General election 2020 (7 Viewers)

oh i know, i just think it's kinda funny that the local authorities have to cut hedges belonging to landowners if landowners aren't doing it.
Yeah - hedges are a sore point with me which is why I mentioned it.
The hedge cutters worked by tractor PTO really hack the hedges and roads are destroyed afterwards for a fortnight with thorns and other debris.
Also a lot of road side trees were brutally trimmed or cut down completely over last 18 months here.
Never saw this happening so much before. Little attempt to do the job properly.
The road surface where I lived in the 90's is six inches higher now but it's not justifiable to spend much on backroads.

Farming is strange in that they have a lot of assets but low income and big debts. It's going to take a lot of investment to get farming sustainable here.
Food is so cheap we don't value it properly.
 
It's hard to know where the responsibility falls for hedges etc. There's a guy who comes with a mower from the council around here regularly to mow the grass at the corners of the roads, it's a constant battle to stop him mowing every wild plant in sight - Mrs. egg_ goes mad when he cuts down the orchids
 
Yeah but with tax, people with more money pay for people with less money, that's the social contract we all accept.
In ireland, which has sea on one side and two of the largest econmies on earth on the other side, it does tend to look like the east pays for the west. If great britain was equidistant to the south as it is east, cork would be paying for louth to survive. It's just financial geography with a hangover from boats.
 
Just look to Texas for what happens when you think you're too good to connect to the national grid.

Dublin "pays" for the rest of Ireland, that's fine. You don't like it, end capitalism, sure I'm all for it.
 
Yeah but with tax, people with more money pay for people with less money, that's the social contract we all accept.
oh, i know i'm like a stuck record on this, but it's the cohort who want to live on half an acre or acre in the middle of nowhere and then complain about lack of services which gets on my wick.
i have a colleague who moved from clondalkin to south of gorey and wants us to have sympathy for his 180km round trip to work. he may have saved himself a bit on property tax but he's costing the taxpayer - and environment - more so he can have his acre of lawn and ride on lawnmower.

actually, i think my attitude stems from a dislike of lawns. fuck lawns.
 
oh, i know i'm like a stuck record on this, but it's the cohort who want to live on half an acre or acre in the middle of nowhere and then complain about lack of services which gets on my wick.
i have a colleague who moved from clondalkin to south of gorey and wants us to have sympathy for his 180km round trip to work. he may have saved himself a bit on property tax but he's costing the taxpayer - and environment - more so he can have his acre of lawn and ride on lawnmower.

actually, i think my attitude stems from a dislike of lawns. fuck lawns.

If FFG succeed in starting a urban/rural tax fight to take the heat off them, you can guarantee these folks will think they are urban.

I'm not a fan of the mcMansion myself - I'm more calling out this political dodge at it's earliest stage.
 
oh, i know i'm like a stuck record on this, but it's the cohort who want to live on half an acre or acre in the middle of nowhere and then complain about lack of services which gets on my wick.
i have a colleague who moved from clondalkin to south of gorey and wants us to have sympathy for his 180km round trip to work. he may have saved himself a bit on property tax but he's costing the taxpayer - and environment - more so he can have his acre of lawn and ride on lawnmower.

actually, i think my attitude stems from a dislike of lawns. fuck lawns.

he shoulda moved to Portlaoise - great train and bus service there into Dublin.
I once got a train from there to Heuston in 35 minutes
 
Farming is strange in that they have a lot of assets but low income and big debts. It's going to take a lot of investment to get farming sustainable here.

Explain to me how this is incorrect:

- there's a few very large entities (eg Greencore) who scoop up very large subsidies, and there's a number of small farmers who also receive subsidies.

- The subsidies are scaled on things such as head of cattle etc, meaning the more you have the more you get.

I guess the blindingly obvious solution is not scale subsidies on things like head of cattle. You subsidize each farmer an amount, essentially a living wage. That farmer could potentially own half of fucking Limerick, but they do not get subsidized any more than the farmer that owns a couple of acres. The person gets subsidized, not the area of land.

The total amount of subsidies remains the same, it's divided by the same number of people, but each person gets the same subsidy. That means that almost every farmer gets a very large increase in subsidy, and a few massive farms get much less.

Then massive farms (which are in reality look like vehicles for a company to gather subsidies at scale) either are profitable (they likely won't be because they are just subsidy gathering devices), or get broken up into smaller holdings. At that point a new farmer comes into the system, and receives the standard farmer subsidy.

Factors like children can be taken into account. For example, if the farmer has two children, both of whom work on the farm, those two individuals would qualify for some kind of subsidy too, not the same as the main farmer, but sufficient to be a living wage, until they become the main farmer at some point.
 
