Daily Mail on the topic of "They own land, give them money!"

Janet Street-Porter in The Daily Mail, is on good form:

The largest landowner in Scotland is a Danish billionaire who is busy returning his holdings in the remote Highlands to wilderness areas where you can rent beautifully restored crofters cottages and lodges for luxury breaks.

Other huge rewilding fans are the Goldsmith millionaires, Ben and Zac, pals of Carrie Johnson, who is the PR for millionaire Damian Aspinall's Foundation in Kent.

Aspinall owns Howletts Zoo (he prefers the term 'nature park') where the public can pay £20 to gawp at gorillas and cheetahs who are being reared to eventually return to Africa. Ben Goldsmith is a rewilding-mad financier who owns 300 acres in the West Country, and wants to return his estate to a 'species-rich scrubby wood', planning to introduce polecats and glow worms...

Ben holds a non-executive role as an advisor at Defra, giving him a good chance to bend the ear of government with his rewilding crusade. To be fair he hasn't taken a salary – then again he doesn't need to. Older brother Zac, a charming man but a failed Tory MP, now sits in the House of Lords as Baron Goldsmith of Richmond Park, personally appointed by Boris, holding the environment brief.

Zac and Ben are old pals of the Prime Minister- they all attended Eton. Last autumn the Prime Minister borrowed the Goldsmith's family house in Spain for a short holiday.

But inevitably, she lapses into Home-Owner-Ism:

... shouldn't the government do more to protect farmland and forestry by refusing to allow unrestricted housing development on rural sites? Instead, every small town in England is becoming surrounded by building sites churning out identikit estates of noddyland housing on land which once produced food.

"Every small town"? "surrounded"? Really? As to "Noddlyland", most people live in fairly non-descript housing (my house is fugly, if truth be told), I don't see why that's a problem. And they get far more benefit from their home than they would have done growing a bit of fruit and veg on the plot. I'm still waiting for the first Nimby activist to buy and demolish housing and sell the land back to a farmer.

But hey, she's got the general idea.

They own land! Give them money!

From the BBC:

Farmers and landowners in England could be paid to turn large areas of land into nature reserves, or to restore floodplains, under new government agriculture subsidies.

When the UK was part of the EU, farmers were given grants based on how much land they farmed. Following Brexit, the government has pledged to pay based on how farmers care for the environment.

But environmental groups say the new plans lack detail and may not deliver. In what the government describes as "radical plans", landowners and farmers will be allowed to bid for funding to turn vast areas of land - between 500 and 5,000 hectares - over to wildlife restoration, carbon sequestration, or flood prevention projects.

The underlying insanity is that the government is in charge and decides what people can or cannot do. There is no need to pay people to obey the law, that's how it works. If they want to have more woodlands, discourage farming within XX yards of a waterway, particularly steep slopes or flood plains or wherever the environmental benefits outweigh the value of food which can be grown, they can just pass a law saying "Thou shalt not...".

I don't think that policing this is particularly difficult. They can fly helicopters over it and take pictures. If anything looks suspect, go and have a look on the ground.

The most insane idea is having a cut-off of 500 hectares (1,200 acres), which is considerably larger than the average UK farm, i.e. only the top fraction of a per cent of UK landowners can qualify. As far as rewilding goes, every acre counts. Wildlife in the UK is hefted and each animal's 'territory' is usually quite small. They're not like elephants or buffaloes which travel hundreds of miles depending on the season.

The Daily Mash says it best:

"Environment secretary George Eustice said: “The agricultural role of the British government is to funnel money to landowners, and I promise you that will not change.”

Who benefits from the pensions tax breaks?

Somehow, we drifted off KLNs and started discussing the taxation of/subsidies to pension savings.

Me: "The bulk of the [tax breaks] superficially goes to higher rate taxpayers (who would save up for their old age anyway, with or without 'encouragement') but is actually largely siphoned off by the FS sector."

Lola: "... as I may have said before, you can now buy pension funds with costs capped at about 0.5% p.a. Actually the worse siphoning off of tax subsidies is in cash ISA's."

Agreed to the last bit. For some mad reason, people who can afford to save would rather have 0.6% interest 'tax-free' than 1% gross taxed at 40%. Basic rate taxpayers should really choose 1% gross taxed at 20% rather than 0.6% tax-free, but the numbers are so small, it doesn't really matter in practice.

