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Jim
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Jan 30, 2016 01:48AM

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Now he's trying to soft soap the British public with the spin that this is a good deal.
Can't wait to see the reaction of Tory backbenchers.




Now he's trying to soft soap the British public with the spin that this is a good deal.
C..."
I saw a report 2 days ago suggesting that the total number of immigrants in the Uk that would be affected by the proposals Cameron had agreed to would be... 80,000. Hum. Not the Millions the Daily Mail like to suggest then.

The Guardian did a pretty full report on it
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2010...


Now he's trying to soft soap the British public with the spin that this is a ..."
That may be, but the negotiations have been a stage managed sham from day 1, and I doubt if the shires of England will appreciate the soft soap from Cameron.


Now he's trying to soft soap the British public with the spin that this is a ..."
Oh, and the DWP have just admitted that they class as a 'migrant family' a UK citizen with an overseas spouse. At least 10% of those families classed as 'migrants in receipt of in work benefits' come into this category!

The papers were saying that other EU nations were 'unhappy' with Britain's 'deal.'
They must think we were born yesterday. I can smell phony outrage from a mile away.

Now he's trying to soft soap the British public with the spin th..."
Don't get me started on the DWP. A shambolic department.



The prefect refused permission for the local groups/ Pegida March on Saturday so certain Calais groups (not Pegida) booked a meetiing room which was cancelled by at the last minute. The roads into Calais were road blocked and cars searched and turned round to prevent an assembly taking place. So only 200 or so assembled including some Pegida. 20 were arrested and 10, including the General who was actually dragged a short way (he wasn't resisting) just being jostled along by about 6 police, were kept in jail. 5 are appearing before the TGI at Boulogne. The ratio of damage / forces used/ arrests is enormous. The 'Berets' are mustering. Last night the migrants totally blocked the lorry access road into the port. No arrests as usual
There's taxi strikes in Paris again and Brittany farmers on the offensive thisd morning. I'm getting nervous because husband is booked to go there next week. I'm not going due to commitments here.
The papers and mainstream TV haven't covered it well either but social media is really stirring it up.


What about the CAP money? I was under the media influenced impression that British farmers loved the EU because of CAP. Or am I horribly wrong?



What about the CAP money? I was under the media influenced impression that British farmers loved the EU bec..."
The big danger from being outside the EU is that the UK government might then become the purchaser of choice of all the cheap stuff the EU wants to dump. This happened before we were in the EU, Harold Wilson's government brought in butter at a price so low the East Germans were buying it to burn in power stations
As a general rule that isn't going to happen now because apart from minor fluctuations (1 or 2 percent shifts) we don't have world surpluses. Just world shortages of money. So currently the price of milk has been driven down because various oil states are no longer buying because they can no longer afford to feed subsidised dairy products to their citizens.
when this happened with Wheat we had the Arab Spring


So the fear among farmers about leaving Europe is not that we cannot survive without the CAP,it's that politicians will revert to buying any cheap crap from around the world and we won't have a viable UK agriculture.
It's not fear of lack of EU, it's just that our muppets were irrelevant within the EU and that meant farming could survive.
So for farmers as citizens it is a case of balancing the survival of our democracy over the survival of agriculture. We know we cannot entrust our democracy to the EU, but we don't know whether we can entrust our agriculture to the UK.
Having looked at all three parties, none of them inspire, The Tories fired someone who did understand agriculture and I'm not sure Jeremy Corbyn even knows it exists. Putting a vegan in charge of agriculture who wants meat eaters treated like smokers isn't a good sign


The vegetarian revolution is needed basically to stop the planet from starving, but as Jim said, politicians don't actually understand agriculture

The vegetarian revolution is needed basically to stop the pl..."
Tell that to Cumbrians, don't grow a lot of cereal crops in much of Cumbria, and you wouldn't eat the bread we could grow, because we cannot grow bread making wheat
Also every time you use margarine, or soya, or drink fruit juice, or use sugar, or eat pine apple remember that if it wasn't for the livestock industry you'd have to find a use for all the byproducts which are currently turned into high quality protein by livestock.
Actually the least efficient use of ground is probably lettuce and similar vegetables.
It would be very difficult to have an interesting vegan diet produced without foodstuffs flown in from abroad (vegetarian would be more possible, but remember for every lb of cheese you eat, you ought to eat a lb of meat as well, because meat is a byproduct of cheese production :-)
Don't worry, I've had fifty years of this stuff :-)

say 'No' to the burger. And the Southern fried chicken.

