looks to have been inspired by anti-farming environmental groups masquerading as farming advocates. Slagging a policy off, however, is far easier than writing one.&nbsp;To that end, I've written a sketch of one, to which I will add greater detail later down the line. It centres on the premise that farms are fundamentally food growing businesses, and all other considerations are secondary. So here goes...The grim reality for farmers in Britain is that farming is barely viable. For many farmers, though, farming is a way of life, and one that adds to the richness of the landscape – which is essential to the wellbeing and prosperity of the country. Every effort must be made to make farming worth it again. In line with our national resilience ethos, Britain’s farmers will come first.&nbsp;In order to support farming (an energy intensive industry), we will work to reboot fertiliser production in the UK, and through nuclear renewal will bring electricity overheads down - which will also stimulate greenhouse farms using cutting edge agribotics – not least to reduce reliance on cheap foreign labour and imports.&nbsp;A research fund will be created to make Britain the agriculture research and development lab of the world with farmers taking a share of intellectual property rights.The fashionable urbanite view is that pesticides, fertilisers and antibiotics should be phased out of farming but pigs and poultry, particularly, would collapse without antibiotics, and arable would not survive without nitrates. The Party recognises that, in reality, there is no British agriculture without them.&nbsp;The anti-pesticide/fertiliser lobby is a very well-funded NGO blob made up almost entirely of climate activists. Increasingly we find sustainable farming advocates are anti-farming climate zealots. As with energy, a full public inquiry will be held into the extent of green lobbying by domestic and foreign "philanthropists" who will then be blacklisted from all policy and parliamentary consultations. The Party opposes the decommissioning of agricultural lands for environmental and energy purposes.&nbsp;Agriculture has found a renewed place in national discourse thanks to the television programme Clarkson’s Farm. While it offers a fascinating insight into the bureaucratic hurdles of modern farming, it is a depiction of farming in the Cotswolds rather than a true depiction of what it’s like for cash poor farmers in remote areas with little diversification prospects. For them, even modest environmental requirements make the difference whether their farms turn a profit or not. Farmers do not have lucrative television deals to subsidise experimentation.We do, however, see the utility in promoting conscientious land husbandry, and it is certainly the case that farmers can play an important role in flood prevention. As such, the beneficiary of their work is the insurance sector. We would therefore explore tax incentives for insurance companies to offer flood prevention grants, inviting land owners to bid for the work.As to pollution from farming, there are already strict anti-pollution laws in place to prevent run-off - including the retained nitrates directive. What is missing is adequate and intelligent local authority enforcement - but there is also room for targeted grants to assist farmers with compliance. Both of these functions should fully be devolved to local authorities but with DEFRA inspection.&nbsp;When it comes to livestock rearing, due to economies of scale, the British meat industry can never compete on price but we can compete on quality and reliability. For the purposes of animal welfare, sustainability and food safety, we will dismantle the EU veterinary system in favour of smaller, local slaughterhouses under local authority supervision. Falling numbers of small, local abattoirs are forcing some farm businesses to call it a day, as finding alternative outlets for finished livestock pushes up costs and journey times.Some animals from remoter areas are now travelling more than 200 miles to slaughter, while many farmers report that remaining smaller abattoirs are increasingly busy and difficult to book into. Slaughter house owners cite the regulatory burden in their decision to cease operation. The system is in need of modernisations and regulatory streamlining. More detail will be given.&nbsp;SupermarketsSupermarkets must take some of the blame of the collapse of British agriculture. The report, Unpicking Food Prices, shows that farmers enjoy little or even zero share of any profit – typically just 0.03% of the retail price. By comparison, processors were found to be receiving 10 times the profit yet debates on farm policy, which put environmental aims at the forefront of targets, largely ignore how the money is divvied up in supply chains. Even doubling farmer profits from the retail price would not have a noticeable impact on the cost to consumers.&nbsp;The Party believes, in line with Sustain recommendations, that a stronger Groceries Code Adjudicator is needed, with greater powers to act when any unfairness between large-scale buyers and individual farm business is found.&nbsp;The Groceries Code Adjudicator (the GCA) was established on 25 June 2013 by the Groceries Code Adjudicator Act 2013 and is responsible for enforcing the Groceries Supply Code of Practice (the Code). The GCA is funded by a levy on designated retailers with a UK annual groceries turnover of more than £1 billion.The adjudicator should be backed by new supply chain rules on fair deals, with codes for each sector and an enforcement body, as provided for in the Agriculture Act 2020. Further rules should be introduced to improve transparency in supply chains to ensure farmers have greater bargaining power when negotiating prices. Provision for this is, again, set out in the Agriculture Act. Clear food labelling would provide greater clarity across the whole cycle of food production. Public procurement models should be established to secure more produce from a large range of farmers and growers, allowing small businesses to feed into public sector food contracts for schools, hospitals, and other institutions.A lack of transparency throughout the food supply chain means that the poor returns for farmers is being overlooked by policymakers. This could be remedied by two key recommendations:• The percentage of the retail price received by farmers has been removed from Defra’s annual report Agriculture in the UK. Reinstating the percentage would help shed light on how small businesses are being excluded from potential profit• The reporting requirements of larger businesses should be reviewed to ensure enough detail is being provided on where money flows within the food systemMeanwhile, schemes such as quality marks such as Red Tractor impose ever more stringent requirements. This has worsened with the onset of stringent environmental requirements which supermarkets use towards their carbon offsetting quotas, essentially exploiting farmers as free labour. The Party will end this by abolishing all state mandated carbon offsetting.&nbsp; ___Please let me know if I missed anything important. There's a lot more to be said on this issue, I'm sure.https://x.com/FUDdaily/status/1815445460372353263

