Datatek
Well-Known Member
Right on
The free trade area comprising the Scandanavian countries and the Commonwealth that preceeded the EU was a much better idea, but it has allowed me to abandon the sinking ship that is the UK and live in France.
Right on
The free trade area comprising the Scandanavian countries and the Commonwealth that preceeded the EU was a much better idea, but it has allowed me to abandon the sinking ship that is the UK and live in France.
Right on
It is and always has been a French benevolent fund. Don't know off hand how many countries are in it now, twenty odd i would think. But a fifth of the agricultural budget paid into by all the countries is spent in one country, France.
Just so that some froggy farmer can totally unprofitably, make twenty cheeses a year from his flock of thrity goats. His living costs being paid for by EU grants.
Datatek
Well-Known Member
Whats a thrity goat
I agree, but UK farmers have done pretty well out of it too according to my farming mate, I'm thinking of set aside in particular.
Whats a thrity goat
Yeah you are correct, all these poor hill farmers struggling to make ends meet rounding their sheep up with £8,000.00 quads and £50,000.00 tractors does get you thinking. Pity there's not a common old retired mechanics fund, that's what i say. There was a programme on long ago about a French farmer who was reputedly paid £40,000.00 a year not to grow Wheat. Think when the film crew visited him he had a cow and a few goats and his farm was a small holding on the side of an hill. So there was a bit of a fiddle going on there one would suspect. Then there was the butter and meat mountains were they decided instead of reducing the prices to us who had paid the farmers to create the surplus. They sold it to the Russians for 3 or 4 pence a pound. Bloody crazy.
kooky_guy
Well-Known Member
We have friends who are sheep farmers in Wales and I think they would very much disagree with that! They certainly aren't rich by any standards and the amount of sheer hard work involved is just incredible.
Set aside subsidies in the UK were scrapped ages ago too, I thought.
To be honest don't know much about it. And i am sure your friends work very hard. Farming is not a job i would like to do. But around here it is not uncommon to see farmers with pretty small farms driving around in their latest new tractor or Range Rover. Either some sorts of farming are VERY profitable or they know which forms to fill in. That is all i can say.
