Unaccountable organisations.....

Steevo

Member
Location
Gloucestershire
So....we've had:

The Environment Agency and their 100ft drain issue
Red Tractor and their double standards of UK grain vs imported
Natural England and @ajcc
NFU and their denial of ownership of Red Tractor

These are just a few examples of bodies failing in their own remit but hypocritically holding others to account. Sadly this "do as I say, not as I do" attitude of is becoming more and more common in the world today.

I thought it made a bit of sense to bring them all together in a single thread so the pattern is clearly visible, rather than it just being a series of apparently unrelated issues.

Any other examples to add?
 

neilo

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Montgomeryshire
HSE with their desktop designed policies, like stacking quadrant bales like bricks in a barn (eventually rescinded when they were repeatedly told how stupid they were), or making pensioners do UTV training because they might take the bins to the end of the drive in a Gator. :banghead:

I am off to a ‘focus’ meeting later this afternoon, where we are going to be questioned about H & S on farms. I may be able to hold my tongue….. for about 5 minutes.🤐😂
 

Ffermer Bach

Member
Livestock Farmer

After 11 years of Tory rule, Britain is still run by a hypocritical Blairite elite​

The quangos and BBC continue to be dominated by a soft-Left establishment that the PM is too scared to tame
SHERELLE JACOBS8 November 2021 • 9:30pm
Sherelle Jacobs


Who really runs Britain? The Conservative Party might keep winning elections, and the prevailing narrative is that incompetent Tory Brexiteers are running the country into the gutter. But in the nation’s quangos and regulators, at the top of our universities and cultural institutions, in the BBC and the charity sector, there is barely a conservative to be found. After 11 years of Tory rule, a soft-Left Blairite elite remains firmly in control. It is both scandalous and impressive. Despite the ejection of new Labour, Brexit, and the landslide election of a Right-wing populist government, the balance of power rests firmly with the old guard.
The evidence is everywhere. It is seemingly business as usual at the BBC, where newly appointed chair Richard Sharp defends the broadcaster’s impartiality (he insists that Auntie’s Brexit coverage was “incredibly balanced”), as the evidence to the contrary mounts and the public’s anger grows. The UK’s top universities are becoming, if anything, even more confident in their virtue-signalling hypocrisy. While Oxford vows to “decolonise” degrees, it has emerged that two of its colleges have accepted millions of pounds in donations from the Mosley family, money inherited from the notorious fascist Sir Oswald Mosley. Both of the colleges in question, St Peter’s and Lady Margaret Hall, were at the time headed by paragons of the soft-Left elite, former BBC controller Mark Damazer and Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger.


