Someone let the cat out of the bag…..

[wanton dwarf]

Ignore all this BS. Its just college graduates playing a 'Who is the most woke?' game. It has zero implications for people in the real world because its utterly divorced from anything approaching the real world. As we are finding with the energy situation right now, eventually the word soup that passes for government policy hits the buffers of cold hard reality. And when it does all the fine words will get thrown out of the window in a mad panic, because people who have votes might just be getting a bit hacked off with having no heating, no lighting, hardly any food in the shops and what food there is going up in price weekly.

Whilst I agree in general.

The government, lords and civil service doesn't have a good record of backing sound policies and spending money wisely.

Far better they were replaced with a sane alternative which was closely tied with public aspirations.

 

[Frank-the-Wool]

It is true we are being manipulated by lots of people that have no interest in agriculture.

Today I had a conversation with a lady who will be responsible for administering some £8 million of public funds that are to go for research into Endemic diseases in livestock. It is apparent that the some of the decisions on how this will be used will be decided by "Social Scientists".
When I asked what these were I was told that they are the people who decipher those surveys we are asked to complete!

 

[yellow belly]

Judging by the constant stream of cars visiting the local McDonald’s every day
even 8 am on a Sunday morning the anti meat environmentleists are failing completely

because they only meet each other they will never be succesfull at educating the masses

Also when we had panic buying the vegan option were never sold out

the local pubs menu only sports one token vegetarian dish which is never sold out

all the latest studies ( last 10 years ) show that drinking milk and eating butter keeps you alive and healthy for longer

 

[spider mike]

Where the hell does he think the government's money comes from?

Most politicians haven't a clue. Most don't know the difference between the economy and government spending. Some opposition members think government spending is the economy

 

[wanton dwarf]

It is true we are being manipulated by lots of people that have no interest in agriculture.

Today I had a conversation with a lady who will be responsible for administering some £8 million of public funds that are to go for research into Endemic diseases in livestock. It is apparent that the some of the decisions on how this will be used will be decided by "Social Scientists".
When I asked what these were I was told that they are the people who decipher those surveys we are asked to complete!

Well hopefully you now realise why you shouldn't fill them in. They are used against you or sold to others to make money out of you.

 

[Greythundercloudys]

The butchers is the busiest shop on our High Street and as said mcdonald is packed all day everyday with teens

 

[Frank-the-Wool]

Well hopefully you now realise why you shouldn't fill them in. They are used against you or sold to others to make money out of you.

Catch 22!! Do you try to influence the decision makers so any money available is spent on what benefits you and your business or just ignore it and the money is wasted anyway.

 

[topground]

Catch 22!! Do you try to influence the decision makers so any money available is spent on what benefits you and your business or just ignore it and the money is wasted anyway.

ADAS want to carry out a telephone survey about my grazing practices on behalf of DEFRA. I have asked for a copy of the questions before hand so I can see what angle they are pursuing. I was caught out with the last one I did which was clearly slanted towards non intensive livestock production.
I have complained and am still awaiting payment 3 months later.

 

[wanton dwarf]

Catch 22!! Do you try to influence the decision makers so any money available is spent on what benefits you and your business or just ignore it and the money is wasted anyway.

The latest policies being put forward by Boris Johnson come from the United Nations. Climate Change and Rewilding were adopted many years ago. As were mass immigration policies.

Rewilding - which includes moving populations from the Countryside into Towns and Cities - is Agenda 21.

 

[Barleymow]

Well hopefully you now realise why you shouldn't fill them in. They are used against you or sold to others to make money out of you.

Does anyone ever fill them in properly without exaggerated areas eg double your acreage

 

[Ashtree]

Why is everybody getting their knicks in a twist over this? Remember the OP, quoted the BBC.
Most of you consider everything published by that outlet to be fake news. Surely selective cognisance isn’t at play….?

 

[nonemouse]

Does anyone ever fill them in properly without exaggerated areas eg double your acreage

Usually answer in acres and tell them it’s ha so I can pretend to farming 2 1/2 times more land to qualify for a better class of freebie

 

[manhill]

George is a plonker. For the purposes of this discussion, the environmental movement vis a vis food, farming and the environment is represented by Sustain. Have a look at their website. Put 'George Monbiot' in the search engine. He doesn't feature. He's just a gobshite self-publicist.

https://www.sustainweb.org/about/

Shoots a deer, bawls his eyes out over what he's just done, then wants to release wolves to predate the deer. If I was a deer I think I'd prefer to be shot than torn apart by wolves while still alive. A complete idiot this man.

 

[tullah]

It's making the public accept that they have to change their lifestyle that no one in power will face up to. Govt MP on the box earlier today said that Joe Public will not have to foot the bill for reducing carbon emissions!

Who else is going to pay FFS? It's time the Politicians told the public a few home truths!

So who is supplying the free lunch?

