News Headlines, “Today it has been announced by a government department, that carbon offsets are a theoretical idea and in practice useless”.

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
I went to Lincoln yesterday. Very naughty, diesel burnt, but sometimes it nice to see different faces now and a again.
Anyway there were signs up everywhere saying car parks are going to be closed for a fortnight. This is to allow for the “Christmas Market” a binge fest where people are invited to travel from all over the country to buy plastic tat you can buy anywhere. The tat will also be hauled in from all over the world. Usually there is a large contingent of German traders as well, as for some reason a market with a German flavour, (generally lukewarm mediocre wine and sausages heavily spiced to disguise the flavour of old sow) is considered a good thing - though personally I’m indifferent to it. The roads will be closed to traffic and hundreds of thousands of people will wander zombie like through darkened streets in search of that one material item that will make so much difference to their present circumstances but will probably be in landfill by 5th January.
There never is the slightest acknowledgement that maybe we need to change our priorities, maybe move on just a bit from reliance of selling stuff for the sake of selling stuff. It needn’t be a change for the worse. It could even be better. But when see you all this going on a week after COP26 you wonder if anybody really wants to know.
 

Ffermer Bach

Member
Livestock Farmer
Ah...then intelligent people who care would have less children.
The net intelligence and empathy of the species would plummet...evolution in action.
that is already happening, with the current welfare system we have, it would only take a few tweaks to alter that. If the government ever try to change anything, straight away the media/labour party/Guardian etc wheel out Jade Smith with her 7 children and 7 fathers, who would be disadvantaged and straight away, the government backs down!
 

delilah

Member
There would be a Christmas market in just about every town at one time selling locally produce, fairly modest set ups, with low food miles and a lot less superfluous junk than we see now. The real age of excess seemed to begin in the late seventies from what I saw.

Don't get me started. How many people on here support their local farmers market ?
 

egbert

Member
Livestock Farmer
that is already happening, with the current welfare system we have, it would only take a few tweaks to alter that. If the government ever try to change anything, straight away the media/labour party/Guardian etc wheel out Jade Smith with her 7 children and 7 fathers, who would be disadvantaged and straight away, the government backs down!
to be fair, Boris has barely started taking flak for the changes to child support.
Isn't it the case that there's no extra past the 2nd...for those born after sometime just before lockdown?
 

tullah

Member
Location
Linconshire
The rationale behind encouraing larger families is that we need young people to do the work. Would that be the logical follow on from retiring in our 50s? Get rid of the ones with experience and wisdom and replace them with youngsters taught how to do it by the universities?
The rationale should be that with less spending power and demand coming then there won't be any work so need minimal breeding
 

Bald Rick

Moderator
Livestock Farmer
Location
Anglesey
I like your plan. Govts could offer 50k to anyone signing up to have the snip, be quids in on future costs and reduce global population & the resultant climate damage at the same time.
Better still, those awful poor people would be the first to take it up, while leaving more fertile females for Boris the alleycat to visit.

It would be far more acceptable to the population to give a carrot, rather than the stick that was the Chinese attempt at population control.👍

Just as a point of interest, World Vasectomy Day ran from 7th to 20th November this year … although that looks more like a fortnight to me

 

sjt01

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
North Norfolk
I think that offsetting can be dismissed as spurious, as each business and industry should seek to reduce its footprint, not divert it to another business and effectively hide it.

Carbon footprinting is notoriously difficult to do, as it depends entirely on where boundaries are set. By judicious definition of the calculation boundary, just about any figure can be obtained. It seems to me that the way to approach it can be modelled on VAT. Every business gets a figure for the carbon emissions from its inputs, then adds or subtracts its own contribution which applies to its outputs. If this is applied to imports in the same way as to local production, we can avoid exporting our emissions and pollution. It could even replace VAT, so the Carbon Added Tax would instantly show the consumer the impact of their purchase.
 

DaveGrohl

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cumbria
I think that offsetting can be dismissed as spurious, as each business and industry should seek to reduce its footprint, not divert it to another business and effectively hide it.

Carbon footprinting is notoriously difficult to do, as it depends entirely on where boundaries are set. By judicious definition of the calculation boundary, just about any figure can be obtained. It seems to me that the way to approach it can be modelled on VAT. Every business gets a figure for the carbon emissions from its inputs, then adds or subtracts its own contribution which applies to its outputs. If this is applied to imports in the same way as to local production, we can avoid exporting our emissions and pollution. It could even replace VAT, so the Carbon Added Tax would instantly show the consumer the impact of their purchase.
Jesus wept, you'll never make a politician with your effing sensible policies.....
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
Its already happening.
That’s how it seems to work unfortunately. Grandad always said the “welfare state” was the “farewell state”.
Since mid last century nobody had to “think twice”, “be careful”, “save a bit for a rainy day” or “face the consequences” of their own actions. The state has provided a safety net for the wilfully ignorant, the chronically evil, the feckless, the criminal etc. All we are doing though is getting higher up the saw tooth curve on the population graph which without an impossibly radical change of attitudes across society will result in some kind of population reducing catastrophe before too long.
We either never learn or we don’t care and I’d put myself into that bracket as well a fair amount of the time. Change on the scale required to avoid an externally imposed catastrophe is very very difficult if not nigh on impossible. Should not stop us trying though.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 79 42.9%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 63 34.2%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.3%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 6 3.3%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

  • 1,287
  • 1
As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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