A load of politics

[gangsta se]

A little boy goes to his dad and asks, "What is Politics?"
Dad says, "Well son, let me try to explain it this way:
I am the head of the family, so call me The "Prime Minister"
Your mother is the administrator of the money, so we call her the Government.
We are here to take care of your needs, so we will call you the People.
The nanny, we will consider her the Working Class.
And your baby brother, we will call him the Future.
Now think about that and see if it makes sense."
So the little boy goes off to bed thinking about what Dad has said.
Later that night, he hears his baby brother crying, so he
gets up to check on him. He finds that the baby has severely soiled
his nappy. So the little boy goes to his parent's room and finds his
mother sound asleep. Not wanting to wake her, he goes to the nanny's
room. Finding the door locked, he peeks in the keyhole and sees his
father in bed with the nanny. He gives up and goes back to bed.
The next morning, the little boy say's to his father, "Dad,
I think I understand the concept of politics now."
The father says, "Good, son, tell me in your own words what
you think politics is all about."
The little boy replies, the Prime Minister" is screwing the Working
Class while the Government is sound asleep. The People are being
ignored and the Future is in deep shit.":bannana:

 

[gangsta se]

sorry i was bored::))

 

[glojo]

Definitely sums up our Deputy Prime Minister. He now states he is in charge of 'Domestic Affairs' and intends having a hands on approach!! Les Dawson could not have wrote a better script.

John

 

[nigel cross]

Sounds like he's telling the truth for a change.:bannana: :bannana:

 

[glojo]

Sounds like he's telling the truth for a change.:bannana: :bannana:

The really funny thing was that it was the answer to a question at Deputy Prime Ministers Questions. MP's were all laughing at the reply but he just kept talking without realising what he said. Just goes to show, he can read, or think. Someone must have typed out certain replies to certain types of questions. John, will be John

John but not the 'John'

 

[Satch]

If you think Prescott and his 132k per annum for doing SFA apart from prop up Tony was bad, read this. OK it is Boris at it again but is absolutely true.


Rural Payments Agency

Acres and acres of madness - and they call this reform

At the bottom of the garden we have a paddock, and on evenings like this I can think of no lovelier place on earth.
The buds have budded. The trees are in leaf. The lambs are making a racket. The rabbits show a boldness that verges on insolence.
Everywhere I look I see nature transpiring at every pore with the green joy of photosynthesis. I see the hawthorn blossom, rolling for miles in great gunsmoke clouds.
I see the shade starting to lengthen from the old oak, and the lovely rickety fence, on which I sometimes balance champagne bottles and shoot them off with an airgun, and I lie down on the springy grass and look up at the pale moon in the blue sky and I breathe a sigh of deep and unchallengeable contentment.
Sometimes, you know, I just can't believe my luck. Because it turns out that I am not only the possessor of a magnificent paddock. I am a farmer. Yes, folks, I am a Tibullan agricola.
I am Marie-Antoinette. I have managed to hitch my wagon to the gravy train of the CAP and clamp my jaws about the hind teat of Defra.
By virtue of possessing 0.3 hectares of grass, excluding the dilapidated outside privy, I am apparently eligible for subsidy!


You think I am mad; but read the 98-page booklet provided by the Rural Payments Agency and you will find your lungs tightening and your lips blibbering into a pant-hoot of pure amazement at the insanity of our masters.
The government - Brussels - the taxpayer - whoever - is seriously going to pay me 10 euros a year merely for being the owner of this blissful patch of grass and rabbits. I don't have to farm it, in any meaningful sense.
I don't even have to graze a pony, though I could. I can use it for clay pigeons. I can use it for hot-air ballooning, it says here in the pamphlet.
I can organise motocross events or nature trails across the paddock. Provided I don't do it for more than 28 days a year, I can even have car-boot sales.
I can invite Billy Smart's circus to pitch their big top in the paddock, or I can let it out as a location for television.

Year after year, the cheque will come in from Brussels via Defra, 10 princely euros, as a thank you to me and my family for doing - well, for doing absolutely nothing except luxuriating in the existence of this paddock.
Weeping with laughter, I decide to ring the Rural Payments Agency to find out if I can possibly have read this right.