By analogy, if they scrapped tax breaks for pension savings or ISAs and cut the headline income tax/NIC rates to match, the final outcome wouldn't be much different. The pay-as-you-go state pension is still the best way to go; it's cheap, reliable and effective on whatever measure. And for about a third of actual voters (pensioners are only one-quarter of the adult population, but they have the highest voter turnout), the state pension is pretty much the number one issue - pensioners vote for whichever party makes the most generous promises (it's not their money), and this is one thing in party manifestos that they stick to if they get elected.

To my first point, the total cost/value of tax breaks for pension savings is at least £40 billion a year (trawl HMRC stat's at your leisure). The ONS says that the total value of assets held in pension or annuity funds was £6,100 billion (in March 2018 - it might have gone up or down since then).

Charges of 0.5% seem fair enough, let's round that up to 0.75% for all the extra charges they sneak in - the cheekier ones, the hidden profits they make on paying out stingy annuities, the transfer fees etc. On that basis, the total charges are 0.75% x £6,100 billion = £46 billion.

I rest my case.

They own land! Give them money!

From The Sunday Telegraph:

Farmers could be paid to rewild river banks for beavers

LANDOWNERS could be paid to stop tending riverbanks on their property under government plans to help reintroduce beavers.

Farmers would be prevented from cultivating up to the river's edge, to encourage trees and shrubs to grow as part of a "nature recovery network" across the country. Ben Goldsmith, Defra's new Nature Champion, has been disussing the rewilding plan with his minister brother Lord Goldsmith for years...

Bloody hell.

I own a house with a garden, there are lots of things I'm not allowed to do for the overall benefit of society, like chopping down a tree that's more than a certain size (I only have small trees, so not a live issue), opening up a night club (not that I'd want to do that either), whatever.

Does the government compensate me for these restrictions? Of course not. They don't compensate me for not speeding either; they punish me if they catch me doing it. If the government now decides that you aren't allowed to cultivate with a certain distance from a river or larger stream because this has wider benefits (see the article), why should anybody be compensated? Just pass a law, enforce it, job done.

They own land! Give them money!

Spotted by TBH in This Is Money:

Second home owners who have registered their properties as businesses are set to land an £85million windfall from the Government's small business grant scheme.

Experts said the loophole allows the owners of second homes – many of which are registered in Devon, Cornwall, the Lake District and in seaside towns such as Scarborough – to register them as businesses as long as they 'make them available' to let for 140 days of the year* and take bookings for at least half of those days.

The practice, known as 'flipping', allows the property owners to pay business rates instead of council tax. It also means they are eligible for the Government's small business rates relief scheme, which means all but the largest properties pay little or no tax.

Owners are now also poised to collect a share – around £1,300 each – of £2.2billion support for small businesses closed due to coronavirus restrictions. According to commercial property adviser Altus Group, there are more than 62,000 properties in England which are classified as holiday homes and have been flipped** to become 'commercial' premises for tax purposes.

It is not the first time that the owners of second homes have benefited from Government handouts during the coronavirus crisis...

* The official name for this is "Furnished Holiday Lets" and is a set of insane (and fiddly) tax reliefs for second home owners.

** No doubt many of them will be flipped back from Business Rates to Council Tax when the Business Rates exemption ends  - Council Tax is usually much lower. I wonder if they will ever publish that statistic.

They own land, give them money.

From gov.uk

The government will provide a voucher worth up to £5,000 or £10,000 to help cover the cost of making energy efficient improvements to your home. Improvements could include insulating your home to reduce your energy use or installing low-carbon heating to lower the amount of carbon dioxide your home produces...

The government will provide a voucher that covers two-thirds of the cost of qualifying energy efficiency or low carbon heating improvements to your home. The maximum value of the voucher is £5,000. If you are on a low income and receive certain benefits, you can receive a voucher covering all of the cost of the improvements. The maximum value of the voucher is £10,000. A full list of qualifying benefits are available on the Simple Energy Advice website.

We own land, give us money!

Emailed in by Lola, from The Telegraph:

Landlords, shops and restaurants have joined forces to ask the Government to step in and pay commercial rents to help them survive the coronavirus pandemic.

Trade bodies have been in talks with ministers about proposals that would see the Government fund up to 50pc of rent and services charges owed by businesses in the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors. These “Property Bounce Back” grants would be targeted at businesses worst affected by lockdown.

It is estimated that about £3bn of rent owed to commercial property landlords for the six months to September will not have been paid, laying bare the acute pressures faced by landlords and tenants.