say 'No' to the burger. And the Southern fried chicken."
But, as Jim points out, not using the producing animals of cheese, eggs and milk for meat will be less efficient. Prices for these items would soar, combined with huge costs for disposal at the end of life.

say 'No' to the burger. And the Southern fried chicken."
But you cannot have milk, cheese and eggs without meat. Take milk for example. To produce milk a cow has to have a calf every year. Fifty percent of the calves are male. At some point the only contribution they can make to the food chain is as meat.
When we look at US feedlots, they look obscene, but remember, the cattle fattened there are from US range cattle, grazing where no crops will grow (or are allowed to be grown because it will lead to soil blowing away.) Then look at this description of the feedlots, especially the rations fed
http://www.precisionnutrition.com/cat...
Livestock rations are formulated to use the maximum amount of waste products, with enough high quality ingredients to ensure that the rations are balanced
For example in the UK a lot of cattle protein comes from rapeseed, which is what is left after the oil has been pressed out. There is a shortage of interest amongst humans wanting to eat the stuff, but plenty of people use the oil
The burgers comment is interesting. Back in the 1970s I can remember a New Scientist article which lauded to the skies a great new advance in 'green' environmentally great food production. Basically cattle are ruminants, this means they can break down vegetable protein. Actually it doesn't, it means they have captive bacteria which can break down vegetable protein (no mammal can) and they then eat bacterial protein. Researchers have known for many years that to bacteria, urea is merely a source of protein-precursors. So if you feed urea to bacteria they make bacterial protein (actually 'single cell protein' is the fancy modern name for this sort of thing, and is a popular area of research for meat-replacement diets).
Hence you can include a proportion of urea in bovine diets (12% is possible if they need that much protein) and they thrive as well as if provided with high quality plant proteins.
So back in the 1970s this was the great breakthrough, would make food production far more sustainable and efficient, and this was part of the answer to save a starving world.
Same with burgers, sausage and similar, they're a hungry person's way of using everything. They're the thrift food, using all sorts of ingredients that are perfectly fine in themselves but which people are too squeamish to look in the face. Think Haggis as a classic example.
As technology got more efficient, and as we got greener and less wasteful, we managed to salvage even more to put into these thrift foods.
But actually we're a wealthy people and remarkably squeamish and don't want to know.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U4rZqCY...


On the subject of spuds, growing them is a hobby of mine, and all I can say is thank God for blight resistant breeds. The wetter climate these days is not helping the potato industry, or me!

But yes, a traditional Cumbrian diet would be much like the Scots diet, your carbohydrates from oat porridge with barley beer or spirit and to provide the variety. Potatoes are almost a novelty but they're still just carbohydrate (and less protein than the barley)
For protein you would have some peas and beans, but to get enough food grown you'd probably use them as a break crop for the cereals and much of your protein will come from mutton (the sheep you need for wool anyway) and beef

But yes, a traditional Cumbrian diet wo..."
We do have some good potato seeds up here, but there are a couple of Hungarian breeds that are equally good at stopping blight. Canny bunch those Hungarians.
On another note, Jim, If Scotland went independent, I'd happily roll down the border to include Cumbria - you're closer to us than London, but that's for the good folk of Cumbria to decide :)

North Cumbria looks to the North East and Newcastle, and South Cumbria looks to Lancashire/Manchester. If you tried swallowing either of those two areas the Scots would become a minority group within Scotland.
Mind you in a couple of years there might not even be a Cumbria. As an administrative area it doesn't work, it isn't a cohesive whole, and is the sort of entity that could only be created by a distant capital.


I'm not entirely sure, I've not met up with Carlisle friends for some months, partially because of the weather. But I know they got some lines back in production in December but it might be time before they're all back in production. Also stock may have been lost

Ughh"
Hes one of those men in public life who scare me with his too bright fixed starey eyes. It's a bit maniacal that look.


It's funny to see people who made a career out of being a Euro-Sceptic fall into line behind Cameron. I wonder how their local Conservative branch will react?
For me, this deal has been a theatrical sham from day one. The supposed burning of midnight oil that paints Cameron in a positive light, the plucky underdog standing up for Britain, and the so called 'interventions' from other EU members, is nothing more than an orchestrated PR move for Cameron's benefit.
They must think we were born yesterday.

Problem is, the sort of improvements to Europe that would convince people to drift from being skeptics to being in favour were never going to happen and were never even on the agenda because they are inimical to the whole concept of Europe as driven by the commission
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