ADVERTISING

The Tories have made little progress in reining in the “Blob”. Whitehall sinks every project that insults its sensibilities – most recently the Prime Minister’s gumptious hopes to make Britain the Qatar of hydrogen. And so much for the bonfire of the quangos; in fact, their spending has tripled under the Tories.
Though the Government likes to reassure its supporters that it knows these organisations are compromised by bias, it lacks the will to tackle the problem head on. Many Tories have long suspected that the parliamentary standards commissioner, Kathryn Stone, has been treating Brexiteers unfairly, but the Prime Minister retreated from battle last week as soon as he realised that it would be politically controversial.
The Government has also failed to challenge the political appointments watchdog’s intervention in the recruitment process for top quango jobs. It was reported this week that the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments blocked Tory-endorsed interview panellists for the role of BBC chairman, as well board members for the British Film Institute and the Office for Students. This was justified on the basis that those put forward weren’t “independent”.
The problem is partly that the power of the soft Left establishment is even stickier than many Brexiteers imagined. It has rigged the system by elevating “process” to an almost spiritual status, while subjectively defining the qualities candidates need to succeed.
This includes the gold-standard ideal of “objectivity”, or “impartiality”. The meaning of these words has been reinvented for the post-modern era, from a commitment to logically revealed truth to a “balanced” positioning between extremities, which tends to mean a commitment to a socially liberal form of technocratic “centrism”. Equally, since Blair, the definition of “diversity” has been restricted to refer only to professional women and ethnic minorities, who conveniently tend towards a centre-Left worldview, rather than greater openness to the working-class or laymen.
Clearly, to overthrow such a regime, the Tories require an argument stronger than the need to politically “rebalance” the system. Such a weak justification leaves them open to charges of nepotism. Instead they should be exposing the lies and artifice that underpin the power of this elite, and opening public bodies to democratic oversight.
They have made some headway on a few fronts. Oliver Dowden’s move as culture secretary to set up a new board to discuss how heritage organisations can educate the public about their past, without succumbing to the anti-statue brigade – with members including Trevor Phillips, the former director of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and the historian Robert Tombs – was a cleverly balanced response to an issue that the liberal Left views through a hysterical lens. Although it was attacked by the woke industrial complex, the race report the Government commissioned which found no evidence of structural racism in this country was subversively daring.
Yet elsewhere they have shown that they have little stomach for a real fight. While they are happy to lambast the BBC’s false claims of impartiality, their threatened “showdown” with the broadcaster amounts to little more than populist rhetoric. Meanwhile, Conservatives who have managed to penetrate the quangos are inevitably almost always a “moderate”, and usually a Remainer.
Most dispiritingly, the Government seems to think it has to work within the grain of the existing system, rather than unpick its very foundations. But it’s not good enough to replace one quango with another: as O’Sullivan’s law states, institutions that are not explicitly Right-wing will tend to become Left-wing over time.
They could, for example, be seeking to give citizens a greater stake in the system. The National Lottery Community Fund’s regional committees, which have randomly recruited people from the electoral register before vetting them for public service, could be an alternative model for deciding quango selection panels. Members of the public could even be chosen “by lot” for secondment stints in select public roles. Such a shift would have the added advantage of challenging the elite’s reverence for “specialisation” and “expertise”. It’s a nonsense that all public roles require “expert” professionals to hold them.
But the Tories cannot do nothing. The institutional resistance of public bodies to conservative policies will only get worse over time. Leaving these bodies in the hands of the same old figures also effectively overrules the democratic rejection of the elite old guard that Brexit embodied. The public will not put up indefinitely with being ruled by a professional elite that does not see the world like them.
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Humble Village Farmer

Member
BASE UK Member
Location
Essex
HSE with their desktop designed policies, like stacking quadrant bales like bricks in a barn (eventually rescinded when they were repeatedly told how stupid they were), or making pensioners do UTV training because they might take the bins to the end of the drive in a Gator. :banghead:

I am off to a ‘focus’ meeting later this afternoon, where we are going to be questioned about H & S on farms. I may be able to hold my tongue….. for about 5 minutes.🤐😂
Although, HSE can be a bit overzealous, like, for example their out of touch bale stacking suggestion, they do at least have a remit which is to reduce accidents etc. Bales do have a habit of killing people so you can see their point.

We're a civilised country and don't want to go back to barefoot kids working on building sites. Some of it is ridiculous but there is usually a point to it.

Don't get me started on the Mafia though.
 
Last edited:

bluebell

Member
My local council, environment agency, charities, sometimes shocking the amount of wasted money? well its not theirs it all the people who donate in good faith? Natural england? etc etc etc etc?
 

cows sh#t me to tears

Member
Livestock Farmer
Got one here too. My biggest pet hate being a dairyfarmer is Dairy Australia. Set themselves up post deregulation out of whatever they were called as a industry research body. Only us farmers pay a levy to them, not the processors. No accountability at all. $650 k to the chairman (more than the PM gets) and all they have to do is "spend" our money every year.
The levy is due for voting on this year. There is NO option to either reduce the amount or pay zero. We have seen zero benefit on farm from the 150k + in levy payments we have had to cough up (taken out of our milk cheque by the processor) since the pŕìçks set themselves up with jobs for life...
 

shearerlad

Member
Livestock Farmer
Got one here too. My biggest pet hate being a dairyfarmer is Dairy Australia. Set themselves up post deregulation out of whatever they were called as a industry research body. Only us farmers pay a levy to them, not the processors. No accountability at all. $650 k to the chairman (more than the PM gets) and all they have to do is "spend" our money every year.
The levy is due for voting on this year. There is NO option to either reduce the amount or pay zero. We have seen zero benefit on farm from the 150k + in levy payments we have had to cough up (taken out of our milk cheque by the processor) since the pŕìçks set themselves up with jobs for life...
Off topic I know by that equates to roughly £354,500, so the head bummer at British Wool is on peanuts in comparison!!

