£61 million missing from Scotland ring fenced agri budget, it has doubled since I last put this up !

banjo · Feb 6, 2024

This is the original post I put up months ago but since that time the amount has doubled to £61 million of ring fenced agricultural budget budget disappeared ?
this is the original vid and the comment below will show the latest minister refusing to say where the money has gone even though it’s doubled !
( ps I went to plant trees into the climate budget )

banjo · Feb 6, 2024

banjo said:
This is the original post I put up months ago but since that time the amount has doubled to £61 million of ring fenced agricultural budget budget disappeared ?
this is the original vid and the comment below will show the latest minister refusing to say where the money has gone even though it’s doubled !
( ps I went to plant trees into the climate budget )

This is the latest answer on the subject and it’s happening in wales also !

Chae1 · Feb 6, 2024

Must be some campervan.

Cowabunga · Feb 6, 2024

As usual, politicians can’t give a straight answer. Where has £61 million disappeared to? Where has it gone and how do they justify it? Have some bent politicians trousered it?

Goweresque · Feb 6, 2024

Cowabunga said:
As usual, politicians can’t give a straight answer. Where has £61 million disappeared to? Where has it gone and how do they justify it? Have some bent politicians trousered it?

Nope, they've just spent it (or will spend it, they are often talking about budget allocations for the future) on something else. Some other part of the Scottish budget was considered more important than the farming budget, and its now got that money. Exactly which part would be impossible to say, as all money is fungible. But there was obviously a shortfall - we want to spend X on this, Y and that, Z on that, oh dear we are £29m short, what shall we do? I know lets cut it off the agriculture budget, farmers don't vote much for us anyway.

Its misleading to say this money is 'missing', its not as if the Scottish Agriculture Dept has been hacked and had £61m nicked out of its account. Its a budget cut. The SNP government cut the agriculture budget last year, and plan to do the same again this year (or whichever years they are talking about).

David1968 · Feb 6, 2024

Try and pin them down and they will just blame Westminster for not giving them enough money to cover what they pi$$ed up the wall on vanity projects like vastly over-spec ferries and the bottle return scheme that nobody was ready for.

TelesnaAg · Feb 6, 2024

This is where the nfu should coordinate a class action imo, or force external to uk auditors through the books and hand findings to law enforcement.

If you want to steal millions work for the govt, at worse you will only loose your job.

Also mitigate tax as much as possible.

And as per the French...hose them with shite.

Ant...

Agrivator · Feb 6, 2024

Thank heavens for the Conservatives and Willie Rennie (Lib Dems) at Holyrood.

David1968 · Feb 6, 2024

TelesnaAg said:
This is where the nfu should coordinate a class action imo, or force external to uk auditors through the books and hand findings to law enforcement.

It hasn't been stolen.

'Ring fenced' is just words.

goldeneagle · Feb 6, 2024

Im sure if it was £61 million missing from their lavish pension fund (yes I know its state funded but using the analogy) they would be doing something about it, the money will never be seen again it will have been redirected towards council tax freezes that were unfunded more than likely.

The hypocrisy of mentioning brexit at any chance from the cult that would have had no access to Europe had they got their dream/wish in 2014.

The sooner the Scottish parliament is disbanded the better for scottish society as it is just another tax on the people who contribute to society. Just another layer ontop of the civil servants who were doing the work prior to its inception.

Agrivator · Feb 6, 2024

And I haven't heard many farmers in Scotland being furious at Brexit. Maybe just the opposite.

stevedave · Feb 6, 2024

We have similar things happening in wales. Is there any mechanism to put these devolved governments into special measures. If a council was being run this badly/corruption, they would be in special measures.

Cowabunga · Feb 6, 2024

Goweresque said:
Nope, they've just spent it (or will spend it, they are often talking about budget allocations for the future) on something else. Some other part of the Scottish budget was considered more important than the farming budget, and its now got that money. Exactly which part would be impossible to say, as all money is fungible. But there was obviously a shortfall - we want to spend X on this, Y and that, Z on that, oh dear we are £29m short, what shall we do? I know lets cut it off the agriculture budget, farmers don't vote much for us anyway.