His comment was "Aaarrghh!" Not much I can add to that.
-----------------------------------------------
Spotted by Mombers at HPC, a question at Property118:

Reluctant landlord (wot?): I note that the LHA rates have been increased from 1st April 2020 – March 2021. A couple of questions…

2. Are any landlords now upping their rents in light of this LHA increase going forward?

PT: If like me, you have tenants on LHA rates, which previously was on average 20-30% below private rental rates, then I see no harm in increasing the rents where the increase will be picked up by the benefit system... It also brings the rents inline with what the property should rent for.

WP: Just thought of another question - if a rent increase will not effect the tenant at all in regard to any top ups (they currently do not pay anyway) - can I notify HB/DWP myself direct? If it is not for the benefit of my tenants, asking them to contact the department about the rent increase will fall on deaf ears....

TBH adds "If you ever needed reassurance that we are on the right side, this thread is ideal." Again, there's not much I can add to that.

Give them more money to buy land...

From the DT - of course - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/buy-to-let/gone-bonkers-buy-to-let-inquiries-boom-landlords-swoop-stamp/; paywall

The Tories' favourite subsidy. A subsidy to landlords.

Buy-to-let landlords have swooped into the property market to take advantage of the stamp duty tax giveaway.

In a temporary move intended to stimulate the property market in the wake of coronavirus, Chancellor Rishi Sunak last week announced that buyers in England and Northern Ireland would pay no stamp duty on the first £500,000 of their purchases until March 31. Landlords and others purchasing a second home still pay 3pc of the entire value of the property in additional tax, but the tax break means that their bills could fall by as much as half. The savings have persuaded many to return to the market.

Estate agents said the biggest rush of demand had been for homes worth less than £500,000. An investor buying a home worth half a million pounds will now pay £15,000 rather than £30,000 in stamp duty. Buyers in the most expensive parts of the country – primarily London and the South East – will benefit most. Rentround, a letting agent comparison website, said the number of landlords contacting its agents across the country had risen by 22pc. In north and east London, inquiries have risen by 31pc, higher than anywhere else in the country.

David Galman of developer Galliard Homes said inquiries for new build homes from buy-to-let investors since the stamp duty holiday was announced jumped by 40pc compared to the previous week. Over the weekend, Galliard agreed seven sales in its Westgate House development in Ealing, west London, four of which were to investors. “In every single transaction, we included a clause that if the development’s completion goes beyond March 31, we will pay the difference in stamp duty,” said Mr Galman. The tax break for investors comes in stark contrast to the government’s recent buy-to-let policies, such as introducing the stamp duty surcharge on second homes in 2016 and cutting down landlord tax relief.

“It is a game-changer,” said Mr Galman. The holiday is primarily driving small-time investors who are looking to buy just one or two properties – a group that had all but disappeared in the last few years, said Mr Galman. “It’s the doctors, the dentists, the professionals who perhaps have inherited some money to put into a deposit.”

Spencer Fortag, of Dockside Property Services, a Kent estate agent with a sister company in London, said since the stamp duty holiday was announced: “It’s just gone bonkers.” The number of inquiries from first-time investors has jumped by 20pc and now accounts for one in three investor inquiries, up from one in four before the holiday was announced, said Mr Fortag.

The discount some buyers will receive on one property is the equivalent to a deposit on an additional home. “I was chatting to an investor on Saturday who had amassed enough money to buy another property, now the holiday means they can buy two properties in Kent with the same pot of money,” said Mr Fortag. “And the fact that you’re saving between £10,000 and £15,000, that can shift your returns by one or two percentage points."

The holiday is particularly significant for overseas investors. Inquiries from India, China and the UAE, which account for half of Dockside Property Services’ inquiries, are up by a third compared to this time last year, Mr Fortag said. Foreign buyers have a triple concentration of time pressure. As well as the stamp duty holiday deadline, they also face the introduction of an additional two percentage points of stamp duty across the entire value of their purchases in April 2021. Plus, right now, many have a currency advantage, said Mr Fortag.

The so-called “Bank of Mum and Dad” is also making moves. James Holmear, of housebuilder Redrow, said the waiting list for the its Frenchay Gardens project in Bristol jumped by 30pc after a surge in inquiries on Thursday and Friday. Much of this interest has been from investors, including parents buying for their children who are studying at the university. “The extra cash in their pockets due to the stamp duty holiday has tipped them over the edge to make the decision to invest,” said Mr Holmear.

