Benn Was Against the CAP Before He Was in Favour of the CAP
Hilary Benn, like his father Tony, makes a strong claim to moral authority. His years as Secretary of State for International Development saw him campaign against the inequities that make life difficult for the developing world. Chief among those inequities is the functioning of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). In 2006 Benn railed against the farm subsidy regime:
Hilary Benn is now at DEFRA. His tune has changed as well, now the developing world's small farm exporters are the competitive enemy and he is leading the British effort to ensure that there is no limit to the subsidies that the biggest landowners in Britain claim. The European Commission proposed to redistribute subsidy money away from farmers receiving more than €300,000 a year. DEFRA opposes even this sensible modest suggestion.
Hilary told the NFU conference this week that "We're alive to some of your concerns about limiting higher levels of payments. We share them."
Hilary's father Tony, the second Viscount Stansgate, has now retired to the family seat, Stansgate Abbey Farm on the Essex coast. From this satellite picture it appears to be a working farm. Guido wonders if the family farm benefits from CAP subsidies?
“Through the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), two fifths of the EU budget goes on subsidies and support to Europe’s farmers who represent 5% of Europe’s population, and produce less than 2% of Europe’s output. Most is not spent in the poorer parts of Europe where it is needed. Most goes to the biggest farming companies and landowners, not small farmers.”
Hilary Benn is now at DEFRA. His tune has changed as well, now the developing world's small farm exporters are the competitive enemy and he is leading the British effort to ensure that there is no limit to the subsidies that the biggest landowners in Britain claim. The European Commission proposed to redistribute subsidy money away from farmers receiving more than €300,000 a year. DEFRA opposes even this sensible modest suggestion.Hilary told the NFU conference this week that "We're alive to some of your concerns about limiting higher levels of payments. We share them."
Hilary's father Tony, the second Viscount Stansgate, has now retired to the family seat, Stansgate Abbey Farm on the Essex coast. From this satellite picture it appears to be a working farm. Guido wonders if the family farm benefits from CAP subsidies?
Hat-tip : CAP Health Check
34 comments:
looks like theres some set aside , tax efficient woodland and pasture , hope hes not grown any of the secret GM trials .
ooohhh arr ooooohhh arrr
The Stansgate are archetypal UK leftists.
It is not the cynicism or greed that grates most.
It is the sanctimony.
Sownd lyke...'e bee..er bit of an ole...combinarvester.
Ooaah boggarts!
All Tony Benn did was give up his title. He did not get rid of his wealth and lifestyle. If he was a true socialist he would have lived the life of the average working man, giving his wealth away to improve the lot of others. He is just a con man as all socialists are.
Looks like it also benefits from sea defences and land drainage, another expensive folly.
I think we should volunteer his farm to be part of the "managed retreat" on the Essex coast and blow up the defences. With any luck he'll be cut off by the tides and sink into the swamp, never to be seen again.
I remember walking round that shore. All the way along, the landowners allow pedestrian access -- except where you go past Fortress Benn. There you have to get down into the mud, assuming the tide's out. Otherwise you must swim.
Not very socialist, is it?
I spy weapons of mass destruction-WMD below right of caption Stanhope Road.
Parasites the lot of them. Benn was a parasite on the taxpayers arse all his life as a leftie champagne socialist. Benn junior is a parasite on my arse as a crappy minister.
Now Benn junior junior (Emily) is also bidding to become the youngest ever MP and lifetime parasite at Shoreham and West Worthing.
There's nothing worse that a rich socialist both lecturing the poor about how they should live their lives and drawing a large salary and expenses at my expense.
Is that a croquet lawn?
Essex Lad, yep being the true socialists that they are, you would think that the Wedgewood-Benns would continue the tradition of free access that the local Blackwater wildfowlers enjoy along that coast. Sadly not, hence their unpopularity locally.
Whether Wedgie gets a Wedge for his farm or not is available under the Freedom of Information Act. They used to publish them all on the Rural Payments Agency website.
off Benn buton Europe have you seen in the Torygraph that the EU have completed a report into MEP exspenses but yoy have to be on the committee to sse it, it's being kept in a locked room with restricted access and you have to sign a non disclosure agreement before you're allowed near it
We all knew that MEP's put our lot to shame but this must be more entire body in the trough not just snouts. Can you now increase the number of pigs on the pigs in shit chart
ELECTORAL COMMISSION IN ANOTHER COVER UP!
http://www.siol-nan-gaidheal.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5030
If Tony Benn has etired I hope there will be no more embarassing appearances on Michael Moore films. Everybody cringed when he came on.
I can't believe the EU is still getting away with the CAP. Even arch-Europhiles change the subject when you bring it up. The words "better off out" are sounding better by the day ...
Speaking of barmpot clapped out socialists, I see that there is an EDM in the Commons praising castro for the joys he has brought to Cuba.
Perhaps you could publish the roll call of dishonour?