Tin hat firmly on!!! :bag::bag:
 

Old Boar

Member
Location
West Wales
The NHS - serious medical accident? Lift carpet, brush under.
Police - break code of ethics? No, thats OK. lessons will not be learned.
County Council - ignoring their own policies. No problem, no one to blame.
The Government - breaking the law. Yes, we know it is illegal, but so what?

The "safety net" has huge holes and only money or power makes the mesh slightly tighter.
 

bobk

Member
Location
stafford

After 11 years of Tory rule, Britain is still run by a hypocritical Blairite elite​

The quangos and BBC continue to be dominated by a soft-Left establishment that the PM is too scared to tame
SHERELLE JACOBS8 November 2021 • 9:30pm
Sherelle Jacobs


Who really runs Britain? The Conservative Party might keep winning elections, and the prevailing narrative is that incompetent Tory Brexiteers are running the country into the gutter. But in the nation’s quangos and regulators, at the top of our universities and cultural institutions, in the BBC and the charity sector, there is barely a conservative to be found. After 11 years of Tory rule, a soft-Left Blairite elite remains firmly in control. It is both scandalous and impressive. Despite the ejection of new Labour, Brexit, and the landslide election of a Right-wing populist government, the balance of power rests firmly with the old guard.
The evidence is everywhere. It is seemingly business as usual at the BBC, where newly appointed chair Richard Sharp defends the broadcaster’s impartiality (he insists that Auntie’s Brexit coverage was “incredibly balanced”), as the evidence to the contrary mounts and the public’s anger grows. The UK’s top universities are becoming, if anything, even more confident in their virtue-signalling hypocrisy. While Oxford vows to “decolonise” degrees, it has emerged that two of its colleges have accepted millions of pounds in donations from the Mosley family, money inherited from the notorious fascist Sir Oswald Mosley. Both of the colleges in question, St Peter’s and Lady Margaret Hall, were at the time headed by paragons of the soft-Left elite, former BBC controller Mark Damazer and Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger.


ADVERTISING

The Tories have made little progress in reining in the “Blob”. Whitehall sinks every project that insults its sensibilities – most recently the Prime Minister’s gumptious hopes to make Britain the Qatar of hydrogen. And so much for the bonfire of the quangos; in fact, their spending has tripled under the Tories.
Though the Government likes to reassure its supporters that it knows these organisations are compromised by bias, it lacks the will to tackle the problem head on. Many Tories have long suspected that the parliamentary standards commissioner, Kathryn Stone, has been treating Brexiteers unfairly, but the Prime Minister retreated from battle last week as soon as he realised that it would be politically controversial.
The Government has also failed to challenge the political appointments watchdog’s intervention in the recruitment process for top quango jobs. It was reported this week that the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments blocked Tory-endorsed interview panellists for the role of BBC chairman, as well board members for the British Film Institute and the Office for Students. This was justified on the basis that those put forward weren’t “independent”.
The problem is partly that the power of the soft Left establishment is even stickier than many Brexiteers imagined. It has rigged the system by elevating “process” to an almost spiritual status, while subjectively defining the qualities candidates need to succeed.
This includes the gold-standard ideal of “objectivity”, or “impartiality”. The meaning of these words has been reinvented for the post-modern era, from a commitment to logically revealed truth to a “balanced” positioning between extremities, which tends to mean a commitment to a socially liberal form of technocratic “centrism”. Equally, since Blair, the definition of “diversity” has been restricted to refer only to professional women and ethnic minorities, who conveniently tend towards a centre-Left worldview, rather than greater openness to the working-class or laymen.
Clearly, to overthrow such a regime, the Tories require an argument stronger than the need to politically “rebalance” the system. Such a weak justification leaves them open to charges of nepotism. Instead they should be exposing the lies and artifice that underpin the power of this elite, and opening public bodies to democratic oversight.
They have made some headway on a few fronts. Oliver Dowden’s move as culture secretary to set up a new board to discuss how heritage organisations can educate the public about their past, without succumbing to the anti-statue brigade – with members including Trevor Phillips, the former director of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and the historian Robert Tombs – was a cleverly balanced response to an issue that the liberal Left views through a hysterical lens. Although it was attacked by the woke industrial complex, the race report the Government commissioned which found no evidence of structural racism in this country was subversively daring.
Yet elsewhere they have shown that they have little stomach for a real fight. While they are happy to lambast the BBC’s false claims of impartiality, their threatened “showdown” with the broadcaster amounts to little more than populist rhetoric. Meanwhile, Conservatives who have managed to penetrate the quangos are inevitably almost always a “moderate”, and usually a Remainer.
Most dispiritingly, the Government seems to think it has to work within the grain of the existing system, rather than unpick its very foundations. But it’s not good enough to replace one quango with another: as O’Sullivan’s law states, institutions that are not explicitly Right-wing will tend to become Left-wing over time.
They could, for example, be seeking to give citizens a greater stake in the system. The National Lottery Community Fund’s regional committees, which have randomly recruited people from the electoral register before vetting them for public service, could be an alternative model for deciding quango selection panels. Members of the public could even be chosen “by lot” for secondment stints in select public roles. Such a shift would have the added advantage of challenging the elite’s reverence for “specialisation” and “expertise”. It’s a nonsense that all public roles require “expert” professionals to hold them.
But the Tories cannot do nothing. The institutional resistance of public bodies to conservative policies will only get worse over time. Leaving these bodies in the hands of the same old figures also effectively overrules the democratic rejection of the elite old guard that Brexit embodied. The public will not put up indefinitely with being ruled by a professional elite that does not see the world like them.
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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politic...till-run-hypocritical-blairite-elite/#comment
What an excellent observation , and , jeez how true it is
 