Starter for an agricultural policy

James Melville posted this alarming movie plot on <a data-mce-href="https://x.com/JamesMelville/status/1815279991938068542" href="https://x.com/JamesMelville/status/1815279991938068542" target="_blank" rel="noopener">twitter</a>... "Here’s a script for a dystopian disaster movie: A pandemic sweeps the planet. In response to this, governments around the world decide to lockdown millions of people, close schools, mandate that citizens should wear masks and that anyone who refuses to take a vaccine (that doesn’t stop transmission) will be discriminated against. Governments spend fortunes on issuing contacts to companies to produce vast amounts of personal protective equipment and test and trace digital apps that are often faulty and not used. A bunch of unelected and grotesquely wealthy individuals and political leaders plot for various treaties to be implemented by global organisations who aren’t elected and also put into place a cunning plan for various forms of digital identity that is approved via a QR scanning device on a mobile phone. Citizens are punished with higher taxes and surveillance camera fines to help ‘save the planet’ while the individuals who enforced these policies travel around the world polluting the planet in private jets and motorcades whilst millions of people pay various forms of taxes to fund their lavish and polluting lifestyles. Doomsday scenarios are created about the temperature of the planet and solutions are found such as electric vehicle production powered by batteries made with lithium and cobalt. Landscapes in Africa and South America are destroyed and polluted due to the mining of these materials and thousands of child slaves are used for the mining. Massive deforestation of trees takes place to provide balsa wood and/or provide land space for wind turbines - which are then dumped in landfills after just 20 years of use. Cow farts are blamed for destroying the planet. Farmland is removed for massive solar farms. Political leaders repeatedly state that they want to ‘save the planet’ but at the same time, create various wars where thousands of innocent civilians die, and meanwhile, political leaders and major corporations try to control the oil and gas supply in the areas of conflict. Millions of people around the world starve, become homeless or struggle to pay for food or warmth - and meanwhile, a bunch of billionaires and major corporations plunder the planet’s assets and acquire obscene amounts of wealth in doing so.And then towards the end, one of the multinational corporations controlling much of the computer power of the planet receives a ransom note demanding a trillion dollars - or their widely deployed operating system will be exploited to brick the computer systems on which it is installed, requiring a physical call-out to each and every one in order to reset the problem. Instead, the megalomaniac in charge of the company refuses to pay and decides to blame a third party and an interfering EU policy decision.A candidate for the US presidency survives an assassination attempt by an inch and the incumbent President steps down from the presidential election campaign. And the bad actors who play the role of villains in this movie display the traits of every spoilt child who didn’t make it to the end of a Willy Wonka chocolate factory tour.&nbsp;It’s a ridiculous plot. It’s too far-fetched.