Explain to me how this is incorrect:

- there's a few very large entities (eg Greencore) who scoop up very large subsidies, and there's a number of small farmers who also receive subsidies.

- The subsidies are scaled on things such as head of cattle etc, meaning the more you have the more you get.

I guess the blindingly obvious solution is not scale subsidies on things like head of cattle. You subsidize each farmer an amount, essentially a living wage. That farmer could potentially own half of fucking Limerick, but they do not get subsidized any more than the farmer that owns a couple of acres. The person gets subsidized, not the area of land.

The total amount of subsidies remains the same, it's divided by the same number of people, but each person gets the same subsidy. That means that almost every farmer gets a very large increase in subsidy, and a few massive farms get much less.

Then massive farms (which are in reality look like vehicles for a company to gather subsidies at scale) either are profitable (they likely won't be because they are just subsidy gathering devices), or get broken up into smaller holdings. At that point a new farmer comes into the system, and receives the standard farmer subsidy.

Factors like children can be taken into account. For example, if the farmer has two children, both of whom work on the farm, those two individuals would qualify for some kind of subsidy too, not the same as the main farmer, but sufficient to be a living wage, until they become the main farmer at some point.
I can't dispute any of this - you know far more than I do.
Just two points-
My father was a farm manager for decades. A lot of folks working on farms are hired hands who own nothing.

We need get away from meat and dairy farming as quickly as we can transition from it and that will not be easy to convince a lot of people I know
 
I don't think you get subsidies based on number of livestock anymore, because that was a pretty strong incentive to overstock.
I thought that stopped along with the milk quota. I’m probably wrong, most of my information comes from 70 year old farmers that have had a few pints.
 
I don't think you get subsidies based on number of livestock anymore, because that was a pretty strong incentive to overstock.

I don't know all of the metrics they use, but I know for example there was 10 euro a ewe fairly recently. I'm more generally saying that the current subsidies are based on animal counts / land area / numbers of things owned.

My point is it should be the opposite way around, it should be per farmer (or in some way relative to the number of people farming the land - as @nuke terrorist noted)

If you are a mega farmer, and you own vast amounts of land, then you should be ok right? If your farming methods work, you should be able to sell your stuff and make ends meet. If you are not able to make ends meet, then you need to change something or scale back your operations. Like every other business on the planet.

As in, if you're making t-shirts, and you're rubbish at making t-shirts and you make a loss on every t-shirt you make, the state doesn't step in and say "here, listen, we all need t-shirts, we'll throw you a fiver for every shitty t-shirt you make".

I get the farming collapses the second you take subsidies out of the equation. That's fine. But subsidise the people doing the work, not the number of unprofitable outputs that people don't want.
 
I know for example there was 10 euro a ewe fairly recently
Wow, you're right - Sheep Welfare Scheme - Irish Farmers' Association

My Da was working for the department when they got rid of sheep headage payments back in the 80s or 90s, I guess they crept back in under a different name

flashback said:
I get the farming collapses the second you take subsidies out of the equation. That's fine. But subsidise the people doing the work, not the number of unprofitable outputs that people don't want
I kind of agree with subsidising the people rather than the land, but I wouldn't call what you're proposing "blindingly obvious", and you'll find very few people who'll agree that farming collapsing is "fine". A big part of the reason for subsidies is food security
 
Wow, you're right - Sheep Welfare Scheme - Irish Farmers' Association



I kind of agree with subsidising the people rather than the land, but I wouldn't call what you're proposing "blindingly obvious", and you'll find very few people who'll agree that farming collapsing is "fine". A big part of the reason for subsidies is food security
I only know that because a mate of mine was just applying for them.

Sorry, I didn't mean that collapsing farming is fine. I meant that farm subsidies as a thing are fine. I've no problem with the state paying farmers, and I accept the reality that if the state did not pay farmers the industry would collapse, and this would be bad.

Sorry... shitty english on my part.
 
Is it still the case that if you have "X" amount of sheep ( was told it was 6), you can call yourself a farmer and get different treatment from the welfare?
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Activity
So far there's no one here

21 Day Calendar

Mohammad Syfkhan 'I Am Kurdish' Dublin Album Launch
Bello Bar
1 Portobello Harbour, Saint Kevin's, Dublin, Ireland
Mohammad Syfkhan 'I Am Kurdish' Dublin Album Launch
Bello Bar
1 Portobello Harbour, Saint Kevin's, Dublin, Ireland
Bloody Head, Hubert Selby Jr Infants, Creepy Future - Dublin
Anseo
18 Camden Street Lower, Saint Kevin's, Dublin, Ireland

Support thumped.com

Support thumped.com and upgrade your account

Upgrade your account now to disable all ads... If we had any... Which we don't right now.

Upgrade now

Latest threads

Latest Activity

Loading…
Back
Top