But the new interest has a price cap. After the £500,000 mark the savings become smaller in proportion to a property’s price tag. Martin Bikhit, of Kay & Co, an estate agent that is part of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway empire, said: “We have seen buy-to-let investors return to the market but only on properties valued sub £1m and in most cases £500,000.”

Meanwhile, in the cheaper parts of the country, such as the North East, the holiday has a minimal impact. Here, it will save investors £280 on the average purchase, compared to £7,240 in London, estate agents Hamptons International found.

Max Armstrong of North East Property Investments, a portfolio management service, said investor interest had not increased since the announcement, adding that the market had been buoyant since mid-June. “Lots of people have been piling in from outside of the region,” said Mr Armstrong. “We have not bought anything for five weeks as prices have been too high.”

They own land! Give them money!

Or "They want to sell land! Encourage the people who want to buy it to pay more!"

From Which.co.uk:

First-time buyers in Scotland have been handed a boost with the launch of a new scheme that offers interest-free loans of £25,000.

The Scottish Government’s First Home Fund, which was originally announced in the Spring, has today opened to applicants. Here, Which? explains how the First Home Fund works, including which lenders are involved, how to apply and details of how the scheme compares with Help to Buy.

We're in the middle of a bloody economic/unemployment crisis, and instead of looking after those who have lost their jobs or businesses, they are targetting "help" exactly where it's not needed.

They own land! Give them money!

Apropos my comment on the last post "They own land! Give them money!", from The Guardian:

London NHS Nightingale hospital will shut next week

No 10 says decision is due to limited demand, with no coronavirus admissions expected in coming days

The showpiece Nightingale hospital in London will shut next week after treating a small number of patients but will be kept “in hibernation” in case a second wave of Covid-19 infections emerges.

No further patients will be admitted to the facility, which was created amid much acclaim in just 10 days, and the 12 patients being treated there at the moment are being transferred to other London hospitals...

Originally planned to have 4,000 beds, the Nightingale has treated just 54 patients since it was opened by Prince Charles on 3 April and received its first patient on 7 April. It has not admitted a new patient for a week as London hospitals have had spare capacity in their own intensive care units.

The four other Nightingales that were opened to stop hospitals being overwhelmed – in Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol and Harrogate – will also be wound down, though the London hospital will shut first. All were conceived in March, when ministers and health service bosses were concerned that NHS hospitals risked being overwhelmed by significant numbers of people needing to be ventilated to keep them alive, as Italy was confronting at the time.

But while the Manchester hospital has taken some patients, its sister facilities in Birmingham, Bristol and Harrogate have not admitted anyone.

They own land! Give them money!

It had to happen, I suppose...

From the FT:

In a letter to Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, a coalition of the UK’s biggest retail chains and property owners warned that “many viable companies” will file for administration if the government does not intervene further, causing job losses and a “devastating impact” on high streets.

“We have come together, as voices of both commercial tenants and landlords, to propose that the government introduces a scheme of rental support for the space that has in effect been furloughed, just as staff have been,” said the letter, from the chiefs of the British Retail Consortium and the British Property Federation...

The two industries want the government to support a “furloughed space grant scheme” where the state would cover the fixed costs of businesses that have experienced dramatic falls in turnover. Similar schemes have been set up in Denmark and other European countries.

The groups have proposed a sliding scale of partial payments to cover property costs, which would still leave some of the burden on the tenant and landlord.

Don't worry lads! The government has finally worked out how to fix the economic crisis caused by their overreaction to the covid-19 scare...

From financialreporter.co.uk:

The Government is in talks with The Home Builders Federation, whose members deliver around 80% of new homes built each year, about extending the scheme to help support the industry after Covid-19 lockdown measures are lifted, according to The Times.

Sorry, what was that first bit... "The Government is in talks with The Home Builders Federation..."? I'm sure the HBF will politely explain the economics of the housing/land market and explain that land prices will always rise to soak up the subsidy and that there are far better ways of spending taxpayers' money.

The shutdown of construction work and sales offices is expected to have a long-term impact on the sector, with Savills estimating that the lockdown will hinder the construction of around 200,000 new homes.

Wot? They are building on average 200,000 homes per year; do they expect the lock down to last a year? (For all of our sakes, I hope it doesn't).

Since the launch of the Help to Buy: Equity Loan scheme in April 2013, 248,075 properties have been bought, with first-time buyers accounting for 81% of total purchases.

