Tom Bradshaw, the NFU president, said this could lead to food shortages
As Jim complains, we can import anything from anywhere.
Tom Bradshaw, the NFU president, said this could lead to food shortages
As Jim complains, we can import anything from anywhere.
I had to queue 3 hours on Saturday for half a loaf and a potato from the Peoples Commissary.
Luxury!
Mamdani’s shops failing already, that didn’t take long.
“could” is, as usual, doing a *lot* of heavy lifting….
Sounds like we need to be draining that winter rain into reservoirs for summer irrigation. Of course that is in the long term. In the short term, so what? We import more food. What happened to al those EU food mountains?
One thing we can be sure of, whatever the challenges facing British farmers, the NFU will be a complete waste of space.
We’ve got a hosepipe ban but that doesn’t bother a local farmer. He has a large lodge that fills every winter. He’s currently pumping it out into his pipe network and merrily spraying the crops locally. The lodge surface is now a few feet down from the overflow but nowhere near how low it got a few years ago. When I walk past his pump I usually take a photo of the meter. Between 3rd July & 1st August he’s used 13210 cubic metres. I’ve no idea how intensive that is or how much acreage he’s spraying though.
You can import stuff until you can’t.
There’s no longer a U-boat threat, but there are unfriendly countries who are now capable of producing thousands of long range drones per week, and I’m not sure that our friends across the Atlantic will happily send lots of their merchant seamen to their watery graves to keep us supplied with shit if it comes to it as they did back then
Mind you, we can’t be far away from drone cargo ships, so it would probably just be the ships that they lost.
I dunno.
It’s very hard to work out the future of warfare, but I wouldn’t buy stocks in tanks, pilots or infantrymen.
We haven’t been self-sufficient in food for 200 years. BTW, which drone-rich unfriendly nations are you expecting to blockade the UK?
I didn’t say we had been. I have no idea what the future holds. Anything else?
We were 80% self sufficient with food by the early 1980s, the high point of the CAP. Since then its been downhill all the way, as subsidies were withdrawn from food production across the EEC, then EU.
“There’s no longer a U-boat threat, but there are unfriendly countries who are now capable of producing thousands of long range drones per week, and I’m not sure that our friends across the Atlantic will happily send lots of their merchant seamen to their watery graves to keep us supplied with shit if it comes to it as they did back then”
Like who? Who wants to attack Britain and can launch drones at that range?
“It’s very hard to work out the future of warfare, but I wouldn’t buy stocks in tanks, pilots or infantrymen.”
There’s a lot of talk about drones, but most of the uses of it are narrow range. They’re particularly guerrilla warfare weapons.
See above. Who would want to cyber-attack us? Who would want to cut undersea gas pipelines? Who would want to carry out assassinations/attempts on British soil? ‘What if your arm bursts’ is funny but not serious. We are currently making enemies we didn’t need to make, and those enemies can happily withstand the sorts of casualties than would make westerners blanche.
China has sub drones that can cover ranges estimated to be near 10,000 nautical miles on diesel and 3,000 fully submerged. Russia is a bit behind but the innovation cycle is rapid.
Aerial drones have completely changed the battlefield in Russia-Ukraine. Sea and air drones have made it possible for Iran to close to Strait and force the Yanks to pull back from many of their Middle Eastern bases, to the point where that whole operation is now very uncertain.
They have made it completely impossible for Britain and the US to contemplate Afghanistan again; the Taliban made it very difficult to hold ground using simple IEDs and shitty Chinese rockets and western aerial supremacy and intelligence gathering capabilities; Iranian and Russian drones in quantity would have made it impossible. (They would have made it very hard indeed in Iraq 2003, given the caterwauling that accompanies the death of even one soldier.)
Of course, this assumes that we will be standing still, but sheer numbers are an unbelievable game changer.
As I said, you can import stuff until you can’t.
Who wants to attack Britain and can launch drones at that range?