You could not make it up...

Oh my goodness. I can remember exactly where I was on the day that John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963. I was in my father's home office using his drawing board for my geometry homework - when a gasp went up from the sitting room.&nbsp; It was the shocked reaction of my family more than anything that brought home the stark reality that something really big had just happened.&nbsp; The infamous Cuban missile crisis had occurred the year before, when Russia had parked a fleet of nuclear missiles with friendly Cuba, right next door to the United States. It was the forerunner of the Ukraine and Russia situation we presently face, when everyone was on edge at the real prospect of nuclear Armageddon. But in return for Russia removing the nuclear missiles from its Soviet satellite states in the Warsaw pact, including Ukraine, there was a tacit understanding that NATO would not park its members' tanks on Russia's lawn. A simple observation of historical reality which got Nigel Farage crucified by a storm of indignation by the liberal establishment, during the UK general election, for daring to speak honestly. The anti-Trump rhetoric in the "liberal media" has been relentless since the alleged "storming" of the Capitol building in January 2020 by what looked more like a Village People tribute Act than a serious insurrection attempt.&nbsp; This incident was reheated and&nbsp; bent to fit the LawFare demonisation of Trump and used to mask the questioning of the legitimacy of the presidential election which once again highlighted the dubious nature of American election counts, and the unhelpful way that the electoral college system works to obscure and distort the actual numbers. The system is impossibly complicated in order that a clear-cut decision can be avoided while election fixers go to work to try to contrive the result they want.&nbsp; It's never going to be resolved with more of the same, somebody has to change the system and use modern direct democracy technology to reduce the scope for fraud and manipulation. And of course, the same can now be said of the UK electoral system where 80% of the electorate have not chosen Labour, yet MP Lucy Powell is claiming that just one in five voters represents a massive mandate for Starmer's socialist revolution. If you are one of the summarily disenfranchised, it's not hard to see that bemusement can lead to frustration at such absurd Alice in Wonderland politics.&nbsp; Especially now that the 20% of winners are poking jibes at the 80% seething losers, over the questions of the Brexit vote which they claim was stolen, despite being the subject of a more straightforward 52/48% majority. Yes, I am aware that the 20% of total electorate winners may be interpreted as 34% of the turned out vote of 56% of the Electorate. But however you spin it, the democratic deficit is extreme and embarrassing. And it will come around to bite the fraudulent winners in the fundament soon enough. Surely we can no longer argue that we do not need an electoral system that more reasonably reflects the entire electorate, where our five-year fate is decided by just one in five of the electorate, with the help of a very gameable system.I am well aware of the arguments in favour of the first past the post system, in that it delivers decisive results that allow government to get on without hindrance. Which is fine, where those governments are legitimate and not the result of accidents of unintended democratic malfunction. However, that was in the good old days before Tony Blair had politicized public service and rendered the rebellious and obstructive civil service as enemies of any Conservative government trying to carry out the will of the people as opposed to the will of the liberal elite that controls the civil service, the education establishment, the Health service, and the legal establishment. The frustrations of those who are denied democracy in the present system had generally been sandbagged by the incumbents of the two party system, who really do not want to risk losing their unfair advantage with any sort of proportional representation. I would of course argue that the proposals on this site for realdemocracy.uk can provide the subtle blend of engagement for all - with the comfort of a voting platform that can engage more than just a once in every five years with an ephemeral snapshot of fickle opinion. In addition, this time, the vote reflected no enthusiasm for the bollard and his vague manifesto, it was mostly a vote to remove the decaying carcass of the Sunak's Conservatives after 5 years of shambolic politics and backstabbing.We must do better - but now we have somewhat foolishly hung the albatross of Keir Starmer and his illegitimocracy around the nation's neck. So take every opportunity that comes your way to resist and object to the democratic deficit and the imposition of Starmergeddon.