That proves nothing. It's an arms race. If other people can bid more because they've tapped into the subsidy, then you have no choice except to tap into the subsidy and bid a bit more as well.

The current Help to Buy scheme is due to end in April 2021. A new scheme will then run for two years, restricted to first-time buyers with regional property price caps.

But finally they've found an excuse to extend it. Phew, I was getting worried there.

Amazon's move to New York

From The Guardian:

Amazon said on Friday it will open offices in New York City’s Hudson Yards neighborhood in 2021 to house its consumer and advertising teams, marking its most substantial expansion in the city since the reversal.

The move comes 10 months after the company cancelled plans for a headquarters in Queens after extensive backlash from residents and politicians, including Ocasio-Cortez.

They had objected to the nearly $3bn in financial incentives the city and state had offered Amazon for the construction of the headquarters.

Ms Ocasio-Cortez ('AOC' to her friends) has given herself a well deserved pat on the back for calling this one right.

Tory win - great news for state-backed and monopoly businesses!

From The Guardian:

FTSE 250 rockets to record high as banks, housebuilders and utilities surge

Your occasional reminder...

From Professional Pensions:

The government will pay out £21bn in income tax relief for pension contributions this tax year, while national insurance relief payments will rise to £18.7bn, according to statistics from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC).

The estimated figures - published yesterday (10 October) - reveal the cost of income tax relief for registered pension schemes in 2019/2020 will be higher than the year prior, estimated at £20.4bn, and five years ago at £17.9bn.

This covers relief on contributions, relief on investment returns, and tax paid in retirement - but the figures do not provide estimates on the total receipt in tax when pensions are in receipt.

That last bit isn't quite clear - isn't "tax paid in retirement" the same as "receipt in tax when pensions are in receipt"? But hey, let's run with the headline figure. 'Cost' for these purposes is the equal and opposite of the value of the tax saving to the individuals, it's the same thing.

As ghastly as taxes on earnings (income tax and National Insurance) are, if I were in charge, I would chuck the 'focused' tax savings for pensions contributions (focused on older and wealthier people, including Yours Truly; and ultimately on the insurance companies which siphon it all off again) in the bin and share out the savings more equitably:

1. Increase the NIC thresholds (primary and secondary) to £12,500 (same as the personal allowance for income tax). Tax saving per employee earning more than £12,500 = £950 or so, call it £25 bn all in. That's an important first step towards a Basic Income. The Employment Allowance and Apprenticeship Levy can go in the bin as well.

2. Reinstate the personal allowance for those earning more than £100,000 (which results in a marginal income tax rate of 60%), tax saving maybe £3 bn. Either you believe in universal entitlements or you don't, and I do.

3. Harmonise Employees' primary NIC (currently 12%) and self-employed Class 4 NIC (currently 9%) at 11%, an overall tax saving of £6 billion or so. The self-employed will squeal, but so be it. Lower earning self-employed will be up to £370 better off, and those at the upper end will be paying £300 or so more (paying £3,724 = 11% x £46,350 - £12,500, instead of £3,413 = 9% x £46,350 - £8,424), hardly a life changing amount. Employees at the upper end will be saving £800 or so a year. There are more of the latter than the former.

4. Depending on how much is left over (it gets circular and there is guesswork involved), we can start chipping away at Employer's Secondary NIC, get it down from 13.8% of wages to 12% or something...

Shocking stuff, the audience cries, but a government would just have to do it and damn the torpedoes. (As far as I am concerned, the flat rate state pension of £160 covers it, there's no need for more endless tinkering on top).

By the next election, which party would be brave, stupid or corrupt enough to pledge to reverse this? How's that going to go down on the doorstep: "We pledge to hike tax rates for most people for the benefit of large corporations who make large donations to our party and offer us cosy jobs when we retire"?

Wowzers! Who would have expected that?

From The Sun:

THE Government’s Help to Buy scheme has benefited more rich than poor households, a new report found amid claims that the scheme is a “major failure”...

Shockingly, around one in 20 households who use the scheme earn over £100,000.

The flagship scheme has also boosted profits of the country’s three largest developers – Persimmon, Barratt and Taylor Wimpey.

According to Shelter, all three have managed to more than double their reported profits in under six years, with Barratt seeing the greatest profit rise of 325 per cent.

Tariff Doublethink

From the BBC:

A no-deal Brexit could cost the farming industry £850m a year in lost profits, new research seen by the BBC suggests...