Pretty well anybody. All they require is a cargo ship. Country like Iran could easily do it. How many ships are within 1000 miles proximity to the UK at at any time?
What’s the benefit to Iran?
We have a frosty relationship with Iran. We don’t like each other, but starving people escalates that to a very bad relationship and achieves nothing for Iran. We both have to spend more money on defence and intelligence.
No-one has really cared much about Britain for a millenium. It’s cold, shitty land.
What’s the benefit to Iran of nuking the jews?
How do you gauge the benefit of anything to a bunch of dark-ages religious crazies?
Exactly, for the Iraninan govt, blowung up the world is a small price to pay for the destruction of Israel.
This is your brain on news. Because Israel is easy to get to, there’s some action, journalists can get a nice hotel, beers, and can get the fuck out of dodge most of the day, that’s where they write stories from.
They don’t go to Yemen, because Yemen is a colossal shit hole and probably doesn’t have a Hilton with wifi. Yemen doesn’t have people like the Hamas media operation that are set up to show things to western journalists.
So everything about the Middle East is perceived through the lens of Iran vs Israel.
The real conflict is Saudi Arabia vs Iran. Those are the two major powers in the region. And they’d both like to knock the other one out, take their oil. Neither are good guys. We don’t get told that Saudi are cunts, because we’re a bit aligned with Saudi.
And all the shit going on in the Middle East is about Iran and Saudi fighting proxy wars to extend their sphere of influence. Yemen? Saudis and Iranians funding each side. The toppling of Assad? BFF of Iran, toppled by the likes of Jaish al-Fatah AKA The Army of Conquest. Who funds them? Saudi Arabia.
Now, Israel were pals with the Shah, and after the revolution, the Ayatollahs didn’t like that, so it’s all Death to Israel. Israel are somewhat allied with Saudi Arabia.
No-one in a position of power gets their by being a genocidal maniac. Hiring murderers is a big expense. Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds because they were helping Iran. That’s a rational use of force. Most genocides were simply about removing people from land so you could have it. But Israel has mostly shit land. Not worth stealing. Iran wants to do harm to Israel because they see them as a threat. As they were pals with the Shah, that makes some sense.
Fucking hell, have you still not yet worked out that things that are of benefit to Iran are not things that normal people would necessarily see as being of benefit to Iran?
They are a country that sees ‘benefit’ in hanging gays from cranes and stoning women to death for showing their hair and threatening to kill every Jew anywhere in the world.
There was no real benefit to Iran having nuclear weapons – it had more than enough conventional forces to deal with any regional issues, and it could be best buddies with the west if it just stopped fucking threatening to kill the Jews and then the rest of us (which is why they wanted the nukes).
They have spent the last week seeing their bridges and power plants being destroyed, hot on the heels of seeing their navy and air force destroyed, hot on the heels of seeing their entire top line leadership eliminated, along with thousands of troops, and they don’t give a shit.
In fact, perversely, this is actually, to them, a ‘benefit’. They could stop all of this now by going to talks and saying ‘Okay, yeah, we get it, we don’t want to kill the Jews any more’, but killing Jews is what they see as being of ‘benefit’, and the bridges and the power plants and the factories and the people are just inconvenient marks in the ‘costs’ column.
We’ve had this discussion before, and – I assume not having much experience of Islamists – you just seem incapable of understanding, but I’ll say it again, having seen them up close: it really is that it’s their religion, and enough of them believe in it that they will happily die for it, indeed actively seek death, and while there are millions who wouldn’t they regrettably don’t have enough power to overthrow the loons, and are thus liable to be killed for that instead.
When should we expect the Mad Mullah drone blockade to start? Only, my Mum has a Sainsbury’s delivery coming on Thursday. Should she order 5,000 tins of beans now or give it a week or so?
I don’t think I have said that any ‘Mad Mullah drone blockade’ is about to start.
I’ve simply said in response to the question who might want to harm us that Iran might, and that it could do so using drones.
These are trivially true statements of fact which have little bearing on your mum’s beans order, so you can relax there.