So....we've had:

The Environment Agency and their 100ft drain issue
Red Tractor and their double standards of UK grain vs imported
Natural England and @ajcc
NFU and their denial of ownership of Red Tractor

These are just a few examples of bodies failing in their own remit but hypocritically holding others to account. Sadly this "do as I say, not as I do" attitude of is becoming more and more common in the world today.

I thought it made a bit of sense to bring them all together in a single thread so the pattern is clearly visible, rather than it just being a series of apparently unrelated issues.

Any other examples to add?

AHDB for colluding behind the scenes against their levy payers. They need shutting down ASAP because they are corrupt.

AIC

All supermarkets

The farming industry is being shafted by all the organisations that we pay fees to.
 

Exfarmer

Member
Location
Bury St Edmunds

After 11 years of Tory rule, Britain is still run by a hypocritical Blairite elite​

The quangos and BBC continue to be dominated by a soft-Left establishment that the PM is too scared to tame
SHERELLE JACOBS8 November 2021 • 9:30pm
Sherelle Jacobs


Who really runs Britain? The Conservative Party might keep winning elections, and the prevailing narrative is that incompetent Tory Brexiteers are running the country into the gutter. But in the nation’s quangos and regulators, at the top of our universities and cultural institutions, in the BBC and the charity sector, there is barely a conservative to be found. After 11 years of Tory rule, a soft-Left Blairite elite remains firmly in control. It is both scandalous and impressive. Despite the ejection of new Labour, Brexit, and the landslide election of a Right-wing populist government, the balance of power rests firmly with the old guard.
The evidence is everywhere. It is seemingly business as usual at the BBC, where newly appointed chair Richard Sharp defends the broadcaster’s impartiality (he insists that Auntie’s Brexit coverage was “incredibly balanced”), as the evidence to the contrary mounts and the public’s anger grows. The UK’s top universities are becoming, if anything, even more confident in their virtue-signalling hypocrisy. While Oxford vows to “decolonise” degrees, it has emerged that two of its colleges have accepted millions of pounds in donations from the Mosley family, money inherited from the notorious fascist Sir Oswald Mosley. Both of the colleges in question, St Peter’s and Lady Margaret Hall, were at the time headed by paragons of the soft-Left elite, former BBC controller Mark Damazer and Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger.