OK, enlighten us.

Farm business consultants Andersons said that without government support increasing significantly, some farms would inevitably struggle to survive. The government says it will "provide direct support to boost some sectors in the unlikely event this is required".

We own land! Give us money!

Under a no-deal Brexit, farms could have to pay a tariff on goods exported to the EU for the first time. Lamb and live sheep exports could face tariffs of 45-50%, while trade and farming groups say some cuts of beef could see tariffs of more than 90%. If European firms suddenly start having to pay more for UK meat, the fear is they could quickly switch to suppliers in other countries.

Tariffs are bad for the exporter then, OK.

Other so-called "non-tariff barriers", like extra veterinary and customs checks at the border, could also increase costs to farmers.

Non-tariff barriers are also bad, OK.

"It could wipe out the sheep industry in Northern Ireland," farmers Jo and Lindsay Best, from County Antrim, told the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme. "A large percentage of our sheep are exported into France and the Republic of Ireland, and the price of feed could go up as well. It could decimate both the sheep and cattle industry here."

Why would the price of feed go up? Not clear.

Farms already receive more than £3.5bn a year in EU subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

We own land! Give us money!

Under a no-deal Brexit, dairy exports would attract higher tariffs and other restrictions which, it is feared, could lead to an oversupply of milk in the UK and falling prices. At the same time, tariffs on imports from outside the EU could be cut substantially, meaning British farmers would face competition from low-cost butter and cheese made overseas.

So tariffs are bad, but low or zero tariffs are just as bad. Make up your minds.

Colin Ferguson, who runs his own herd of 200 dairy cattle on the Machars peninsula in south-west Scotland, said that would be his "biggest concern". "[Produce from overseas] doesn't need to meet the high welfare or production standards that we conform to, therefore our market gets undermined by cheap produce and the consumer quite rightly will buy the cheapest item on the shelf," he added.

So, non-tariff barriers are good?

The research by Andersons shows the impact of a no-deal Brexit will not be felt equally across the industry. Lamb and beef farming are likely to be hardest hit, especially in Wales and Northern Ireland.

Other businesses - like fruit and vegetables, pigs and poultry - could see modest increases in profitability as rivals like Danish bacon attract import tariffs and become more expensive.

So tariffs are good?

Here's a thought, everything will adjust. UK farmers will probably export less, but UK consumers will import less, so it balances out. The UK is only about two-thirds self-sufficient in food, so we can easily consume the entire UK farming industry's output. So lower "food miles" as well, which is surely A Good Thing? And maybe those sheep or dairy farmers can move into fruit and vegetables, pigs and poultry?

Please sir, may we have some more?

From City AM:

Taxi drivers have slammed plans to close off key locations in the City of London to traffic during the summer, saying they amount to a “PR gimmick”.

Key City hotspots, including St Mary Axe and Chancery Lane, will be closed for days in August and September to allow workers to enjoy traffic-free lunch breaks, the City of London Corporation announced today.

Yes, it is a bit of a gimmick, but let them try it.

People might prefer it or they might hate it. Some businesses will benefit, others will lose out. There's only one way to find out.

Here's the fun bit:

Steve McNamara, general secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association, said:

“While the taxi trade agrees strongly with the need to tackle London’s toxic air, one off stunts like car-free days won’t do much to cut pollution in the long-term.

“Instead of PR gimmicks, the City of London Corporation should make a real contribution to improving air quality by installing more rapid charge points for the 2000 London cabbies who are out picking up passengers in zero emissions capable taxis.

"There are currently only two rapid charge points available to cabbies within the richest Square Mile in the world. This is totally absurd and we need to see many more installed to encourage more cabbies to make the switch to electric.”

The cabbies much prefer the carrot to the stick, especially if somebody else is paying for the carrot.

"We could be wiped out like the coal industry"

From the BBC:

Some farmers have said without long-term guarantees about future subsidy levels, farms could disappear from the landscape.

"We could be wiped out like the coal industry," said Roger Hobson, whose 4,500-acre farm near York qualifies for a subsidy worth £100,000 a year.

"What we fear is that in the future the farm industry will have to go to the government and compete for funding alongside the NHS and other public services."

Agricultural subsidies

A debate on Twitter has helped me clarify my thoughts on agricultural subsidies:

Dr Sarah Taber @SarahTaber_bww: So ... yeah. Sometimes rural land ownership is just an instrument for rich people to extort bribes from taxpayers. "Pay me or I'll ruin your water." And sometimes you just monetize it on the corn platform.