We have in a sense been at war with Iran since 1979 – a significant number of British soldiers died in Afghanistan and Iraq at the hands of men trained and equipped by (among others Iran).
And:…have you still not yet worked out that things that are of benefit to Russia are not things that normal people would necessarily see as being of benefit to Russia?
I have no idea what is behind that question, but yes, I have worked that out.
“They are a country that sees ‘benefit’ in hanging gays from cranes and stoning women to death for showing their hair and threatening to kill every Jew anywhere in the world.”
We were still executing gays in 1835. And we and the Spanish did a whole lot of burning heretics from what I recall in the 15th century. Were we abnormal people in 1835?
Why we stopped doing it, and Iran didn’t is the pertinent question.
“There was no real benefit to Iran having nuclear weapons – it had more than enough conventional forces to deal with any regional issues, and it could be best buddies with the west if it just stopped fucking threatening to kill the Jews and then the rest of us (which is why they wanted the nukes).”
I could say the same thing about the UK. We have plenty of arms to deal with the Falklands, trouble over Gibraltar. Why do we need nuclear arms?
Iran wants them because why the fuck not? Maybe you can defend against someone, or if you want to get richer and steal their land, point it at them and tell them to leave. Why is Iran bothered about killing all the Jews? Forget stated Sky Fairy bollocks. What is the cui bono of it? What do they get for throwing their money at nuclear weapons and hen using them on Israel?
And why would Iran want to kill everyone in the UK? Did English people, the sort that executed gays in 1835 commit irrational, hateful genocide? I’m sure we killed lots of people, but you could find a rational explanation.
“We’ve had this discussion before, and – I assume not having much experience of Islamists – you just seem incapable of understanding, but I’ll say it again, having seen them up close: it really is that it’s their religion, and enough of them believe in it that they will happily die for it, indeed actively seek death, and while there are millions who wouldn’t they regrettably don’t have enough power to overthrow the loons, and are thus liable to be killed for that instead.”
If they actively seek death, why isn’t the population of Iran in rapid decline?
I believe many people in that region are ruthless, violent. I just don’t believe in comic book villains, in people acting that much differently to the rest of us, if given the same incentives. Germans in 1941 invaded Ukraine and nicked the food for German people. Germans aren’t doing that now. Because there’s plenty of food to go around.
And the incentives of living in the Gulf are very different to the rest of us. It is closer to medieval England. Sure, they have iPhones, but the money is all in owning land, much like Kings and Dukes.
‘Why do we need nuclear arms?’
Would the Russkies have invaded Ukraine if it had kept its nuclear arms??
I could say the same thing about the UK. We have plenty of arms to deal with the Falklands, trouble over Gibraltar. Why do we need nuclear arms?
No, we don’t ‘have plenty of arms to deal with the Falklands’, or, probably, Gibraltar
Why is Iran bothered about killing all the Jews? Forget stated Sky Fairy bollocks.
Unfortunately it is not possible to forget the ‘sky fairy bollocks’; that is their motivation.
They keep telling you that.
I could understand why they might try to obscure an objectively insane motivation (though they don’t).
I can’t understand why you would want to obscure it.
And why would Iran want to kill everyone in the UK?
Why would they – at least, the RCG etc – want to kill all infidels, everywhere, starting with the Jews?
Because – they believe – it is a religious imperative.
I just don’t believe in comic book villains…
It’s as though you’ve never heard of Pol Pot, Stalin, Vlad the Impaler, Hitler, Henry VIII, the Mongol hordes, ISIS, and ten thousand others I could probably name.
…in people acting that much differently to the rest of us, if given the same incentives.
You made play with my admittedly loose definition of people who don’t want to hang gays as ‘normal’.
So what do you mean by ‘the same incentives’, and how do you give a bloke raised in the Kush in a village that hasn’t changed much socially in well over 1300 years the same incentives as you?
I suggest it probably cannot be done.