Yes, they say, it sounds like you qualify. Yes, they say, there are plenty of people who have been given subsidy entitlements for having pony paddocks, just like the one you describe. Yes, it is OK to mow it. Yes, it is acceptable to use the land for having barbecues, playing rounders or nude sunbathing. Yes, says the Rural Payments Agency, you can have a pony paddock and attract the subsidy, without going to the trouble of having a pony. Yes, says the agency (now with a tremor of exhaustion in its voice), you are right in thinking that you are getting the money for nothing at all except keeping the land in "good environmental condition".

Fantastic! I say. Where do I send the form? And it is only then, of course, that I discover the catch.

My paddock qualifies in every respect. This beautiful, if tiny, corner of Oxfordshire is entitled to all the dignity that goes with being a CAP-funded estate - except that, like a complete fool, I missed the deadline, in May 2005, for registering my claim.

Through sheer stupidity, I failed to grasp that last year the government changed the basis on which agricultural subsidy is to be paid.
Under the reforms of the CAP, farmers are no longer rewarded for growing barley or rearing suckler cows. It is the end of paying Greeks for growing acres of fictitious olives.

Under the brilliant new single farm payment, the Greeks and the rest of us are to be rewarded simply for having grown acres of fictitious olives in the past.

You no longer need even to pretend to grow the olives; you simply have to show that you have title to the land and that you are keeping it in good nick, olives or no olives; and that is why the pony paddocks of England are now accompanied by EU subsidy.

If I missed the deadline, there were thousands of paddock-owners who were quicker off the mark, who whanged those forms into the Rural Payments Agency - and who caused the monumental chaos with which you will be familiar.

Across Britain there are farming families who have been driven deep into debt, and farmers who have contemplated suicide, because of the government's disastrous failure to send out the single farm payments.
They were told they could expect the payment in December; then it was February; then March; and when, by mid-March, Margaret Beckett was forced to come to the Commons and apologise, it was obvious that the system was in meltdown.

And the reason it was in meltdown was at least partly because no one had predicted that the number of subsidy claimants would rise - from 80,000 to 120,000 - as the paddock-owners, the raspberry-growers, the filbert-growers and the possessors of 0.3-hectare marrow patches piled in to register their land.

And, of course, there will be some optimists who point out that the expense can't be overwhelming, not at 10 euros a paddock. But if you look at the Rural Payments Agency booklet, you will see how ever more of our countryside is now being sucked into a bureaucratic vortex of madness.

If you claim a subsidy for your orchard (as you may), you have to prove that your trees are 10 metres apart and that the trunks are one metre in circumference; and if you have more than 50 trees a hectare, you've got to prove to the inspector that the bases of the trees have previously been nibbled by sheep.

You can grow cucumbers, cabbages and cauliflowers, but not strawberries or mint! Think of the new legions of bureaucrats being created, who will have to check whether or not you are running your subsidised nudist colony for more than 28 days.

Forty thousand new dependants have been created! Untold acres are now under new and pointless subsidy! And they call this reform? No wonder Margaret Beckett was promoted

 

[Ashley]

I can tell you a few stories Satch.

Meet my MP, we have so much in common.

• A mixture of for and against introducing a smoking ban.

My views are on here

• Very strongly for the reduction of parliamentary scrutiny.

What a good idea at a time you are taking away my liberty you are adding to yours, good man.

• Very strongly for introducing ID cards.

I've had words with Mr Hutton about this.

• Very strongly for introducing foundation hospitals.

I think I may start referring to him as Mr Gummidge

• Very strongly for introducing student top-up fees.

Just what we need as jobs get more skilled based.

• Very strongly for Labour's anti-terrorism laws.

I have not got time to go here.

• Very strongly for the Iraq war.

I wonder if he could take the time to explain to familes the world over why.

• Very strongly for the fox hunting ban.

Eh hello Mr Gummidge

• Quite strongly for equal gay rights.

I have always said he was bent.

John Hutton MP

 

[glojo]

Rural Payments Agency

Acres and acres of madness - and they call this reform

Hi Satch,
I am one of these sad people that actually listen to Parliamentary Select Committee hearings. There has been an enquiry into the huge amounts being paid out and there have been hundreds of claims for this grant which when auditors checked the odd claim form they were shocked to discover some of the locations were actually miles out to sea and these alleged field were sometimes hundreds of acre's in size!!

Unbelievable , it transpires that the claims were very rarely checked, and when a claimant was caught they merely apologised for getting the location wrong!! The government agency claimed that it was difficult to actually give a precise measurement or location for fields and generally accepted lat, long fixes which were very rarely checked!!

John the sad