 

[Tarw Coch]

Usually answer in acres and tell them it’s ha so I can pretend to farming 2 1/2 times more land to qualify for a better class of freebie

Couldn’t be arsed converting acres to hectares for June returns one year so filled in in acres and added a note that all areas are in acres.
Later in the year I received some survey stating that I was growing X hectares of wheat.............the acreage, so obviously they don’t read these forms very carefully.

 

[Steevo]

A Telegraph article I read this morning reminded me of this thread......but from a completely different angle.​

​

​

How we will be ‘nudged’ this winter​

Could the parade of ministers and health advisers urging us to help ‘save Christmas’ be up to their old tricks?

ByLaura Dodsworth21 October 2021 • 5:00am

There’s a chill in the air. Not from the changing seasons – it’s still fairly balmy – but from the latest attempts to orchestrate a subtle psychological manipulation of us all.
About 18 months ago, in the lockdown summer of 2020, I started to argue that the Government’s response to Covid is driven not so much by medical science or epidemiology, but instead by the psychological insights of behavioural scientists. In my book, A State of Fear: How the UK Government Weaponised Fear During the Covid-19 Pandemic, I argue that controversial “nudge theory” lies at the heart of Westminster’s response. It refers to sneaky attempts to prime, prepare and prod us into their desired mindset and course of action, without us ever realising we are being coerced.
Some responses to my book seemed naive. Many believed that Downing Street’s approach was genuinely grounded in public health epidemiology. Now, I think the dial is starting to move; the Government’s strategy becomes ever-more clear. Once nudge is seen, it can’t be unseen. Behavioural scientists were dazzling the public with card tricks. This week, the Government may have overplayed its hand.
On Tuesday, Professor Neil Ferguson, the Imperial College epidemiologist whose modelling was used as the basis for the UK’s lockdown policy, made an illuminating comment on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “Nobody likes having their freedoms curtailed by measures but it’s prudent to be cautious, in everyday interactions certainly,” he told presenter Sarah Smith, “and wearing masks certainly helps that: it reminds people we’re not completely out of the woods yet.”
It was a startling admission, if we needed one, that masks are as much about psychology as they are about preventing infection. They act as a social cue, to use the language of behavioural scientists, nudging us into vigilance.
Then, on Wednesday, after NHS leaders urged the Government to implement its Covid ‘Plan B’ immediately (including the reimplementation of mandatory masks in crowded indoor spaces, and advice to work from home), business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng took to television to herald the “hard-won gains” Britain has eked out of lockdown, adding: “I don’t want to reverse back to a situation where we have lockdowns, I don’t think it’s necessary”. It was a deployment of the sunk-cost fallacy: we’ve come so far, we mustn’t allow our good work to be undone. Until hearing Kwarteng’s words, you mightn’t have known there was even a risk of another lockdown. But now the idea has been seeded in your mind, ever so subtly.
Yesterday, the Health Secretary Sajid Javid gave the first Downing Street briefing in a month – surely a portentous sign in itself… – in which he announced that Covid infections had risen 15 per cent in a week, and warned that cases could hit 100,000 a day this winter.
But, he continued, “if we all play our part, then we can give ourselves the best possible chance in this race… [We can] get through this winter and enjoy Christmas with our loved ones.”
Why is Christmas even in doubt, an alarmed listener might think?
These psychological cues are carefully calibrated, more so than many realise. In a document drawn up by the “Nudge Unit” (known formally as the Behavioural Insights Team, a team seat up by David Cameron in 2010; it is now a private company, but is still one-third owned by the Cabinet Office), scientists examine the success of Slovakia’s mass testing programme, looking at how we could replicate that success in the UK.
“Use empowering messaging,” the document advises. “Motivate people by creating a spirit of national resistance to the virus, highlighting the ability to make a positive action and contribute to the national effort to save lives and livelihoods. Use ‘save Christmas’ messaging.”

