Should I vote Labour Mark 11

Rosesarered, I need my bed ? Be great to win Gower back though

Chewbacca
ab sounds like you need hot chocolate and buttered toast!

I am back, been tramping around Gower , cold and wet and fed up. Too old for this now , will not mention names I heard party leaders called today .

Labour lost Gower at last election by 24 votes , after holding it since 1906,

How about references to all political party leaders are with their correct names. You know, like really radical, adult? Grown up? Non petty? Non childish and silly? Like a bunch of school kids! Nah, nah!

Why should they Chewbacca? It is a name not a fact to be proved. How about - radical I know - you look for yourself?

I've never heard Theresa May being referred to as "Mayhem" or "Maybot " apart from on these threads, and by Durham. Please could anyone link me to any national, or international, press that does?

No they don't. Only you and your cronies.

This is why you should vote Labour.
They stand up for workers rights; they don't just pretend to, then change when they get in power.

labourlist.org/2017/05/yvette-cooper-the-party-of-workers-rights-just-look-at-the-theresa-mays-record/

When May was standing for election as leader last year she promised that there would be workers on boards of every business.
When she met the CBI last November, she told them that she didn't mean it.
Now she is saying she is going to put workers on boards again.

No wonder people call her Mayhem.

They rotate crops round here, dj. I know because that vile bright yellow oilseed rape appears in different fields(in rotation) each year

I don't know how they are attempting to reverse soil degradation in my home county (Essex) where they cheerfully grubbed out all the hedges in the 1960s, to make fields more efficient/economic to plough, and the light, sandy topsoil was promptly blown away..

Our soils are in crisis, in the last 50 years around a third of the world’s arable land has been lost as a result of soil degradation. But organic techniques such as crop rotation are helping address the problem by fixing nitrogen into the soil and improving fertility. Innovative techniques are essential now more than ever to make sure farming maintains its productivity.

Soil Association.

From an elderly website about EU farm subsidy

Following the recent mid term review (2005), set-aside became part of the new Single Farm Payment with a rate of 8%. However in 2008 the rate was set at 0% - it is thought that the set-aside measure will be abolished sometime in the future.

www.ecifm.rdg.ac.uk/setaside.htm

Crop rotation is/was standard farming practice, dj. Quite different from set aside. It used to include a period when the fields were left fallow for a season (usually grazed by livestock to manure the land) but I don't think it would today. In fact, I think it went out of favour in the early 19th C. Turnip Townsend and all that! ('O' Level history)

Professor Richard Murphy's take on the Labour Manifesto, with an interesting comment on housing from Simon Cohen

www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2017/05/15/on-labours-missing-big-idea-which-i-hope-is-on-its-way/

I don't think that set aside is party of the subsidy any longer. It was all changed a few years ago. Though I haven't checked this.

Are you talking about crop rotation, used by organic farmers in order not to deplete the land?

X posts

And the subsidies were paid too for leaving land uncultivated for environmental purposes.

So - if this set-aside land was used for millions of houses and all the associated infrastructure, what damage would that do to the environment?

And it's going to cost us so much we won't be able to afford to continue to subsidise them!

I think a lot of just about managing small farmers (farmers of small farms, not small in stature) will give up.

And what will happen to the environmental protection in the bonfire of regulations we're promised?

But - we're coming out of the EU!

(perhaps subsidised as foreign farmers are)

Err, farmers are subsidised, Jalima, by the EU.

As far as I'm aware the conditions of the subsidy are that they keep their land in good heart and don't cause environmental damage with their farming practices.

Even with the subsidy many farmers struggle, mainly because we expect cheap food, an expectation encouraged by the supermarkets.

I don't know about the three crop thing; I saw it mentioned during the Brexit debate, both asserted to be restricting farmers and the assertion refuted. Can't recall details though.

Nice to see a bit of levity on a political thread! Brightened my day no end! to all.

I agree Niggly ?

Make farmers stop farming ? Closer to state controlled country is good? What else, close down small business if their profits do not reach an expected level ?

So you honestly think, Ana, that the Labour Party has someone tucked away in a back room dutifully photoshopping all pictures of Corbyn's election rallies?

You mean to say that they don't??

oh, then again, perhaps you're right MaizieD!

annie, they made me smile too! As you say the threads do get a bit heavy and it is nice to lighten up very occasionally!!

Why not stop farming in some areas, where it's not profitable and the land could be put to another purpose?
Probably some of it could be sold off for housing, yes, but my view is that we should be producing more home-grown food rather than importing more as the population grows. Farmers should be paid a price (perhaps subsidised as foreign farmers are) which enables them to make a profit, not a loss, employ workers who could rent this low-cost housing which has been built on a field which is not good for agriculture and we become more self-sufficient.

Crops can be grown on set-aside land at present as long as they are not food crops.

Pause for thought........ Can you think of examples in other industries in the UK where owners of a resource are paid either not to use the resource, or to manage it in a specific manner?

Rather than import as we now do we may need to produce more food in the UK.