People jump into shark infested seas to escape the leftist hellhole, and STILL Labour MPs delude themselves about the nature of Castro.
Hmmm... What will these MPs be when they grow up?
I wonder if these tax reliefs still apply to farm land?
There are two principal reliefs from inheritance tax, namely Agricultural Property Relief and Business Property Relief. Both of these reliefs, subject to certain ownership conditions, operate by reducing the value of qualifying assets liable to inheritance tax.
The reductions are as follows:
100% for the agricultural value of farmland, including farmland under certain tenancies which commenced after 31 August 1995
50% for the agricultural value of most other tenanted agricultural land
100% for interests in business assets owned by a sole trader or by a partnership and shares in private companies carrying on a business
50% for land, buildings and certain other assets used in a farming partnership or company, but owned personally (and not otherwise covered by agricultural property relief).
The effect of these reliefs is to remove much farmland from the charge to inheritance tax.
Hilary Benn has the maddest eyebrows in politics. Chez lola we rush to laugh at them when he comes on the telybox.
Both he and his dad are hypocritical and clueless.
In re the CAP - it's no good doing fiddling with it, it'll just make it worse. It has to be scrapped. But there you up against the French....
8:55 AM
well spotted, more like weapons of self-destruction, i think...
WMD = Wedgie's Mountain of Dosh
Words like hypocrite really do fail to deliver the opprobium that one wants to dump on the little shit.
But for once, I agree with Hillary. We want every last penny of CAP we can get, afterall we're bloody well financing the EU.
As for the farm, does boy wonder have an interest? has he declared? i suspect that he has left himself exposed as i suspect that the farm is in trust and Hillary gets a cut.
Which also begs the question as to how a socialist can own such assets. A murderous kleptocratic apparatchik`yes, manofthepeoplepipesmoking Tony shurely not.
Yes they do, which is why land prices have rocketed over the past five years.
Being 'in the industry', I understand the reasons for the tax breaks, too: If you are a farmer, then your farm is your business. It'd be pretty devastating if everytime a generation retired, the next had to pay huge amounts of IHT.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=515178&in_page_id=1770
Of course we remember reading these - don't we?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/02/16/eaflood116.xml
16th Feb 2008
"Hilary Benn in new row over flood defences
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/02/09/eapath109.xml
9th Feb 2008
"Benn under fire over 'private' patch of Essex"
http://farmsubsidy.org/recx/unitedkingdom/113452/MR%20AW%20BENN
Data obtained by farmsubsidy.org reveals farm subsidy payments to MR AW BENN totalling GBP £122 355 (€195 352) over all years.
UNITED KINGDOM
The government has refused to release any address information for MR AW BENN.
"People jump into shark infested seas to escape the leftist hellhole" - steady on! We're only talking about a footpath.
If Mr Backwoodsman checks he will discover that there is no second 'E' in Wedgwood
One had the pleasure to work with a cousin of the noble second viscount back in the days of the Wilson Government* (*for want of a better word.) One's colleague was most forthright in his opinions on his famous relative, claiming that the Great Man of the People followed his illustrious father's tradition of treating the humble peasants on the family demesne like shit. One didn't take the words of a dedicated quaffer at some of the Square Mile's most salubrious watering holes lightly. Of the squatter on the green benches, intelligence is scarce, but one has no reason to believe that family custom will be abandoned. To think that there is yet another generation of these parasites waiting in the wings is not a pleasant prospect.
No problemos mate, coz I wunt want im near my private patch neither
Little Black Sambo said...- steady on! We're only talking about a footpath.
Laughed and Laughed.
The EU is a cesspit of lies...England is better off out and getting back monies drained in Brussels to people who work 20 hours a week and do f*** all. Regards
I am one of a rare breed, an actual Eurocrat of UK nationality. I work a 45-55 hour week, and receive a crap salary (around the same as the UK civil service). I'm not moaning about my terms of employment - I could always get another job - but I do find it hilarious that people think we are fat cats/lazy tossers.
and btw 85% of EU money is spent by member states not brussels.
Anon @ 2:40 PM said:
"I could always get another job - but I do find it hilarious that people think we are fat cats/lazy tossers."
If you aren't lazy, what are you doing trolling around here at 2:40 PM on a Thursday afternoon?
Lazy tosser.
Word verification: turdish!!
Nice to see that the Socialist Wedgie-Benns are keeping the riffraff out!
"Get orf my land, brother"
conchis said...
Anon @ 2:40 PM said:
"If you aren't lazy, what are you doing trolling around here at 2:40 PM on a Thursday afternoon?"
Ever heard of annual leave?
All Property is theft!
Where is Gary Elsby when you need him to poke the landed gentry ?
His dad was exactly the same. In favour of nuclear power when a minister responsible for it, then as soon as he was sacked, he was as anti-nuclear power as if he had always been so!
He tried to brazen his way out of it, but was for ever exposed as a time-serving, vile money-grubbing Champagne Socialist.
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