Laura Dodsworth: ‘Masks are as much about psychology as they are about preventing infection’ CREDIT: Jeff Gilbert for The Telegraph
The threat of lockdown hangs like a Sword of Damocles. Will we or won’t we? It seems unlikely that the public and businesses could be persuaded again to cancel festivities for a second year. Regardless, the threat of lockdown might be leveraged to justify the introduction of Covid passports, in what is known as a “reciprocation nudge”, in which we appear to be given a concession (the freedom to see our friends and relatives) as long as we roll over and accept a less severe option (in this instance, Covid passports).
It all makes me feel rather like a child: eat your vegetables, kids, or you’ll lose your right to dessert.
It is now becoming clear that Covid passports are a behavioural science tool, too, used to increase vaccine uptake. They are vigorously opposed by MPs and civil liberties groups, and there hasn’t yet been a vote in Parliament. And yet they squat in the Government’s ‘Plan B’ as a mild threat.
There’s more honesty about this north of the border. Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s First Minister, said the passport scheme “will not eradicate transmission completely, but it will help reduce it in some higher-risk settings, and it will maximise protection against serious illness. And we believe – as we have seen already in some other countries – it will help encourage take-up of the vaccine.”
But that strategy may well backfire. A study by academics at Imperial College found that vaccine passports deter a significant minority of people who want autonomy over their bodies. This chimes with research conducted by the Vaccine Confidence Project.
The Government’s Winter Plan contained some welcome news. The most draconian schedules of the Coronavirus Act have been revoked, including the powers to close schools, allow potentially infectious people to be detained, and restrictions on gatherings and events. The times are “challenging”, but it is no longer claimed that Covid is the “biggest threat this country has faced in peacetime history”.
But the policy is vague, and the language rife with “nudges”. We will move from Plan A to Plan B if the NHS comes under “unsustainable pressure”. It’s under serious pressure every winter so consider yourselves put on notice.
At this point, Plan B looks inevitable. For Patrick Fagan, a behavioural scientist at Goldsmiths, University of London, it’s a classic example of what he calls the “foot-in-the-door” technique. “Firstly, it makes us accept Plan A, because compared to Plan B, it looks more reasonable,” he told me. “Then, once we have accepted and acclimatised to Plan A, we are more likely to then accept Plan B, because it is just one extra step on top of the commitment we’ve already made.” He also thinks discussion of Plan B might help ministers with the “exposure effect... simply by talking about the measures... the Government makes them more familiar and therefore more psychologically acceptable”.

Epidemiologist Neil Ferguson: ‘Nobody likes having their freedoms curtailed by measures but it’s prudent to be cautious’ CREDIT: Imperial College London
Bizarrely, after 18 months, we’re still trapped in a Groundhog Day of modelling and worst-case scenarios. More than a year ago, on September 21, 2020, Prof Chris Whitty and Prof Patrick Vallance warned of infections hitting 50,000 per day by mid-October in their “Shock and Awe” presentation. When the day arrived, the moving average was 16,228. The big numbers both fuel the policies and justify them. It doesn’t matter that there are more optimistic scenarios, or that the modelling has limitations, because the first scary headline sticks in the brain. It’s an example of what behavioural psychologists call “salience” – the tendency of our brain to focus on what is novel and risky.
“Since the beginning of the pandemic, it seems many modelling assumptions, such as the infection fatality rate, have been quite pessimistic,” says Dr Alex De Figueiredo, who conducts statistical analyses for the Vaccine Confidence Project. “I think this has been why many of the predictions – such as hospitalisations and deaths – have been overstated. It also appears there has been little effort to validate forecasts out-of-sample, such as applying the models to Sweden or Florida, who have had far fewer restrictions.”
Never-ending question marks hover over travel, keeping a whole industry adrift. Double-vaccinated travellers will no longer need expensive and inconvenient PCR tests, ministers announced last month. Many will delight in the news, and it sounds sensible on the surface. However, the previously infected do not benefit from the exemption, causing me to question whether this is really a case of “following the science”. Instead, it looks like an incentive, a classic nudge, to encourage jabs. The vaccinated are rewarded and the unvaccinated are punished. Bearing in mind that negative tests and prior infection could suffice; this decision reeks of disdain for personal autonomy.
As we move into November and then the festive season, I wouldn’t be surprised to see ministers on television, urging us to follow restrictions in order or to “save Christmas”, as they did last year. We must be good boys and girls if we want Father Christmas to come. And be aware, right now, the nudgers are drafting our collective New Year’s Resolutions.
As told to Luke Mintz

How we will be ‘nudged’ this winter

Could the parade of ministers and health advisers urging us to help ‘save Christmas’ be up to their old tricks?

www.telegraph.co.uk

 

[Ffermer Bach]

Old George don’t like sheep and he’s what could be described as an ‘environmentalist’

and Iolo Williams has not been very keen on sheep either

 

[Ffermer Bach]

Whilst I agree in general.

The government, lords and civil service doesn't have a good record of backing sound policies and spending money wisely.

Far better they were replaced with a sane alternative which was closely tied with public aspirations.

The problem being, when we have government of Technocrats, things are even worse!

 

[Ffermer Bach]

Why is everybody getting their knicks in a twist over this? Remember the OP, quoted the BBC.
Most of you consider everything published by that outlet to be fake news. Surely selective cognisance isn’t at play….?

I find that there is so much good stuff published by the BBC and on Radio 4, it is just that there is also so much biased, city centric left wing stuff too.

 

[wanton dwarf]

I find that there is so much good stuff published by the BBC and on Radio 4, it is just that there is also so much biased, city centric left wing stuff too.

You'll have to point out the "good stuff" on the BBC. In the past decade the majority is pure bile and rubbish.

In fact it's so weak and incorrect at times it's embarrasing.

I'll always remember Jeremy Paxman and the then IT Zar for HMG having an interview where both of them knew nothing about IT.