It is apparently impossible for secular westerners with little contact with religious fundamentalism to understand the incentives driving a suicide bomber, or an Ayatollah.
Even when they patiently explain to you why they’re doing this stuff, even though it involves massive death and destruction to them, you cannot accept it.
There must be a rational explanation, involving ‘incentives’.
Yes! There is! It’s going to eternal paradise for doing God’s work.
Nailed it.
…and it seems the Russkies have already been launching drones from black fleet tankers in the Channel.
Yes, the events unfolding in the strait of Hormuz should be teaching Western nations a very important lesson – international trade only works when those involved in making it possible (the international shipping companies and the crews who man their vessels) consider it safe to attempt to transport goods over a given stretch of water. If there’s a chance your supertanker is going to get hit by a drone missile, even if its a 10% chance, then you’re probably going to say ‘Nope, not going there’.
So unless countries are going to build their own fleets of shipping, under their own legal control, and crewed by people who are prepared to run blockades if needed, and have the naval assets to defend those ships, then they will be reliant on the decisions made by shipping owners and crews who have no interest in the needs of any given country at all. Its now entirely feasible for a bad actor to blockade a country from importing anything by sitting submarines loaded with drones (the sub itself might be a drone) just off the relevant port (or at some choke point like Hormuz) and attacking any ships that attempt to come in. They could easily do the same to air traffic as well. Free traffic of shipping across the globe is dead. It can be closed off in an instant now. International trade and globalisation has now ended.
I think Iran might quite like to cause us some serious pain, and Russia too, China less so, maybe. Who else is currently unclear – maybe no-one – but the idea that no-one ever will and that the world isn’t very different now from what it was or seemed to be twenty years ago is silly.
Those drones can also set fire to crops growing in the UK.
Indeed. Their applications are pretty much limitless.
Funny because my fruit crop is pretty good this year. Plums, apples, rhubarb and I think we have a damson I didn’t plant.
“Cereal yields have generally been below the 10-year average so far, with some farms experiencing significant reductions.”
If this was worst of the 10 years, he’d have said it. As he didn’t this means there were worse years in the past decade. Were Ethiopians making a record to help feed us? No.
I bet this guy tells his mother he’s a piano player in a brothel.
We’ve picked our apple crop. Two. Not two trees, two apples off our three trees. Sweet cherry crop: nil. Sweetcorn: looks doomed. Gooseberry: the bush has fallen apart. Tatties: one third of the plants have given up the ghost.
On the other hand: morello cherry – good crop. Tomatoes: lots and lots.
Saddest part: we lost almost all our strawbs to pests, presumably rats or squirrels. No wonder my father kept a rifle for shooting vermin. Wish I hadn’t sold it though, truth to tell, I wouldn’t dare use it now that we are neighboured by new housing.
Loads of apples here. Pears too, probably, too soon to know. Loads of tomatoes, french beans, strawbs, gooseberries, blackcurrants. Pigeons got the redcurrants. Peas were hopeless. Potatoes suffering a little from the dry. but we planted lots and we got lots. Raspberries coming on now. Except for the spuds none of this is down to me.
You don’t need a rifle-rifle.
A decent .177 air rifle with 12 ft·lb of muzzle energy (legal without a Firearms Certificate), with a decent scope, ideally gas powered with a magazine as it’s quieter and quicker to reload, zeroed to about 50ft with the aid of a Coke tin, and firing a decent pellet eg H&N Field Target, will kill any rat stone dead.
Ideally you need to hit the head, but upper chest will do it. (Will kill rabbits too, and even a fox if you get it with a headshot.)
.177 is better than .22 as the smaller surface area = deeper penetration and the lighter weight = a flatter trajectory so more accurate, and if you’re shooting from an upstairs window into dead ground there is zero risk to any neighbours. (It is illegal to allow pellets to escape your land.)
We had a rat issue – they were coming across our garden to eat the nuts and seeds my wife puts out for the birds, so I plotted up in an upstairs room and killed seven of them, one after the other.