A very close shave. .

<h3>A sane energy strategy - this has nothing to do with climate change, and everything to do with the reality that fossil fuels will run out eventually, and we need a viable alternative up and running. </h3>Does energy policy need to be any more complicated than this?...We begin by recognising that secure, affordable energy is the cornerstone of a thriving economy. Through thirty years of policy neglect, and an obsession with arbitrary climate targets, Britain has undermined its national security and economic resilience. It is absolutely absurd that we are spending billions on the grid to accommodate intermittent sources out in the middle of the sea which are vulnerable to attack. Decommissioning farmland or using it for low yield solar is also unwise. We judge the renewable energy experiment as a comprehensive failure.We do not share the liberal internationalist view that the world will follow Britain’s “climate leadership” and see no good reason to hobble our economic prosperity. As such, any and all applications for new fossil fuel exploration will be expedited. We will look to exploit Britain’s vast coal bed methane reserves. In accordance with this goal, Britain will withdraw from the Paris Agreement. We do not recognise any notion of “climate emergency”.As to electricity, Britain will build a fleet of new &nbsp;combined cycle gas turbine power stations on existing sites as an interim measure, pending a complete renewal of Britain’s nuclear fleet, supplemented by small modular reactors throughout the country. The nuclear sector will be put under an extensive regulatory review to expedite new designs. This will be the number one national priority.Britain will then undertake a review of planning laws. We take the view, however, that planning regulation is often used as an excuse for lack of political will. We will pass a nuclear infrastructure bill that permits any development on existing nuclear sites. We also regard Small Modular Reactors as safe and unobtrusive, and can be made to fit sympathetically into the landscape. As such, we regard any objections to them as frivolous, time-wasting NIMBYism, and will take legal steps to ensure their construction is exempt from the usual NGO lawfare.It is a given that successful fusion energy reactors would obviate all other forms of electricity generation, but estimates of deployment vary from 20 to 50 years to never. However, the entire solar system has evolved over 4 billion years fueled exclusively by fusion energy. It just takes a little more imagination than we seem to have been able to master recently.Mad Ed Milliband and his wind farms are a mistake, or maybe he plans to use prisoner release schemes and have them stand around and blow at becalmed windmills.?&nbsp; Or maybe pedal millions of bicycle operated generators..? Which in turn would tend to make them puff and blow even harder... 😃 Energy storage using ideas like the Wash Barrier scheme would be a start on more interesting alternatives.https://x.com/FUDdaily/status/1812455541941080499#NVManifesto