PNW Policy Wonk @PNWwonk: That's literally not how it works. I administer conservation subsidies for a living. This is all bullshit... We contract to fix existing issues on farms. We don't pay people to not release their manure lagoons into the river. We don't work in prevention. We react to existing pollution.

Me: Same thing. Bad behaviour in past = subsidies in the present. I'm all in favour of looking after environment but we have LAWS for that. We don't pay ordinary people for not dumping rubbish on the street, we FINE then for doing so.

PNW Policy Wonk: Your first sentence makes sense. It does not relate to the second sentence at all.

benjamin @benjit14: The elimination or internalisation of costs allows best market allocation of resources. This is why we have rules, regs. laws etc. Letting others pick up the tab isn't good for society or our economy. IMHO.

Wes @lord_0f_land: If the land isn’t sustainably farmable without the manure lagoons, wouldn’t it be better to just directly ban farming on the land in question instead of subsidizing?

PNW Policy Wonk: So, ban all dairies? Come on, guys. I know you guys care about land policy, but stop talking about farming if you don't know anything about it.

Me: No, don't ban all dairies. I like milk and butter and cheese. So I as a consumer should bear the full costs of production, which might include environmental protection costs paid for directly by the farmer.

PNW Policy Wonk: The reason milk has price supports (an extra layer of govt assistance) is because you can't turn a cow's milk production on or off. But you still need to pay to feed and house them. The entire industry would collapse during gluts without support.

benjamin: Cheese is sort of like stored up milk product. I'm sure they could figure all this out without the subsidy. If there is a risk of gluts, there's a futures market for that i.e. insurance.

At this stage, PNW Policy Wonk appears to have abandoned his defence of the indefensible.

He seems to have three lines of argument:

1. We should reward landowners for not breaking the law, or pay for them to rectify earlier breaches, which is clearly nonsense.
2. Farmers and consumers should not bear the full cost of responsible production methods.

We own a home, there are rules against doing certain things, like having noisy parties every night or rearing pigs in the back garden. Our neighbours benefit if we don't do those things and we benefit if our neighbours don't do those things.

We all bought our houses knowing that those are the rules, and so the rules are to our overall mutual benefit. It's the same with factories, there are rules on how they deal with the noise and waste they generate. If anybody breaks the rules, then (hopefully) the 'state' will step in and stop them.

Why does he make the assumption that - unlike homeowners and factory owners - agricultural landowners are basically allowed to do what they want in perpetuity, and that we have to pay them to behave responsibly? That would be like me having noisy parties every night and instead of the local council stopping me, they pay for my house to be fully sound insulated.

Would food prices go up without subsidies? We have a crazy situation where agricultural land owners/farmers get subsidies, but they also pay income tax (and some National Insurance). The numbers are pretty small either way and they probably net off to nothing. So it would be fiscally neutral to scrap the subsidies and just exempt farm profits and farm wages from income tax and National Insurance* - in which case, no reason to assume that food prices would go up.

* Like forestry in the UK - they get very little in the way of subsidies (compared to arable land) for simply owning a forest, but forestry profits are exempt from income tax and corporation tax (wages are still taxable as normal, go figure).

3. Then he segues effortlessly into 'gluts' and underwriting farm incomes, which is a completely different topic.

I don't know why he thinks there are sudden gluts in milk output, because there aren't. Farmers are getting better and better at breeding cows to produce more milk and getting the milk out of them, but that is a long term trend as a result of which prices are falling long term. An individual dairy farmer's output is pretty steady and predictable.

It's arable goods where farmers can only guess how much they will be able to harvest. It is uncertainty right until the end.

It could be brilliant growing weather all season and then pissing it down, frost or drought in the last few days before the harvest and the whole thing is ruined. Just as bad, the farmer harvests pretty much what he expected, but there is a glut elsewhere so prices fall.

From the point of view of the rest of the country (consumers or government), gluts are a very good thing indeed and nothing to worry about. We should be worrying about sudden shortages, not gluts.

From the point of view of farmers, this is a precarious way to live. But in the long run, it averages out, good years and bad years. And relying on the weather is a mug's game anyway, controlling growing conditions is the way to go i.e. greenhouses, poly-tunnels, hydroponics etc (like in the Netherlands or southern Spain).