I agree with BarryW,
Some subsidies are a curse and very unjust but again in this unjust and unbalanced country, if the subsidies below were stopped, it would be the poorest who would yet again bear the brunt.
Information below from Kevin Cahill, author of Who Owns Britain.
He states that 69% of the land here is owned by 0.6% of the population. It is this group that takes the major subsidies. According to the government's database, £Billions is shared between just 16,000 people or businesses. Some examples below.
Subsidies to the Captains of British enterprise and aristocrats.
The Duke of Devonshire gets £390,000,
The Duke of Buccleuch £405,000,
The Earl of Plymouth £560,000,
The Earl of Moray £770,000,
The Duke of Westminster £820,000.
The Vestey family takes £1.2m.
"You'll be pleased to hear that the previous owner of their Thurlow estate, Edmund Vestey, who died in 2008, managed his tax affairs so efficiently, that in one year his businesses paid just £10.
Asked to comment on his contribution to the public good, he explained: "We're all tax dodgers, aren't we?"
Matt Ridley, Chairman of Northern Rock, who helped precipitate the economic crisis that has impoverished so many. This champion of free market economics and his family received £205,000 from the taxpayer last year for owning their appropriately named Blagdon estate
Prince Bandar, the Saudi Arabian fixer at the centre of the Al-Yamamah corruption scandal, receives £270,000 a year for his Glympton estate in Oxfordshire.
It has already been decided that these levels of subsidies will remain safe until at least 2020
George Monbiot,
States.
"For the past year, while researching my book about Rewilding.
I've been puzzling over why these bodies fetishize degraded farmland ecosystems and are so reluctant to allow their estates to revert to nature. Now it seems obvious. To receive these subsidies, you must farm the land."
He goes on to say.
"As for the biggest beneficiary, of these subsidies, it is shrouded in mystery.
It is a company based in France called Syral UK Ltd. Its website describes it as a producer of industrial starch, alcohol and proteins, but says nothing about owning or farming any land. Yet it receives £18.7m from the taxpayer.
It has not yet answered my questions about how this has happened, but my guess is that the money might take the form of export subsidies: the kind of payments that have done so much to damage the livelihoods of poor farmers in the developing world."
Now the crunch.
Are these Government subsidies?
No.
They are EU, Common Agricultural Policy(CAP) subsidies, paid to the Big Farmers, who swallow €55bn (£47bn) a year, or 43% of the European budget.
Our Government has, in one respect, lobbied the European commission, so far unsuccessfully, for "a very substantial cut to the CAP budget".
Which, on the face of it, sounds sensible but hold the enthusiasm.
It has also demanded that the EC drop the only sensible proposal in the draft now being negotiated by member states:
Which is "that there should be a limit to the amount a landowner can receive."
Our government warns that capping the payments "would impede consolidation" of landholdings.
It seems that 0.6% of the population owning 69% of the land isn't inequitable enough.
"My New Year's Resolution, is to try and emulate Marek's level of chilled out, thoughtfulness and humour towards other forumites and not lose my decorum"