ADVERTISING

The Tories have made little progress in reining in the “Blob”. Whitehall sinks every project that insults its sensibilities – most recently the Prime Minister’s gumptious hopes to make Britain the Qatar of hydrogen. And so much for the bonfire of the quangos; in fact, their spending has tripled under the Tories.
Though the Government likes to reassure its supporters that it knows these organisations are compromised by bias, it lacks the will to tackle the problem head on. Many Tories have long suspected that the parliamentary standards commissioner, Kathryn Stone, has been treating Brexiteers unfairly, but the Prime Minister retreated from battle last week as soon as he realised that it would be politically controversial.
The Government has also failed to challenge the political appointments watchdog’s intervention in the recruitment process for top quango jobs. It was reported this week that the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments blocked Tory-endorsed interview panellists for the role of BBC chairman, as well board members for the British Film Institute and the Office for Students. This was justified on the basis that those put forward weren’t “independent”.
The problem is partly that the power of the soft Left establishment is even stickier than many Brexiteers imagined. It has rigged the system by elevating “process” to an almost spiritual status, while subjectively defining the qualities candidates need to succeed.
This includes the gold-standard ideal of “objectivity”, or “impartiality”. The meaning of these words has been reinvented for the post-modern era, from a commitment to logically revealed truth to a “balanced” positioning between extremities, which tends to mean a commitment to a socially liberal form of technocratic “centrism”. Equally, since Blair, the definition of “diversity” has been restricted to refer only to professional women and ethnic minorities, who conveniently tend towards a centre-Left worldview, rather than greater openness to the working-class or laymen.
Clearly, to overthrow such a regime, the Tories require an argument stronger than the need to politically “rebalance” the system. Such a weak justification leaves them open to charges of nepotism. Instead they should be exposing the lies and artifice that underpin the power of this elite, and opening public bodies to democratic oversight.
They have made some headway on a few fronts. Oliver Dowden’s move as culture secretary to set up a new board to discuss how heritage organisations can educate the public about their past, without succumbing to the anti-statue brigade – with members including Trevor Phillips, the former director of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and the historian Robert Tombs – was a cleverly balanced response to an issue that the liberal Left views through a hysterical lens. Although it was attacked by the woke industrial complex, the race report the Government commissioned which found no evidence of structural racism in this country was subversively daring.
Yet elsewhere they have shown that they have little stomach for a real fight. While they are happy to lambast the BBC’s false claims of impartiality, their threatened “showdown” with the broadcaster amounts to little more than populist rhetoric. Meanwhile, Conservatives who have managed to penetrate the quangos are inevitably almost always a “moderate”, and usually a Remainer.
Most dispiritingly, the Government seems to think it has to work within the grain of the existing system, rather than unpick its very foundations. But it’s not good enough to replace one quango with another: as O’Sullivan’s law states, institutions that are not explicitly Right-wing will tend to become Left-wing over time.
They could, for example, be seeking to give citizens a greater stake in the system. The National Lottery Community Fund’s regional committees, which have randomly recruited people from the electoral register before vetting them for public service, could be an alternative model for deciding quango selection panels. Members of the public could even be chosen “by lot” for secondment stints in select public roles. Such a shift would have the added advantage of challenging the elite’s reverence for “specialisation” and “expertise”. It’s a nonsense that all public roles require “expert” professionals to hold them.
But the Tories cannot do nothing. The institutional resistance of public bodies to conservative policies will only get worse over time. Leaving these bodies in the hands of the same old figures also effectively overrules the democratic rejection of the elite old guard that Brexit embodied. The public will not put up indefinitely with being ruled by a professional elite that does not see the world like them.
politics_headline.png

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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politic...till-run-hypocritical-blairite-elite/#comment
To be fair why would any half sharp Tory MP go to work on the side for a quango for £50k a year when they can be filling their boots by advancing the profits of any large or small company who wants to chuck them £100K plus. Often with zero work involved
 

bobk

Member
Location
stafford
AHDB for colluding behind the scenes against their levy payers. They need shutting down ASAP because they are corrupt.

AIC

All supermarkets

The farming industry is being shafted by all the organisations that we pay fees to.
I'd agree , except supermarkets , they're business looking for the best return , sadly our leaders are giving them a leg up
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 77 43.5%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 62 35.0%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 28 15.8%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.7%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.7%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 4 2.3%

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

  • 1,286
  • 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/
Top