sanity in energy policy

Pete is testing a law and order policy strategy for his manifesto project. It is mostly a simple if long overdue infusion of common sense - and the extraction of dumb dogma... "... I'm first looking to firm up Policing &amp; Crime policy for a new manifesto. I have a reasonably good understanding of the problems (call me out if I missed anything), but solutions may prove to be difficult, costly and contentious. I'm offering up this preamble. Feel free to shoot me down. I will not be offended if you tell me it's crap. It's all part of the process..... Policing in the UK is broken. Through amalgamations, streamlining and politicisation, the force is no longer fit for purpose. <h3>Police officers are too thinly stretched, having to perform as detective, peacekeeper, social worker, paramedic, and taxi driver. The force suffers from a retention and recruitment crisis, deteriorating conditions and poor pay. Meanwhile, too many forces suffer from political activism at the command level, resulting in “woke” policing, and rainbow nail polish on expenses.</h3>Over the last twenty years, local police stations and detention facilities have been closed which has further eroded genuine community policing, where dedicated officers no longer meaningfully patrol a regular beat. It must also be noted that we have and disturbing number of low intelligence police officers, some with poor language and literacy skills. Police are also overworked with paperwork and administration.Maybe a job for an AI RoboPlod? Although the legal profession will probably object as it will sense that legal aid and other sinecures will be eroded in due course.A recent trend in policing is the prioritisation of public order at all costs, even to the extent of appeasing the mob. The police are quick to act against everyday British people, but will kneel for Black Lives Matter and stand idle as pro-Palestine protesters chant genocidal slogans. There is a growing perception of two-tier policing, which is not just a perception. The police will be instructed to intervene. Self-appointed protest conspiracies&nbsp; such as Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion will be met with extreme prejudice.We take the view police authorities are now too big and must be broken up. We will restore real community policing by rebuilding local police stations and detention facilities. We will ensure police work a regular beat, and that they drilled in the value of community connections.As regards the London Met, we will dismantle it and establish four separate commands answerable directly to the boroughs. Mayoral oversight has proven divisive and useless.&nbsp;We will then establish a London wide armed force, similar to the French Gendarmerie which will perform armed response duties, counter-terror operations and riot control. This force will be directly answerable to the Prime Minister.As regards “woke” policing, Chief Constables will be appointed by a policing committee in a two stage process, according to strict criteria. The committee will be composed of members of the public and selection proceedings will be streamed online with open comments.Police officers will submit to a bi-annual fitness test which they must pass. Officers incapable of passing a robust literacy and language skills test will be dismissed. Police officers and police vehicles will display no political symbols or badges, including rainbow flags (with the exception of poppies).Headcount and salaries will improve, but senior pay will be capped, except for high achievers, which will be decided on an individual basis by the local authorities they report to. Police and Crime Commissioners are useless. They will be scrapped in favour of community review boards comprised of magistrates and members of the public on a jury service basis.In order to make cities liveable spaces, police will be instructed to tackle vagrancy and will work closely with the border force to remove illegal immigrants. The first order of business will be to build three new super-prisons. The priority will be placed on public safety and punishment. Zero tolerance for violent crime will mean zero tolerance.The Party supports police officers having powers to stop and search all suspects if they have reasonable grounds to think they are carrying drugs, a weapon, stolen property, items used in connection with theft or to use to commit criminal damage.The Party will reverse the decision taken in 2013 by David Cameron’s Coalition Government which introduced direct entry to the senior ranks of policing, thus ending 180 years of tradition, which holds that all recruits to the police start their careers as constables.&nbsp;The Party will review and audit the actions and policies of all chief constables and issue new requirements, reflected in this manifesto, that must be adhered to..... This is just a preamble, and I'm sure I've left some important things out. Feel free to add your views.&nbsp;<a href="https://x.com/FUDdaily/status/1812412808950124662" data-mce-href="https://x.com/FUDdaily/status/1812412808950124662">https://x.com/FUDdaily/status/1812412808950124662</a>14JUL24 #NVManifesto

Minding how we go...

Chris Martz spells it out. He doesn't beat about the bush. He is ready on X with arguments and copious data if you need convincing... "...Under “Net Zero” emission policies, the “green” energy platform forces you to:• Pay more for an EV that performs worse than an ICE, especially in cold weather or on long-distance trips.• Pay more for less efficient energy and be given a monthly allowance for heating and cooling.• Adhere to a diet you don’t want to and eat lab-grown “meat” injected with who knows what chemicals.• Confined to a “15-minute city” and are told how often and whereabout you may travel.• Make all financial transactions digital such that governments will track your appliance purchases and carbon dioxide emissions per purchase. If you go over your monthly limit, they shut your card off. It’s the “carbon credit” system.And, all this would make zero difference in the weather you experience on a day-to-day basis, and it’d have no impact on global mean temperature by 2100. But, it would bankrupt you and force us to live under a police state which suppresses individual liberties.The “green” agenda is a scam. There are no if’s or but’s about it. The intentions of those pushing this ideology are clear, and they rely on the gullible masses to just go along with it.They do not like people standing in their way, especially youth like myself. That’s why they are desperate to shut us down.https://x.com/ChrisMartzWX/status/1811493304736821371

The WOTE.uk Federation 2025

Blog: the Revolution starts here...

Starter for an agricultural policy

You could not make it up...

A very close shave. .

sanity in energy policy

Minding how we go...

Net zero for beginners