One would scurry across and I would shoot her (the first six were all females), and she was instantly gone, and my wife would pick her up and put her in the bin, and two minutes later another would scurry across and we’d do it all again.
I killed six females like that, but the male was a bit warier and wouldn’t show himself, so I got him with a classic flanking manoeuvre.
Unfortunately he was at the rifle’s extreme range (about 30m) and while I did hit him in the flank he ran off. I hope (and think) he died quickly thereafter but I didn’t like that. I don’t actually much like killing things these days – once upon a time it didn’t bother me one bit, but I suppose I’m getting soft – but you can’t have rats near people unfortunately.
Anyone who has read PG Wodehouse will know the difficulty of hitting a moving butler at 90ft using an air rifle.
I don’t actually much like killing things these days – once upon a time it didn’t bother me one bit
Not the sort of comment you read every day, and therefore comment of the month (imho).
Got 400g of blackberries just from skimming the bottom of the garden, there’s something like ten times as much that’s not ripe enough yet. I’ll be pulling in plenty for several weeks.
Or it might not.
Remember, any time you see the words “might” or “could” in an article, you can replace it with “might not” without loss of meaning.
Guardian appeal to pity tripe.
If you can’t make a profit, get out of the business.
Name one.
Weather report from Guardian journo.
Gamecock would usually say, “Nah. Make what you are good at; buy what you’re not.” But Net Zero is going to make you agrarian, so propping up agriculture is probably a good idea.
He told BBC Radio 4 that farmers should be given tax breaks to build water storage systems on their land to prepare for the years ahead.
Dig a hole & line it with plastic sheet. If you want tit to last longer use bituthene. Farmers generally already have pumps.
Planning permission would have your first spade in the ground in 2035…
*IF* the local [insert GreenTard outfit here] doesn’t make a court case out of it, and *IF* the National Trust doesn’t want to hunt for Archeology, and *if* ….
Not only that, but now you have become a designated wetland and have to follow all the environmental regs for that. Including how much you can extract from the pond, especially in a dry year when you need it most.
Nail on the head. Full planning permission would be required, with environmental, archaeological and god knows how many other surveys to be done first. All relevant Statutory Bodies (local authority, parish council, Environment Agency, Historic England + many many others) would have to be given a chance to object. You’d also have to pay for the ‘loss of habitat’ by providing a ‘Bio Net Gain’ of at least 10%, ie if your reservoir took up 5 acres of land, you’d have to provide 5.5 acres of land somewhere else that is put down to birds’n’bees’n’butterflies, ie can’t be used to produce food. And pay a fat fee to council for the application, with nothing back if they throw the application out. If the ideal spot on your farm happens to have a public footpath on it, forget the whole idea as moving a footpath takes a Public Enquiry and will take years as the Ramblers Association oppose all alterations to footpaths on principle.
When you accept government candy, you allow them into your industry. Fascist control will be the end result.
Bradshaw is, at a minimum, stupid for inviting a relationship with government.
What he should be saying, as stated in others’ comments, “Government, leave us the hell alone.”
It just occurred to me: after the collapse and you become agrarian, that will fail, too. Your fine government isn’t going to relent. They will regulate farming til all starve.
For years, I have believed that your energy problems won’t be fixed until blackouts become regular. I was wrong; that will change nothing. BBC will gaslight it, say it’s Trump’s fault, or the cost of gas, or dependence on foreign dictators, et f cetera.
UK is sofa king dead.
Fair enough to ponder what risks you might face, how independent you should be, etc.
Then look at the odds it’ll happen versus the costs to prepare.
But the idea that “we have to subsidize this industry” will be tried for damn near everything. “We can’t afford to be dependent on foreigners for hair dye!”
Without subsidies there would be no armies of civil servants overwhelmingly voting Labor to distribute the largesse. Cameron and Caminski simply couldn’t grasp this simple fact and kept the bureaucracies flourishing.
On the other hand:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7Sk02IeSXE