Its misleading to say this money is 'missing', its not as if the Scottish Agriculture Dept has been hacked and had £61m nicked out of its account. Its a budget cut. The SNP government cut the agriculture budget last year, and plan to do the same again this year (or whichever years they are talking about).

So why do these politicians not just say so in plain speaking? Why not answer the questions asked?

banjo · Feb 6, 2024

TelesnaAg said:
This is where the nfu should coordinate a class action imo, or force external to uk auditors through the books and hand findings to law enforcement.

If you want to steal millions work for the govt, at worse you will only loose your job.

Also mitigate tax as much as possible.

And as per the French...hose them with shite.

Ant...

I totally agree, where are the farming press and Nfu and why are they not pushing this story on the front page of the farmers weekly, it’s because the lot of them are working together to hide the corruption and push the other nonsense onto us all !
why does it take a plain old hurdle bunter to push this on a farming forum instead of actual farming journalists !

Goweresque · Feb 6, 2024

Cowabunga said:
So why do these politicians not just say so in plain speaking? Why not answer the questions asked?

Because the ones doing the attacking want it to sound as bad as possible, and the ones doing the defending don't want to admit what they have actually done, so everyone is talking out of the side of their mouths. Its all a game played by the sort of people who no-one liked at school.

It would be interesting to know exactly what the phrase 'ring fenced agriculture budget' means. I doubt it has any legal force, otherwise someone could take the Scottish government to court for not spending what they are legally bound to do. I suspect its more a case of Westminster giving Scotland £Xbn, which includes £Ym for agriculture (as requested by the Scottish government), but once that money gets to Scotland they can carve it up any way they want. Its nominally been given them for agriculture but if they want to spend it on free Buckfast for winos they can. Thats what devolved government means.

banjo · Feb 6, 2024

Goweresque said:
Because the ones doing the attacking want it to sound as bad as possible, and the ones doing the defending don't want to admit what they have actually done, so everyone is talking out of the side of their mouths. Its all a game played by the sort of people who no-one liked at school.

It would be interesting to know exactly what the phrase 'ring fenced agriculture budget' means. I doubt it has any legal force, otherwise someone could take the Scottish government to court for not spending what they are legally bound to do. I suspect its more a case of Westminster giving Scotland £Xbn, which includes £Ym for agriculture (as requested by the Scottish government), but once that money gets to Scotland they can carve it up any way they want. Its nominally been given them for agriculture but if they want to spend it on free Buckfast for winos they can. Thats what devolved government means.

The last £30 million went allegedly on planting trees ( forestry ) instead of agriculture, same in wales !

Cowabunga · Feb 6, 2024

Goweresque said:
Because the ones doing the attacking want it to sound as bad as possible, and the ones doing the defending don't want to admit what they have actually done, so everyone is talking out of the side of their mouths. Its all a game played by the sort of people who no-one liked at school.

It would be interesting to know exactly what the phrase 'ring fenced agriculture budget' means. I doubt it has any legal force, otherwise someone could take the Scottish government to court for not spending what they are legally bound to do. I suspect its more a case of Westminster giving Scotland £Xbn, which includes £Ym for agriculture (as requested by the Scottish government), but once that money gets to Scotland they can carve it up any way they want. Its nominally been given them for agriculture but if they want to spend it on free Buckfast for winos they can. Thats what devolved government means.

‘Ring fence’ usually means that it cannot be used for other purposes. I’ve just checked a dictionary definition and, from Oxford Languages...
guarantee that (funds allocated for a particular purpose) will not be spent on anything else.
"the government failed to ring-fence the money provided to schools"

So if it was indeed ring-fenced then, since it is missing from the allocated budget, it must have been mis-used. Effectively, stolen from the allocated ring-fenced budget.

Henarar · Feb 6, 2024

perhaps they spent it on sheep
they still get out even with a ring fence

Levelsman · Feb 6, 2024

Perhaps they've got a Fujitsu computer programme.

Pushdyke · Feb 6, 2024

So if farmers are looking for a reason to demonstrate then all of the above is a good enough reason

£61 million missing from Scotland ring fenced agri budget, it has doubled since I last put this up !

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Up to 25%

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100% I’ve had enough of farming!

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