david bramley

Grateful to Sir Geoffrey Boycott for revealing that the Cricket Regulator has absurdly fined the Deputy Chairman of Yorkshire CC , Phillip Hodson, £1,000 for telling two allegedly offensive and discriminatory gags at a lunch. The Telegraph says the gags were made at the Scarborough Cricket Club annual lunch. Frankly I find the fine and Mr Hodgson being fired from his role at YCC ridiculous and wrong. You make your own mind about the gags; Joke No 1. “I apologise for looking so tired but this is the third dinner in as many days. On Sunday I was in Halifax, speaking to the local haemorrhoid society where incidentally I received a standing ovation. “ On Monday I was in Hill as a guest of the Gay Liberation Front and I must say it’s gratifying to see so many friendly and familiar faces tonight. Joke No.2 ; “ Everybody’s getting their award and they’ve sold three or four bibles, but this chap has sold 305 bibles and I asked how did you sell 305? At that stage he starts to shutter. “ He explains; ‘Well,well, well I go and knock on the door and the lady comes to the door and I say; ‘ Would, would, would you like to buy a bible or would would you like me to stand here and read it to you.’” Pretty thin material but the idea of him being fined by the English Cricket Board regulator is simply absurd. Apparently only two of 200 guests at Scarborough Cricket Club complained to the Regulator but have decided to keep their anonymity. Appalling you can destroy someone’s reputation but demand you keep your own identity a secret. But even that cowardice is less important than fine being handed out an a reputation destroyed. Can you imagine the ECB committee pouring over the jokes before making that decision. What an odd site. At the minimum Mr Hodson should appeal and hold the ECB up to ridicule. They deserve it.

@FarmersWeekly @NFUtweets @LizWebsterSBF @SaveBritishFood @Nigelrefowens @1GarethWynJones @agricontract @wheat_daddy @TWBFarms @loosecollie @NoFarmsNoFoods Arise Sir Tom?

🗣️ @NFUtweets president Tom Bradshaw has defended the union’s decision to end its Stop the Family Farm Tax campaign. READ MORE: ow.ly/ZQQS50Y4KgG

I’ve never hunted and have no desire to start. But this is spot on👇 “This isn’t about animal welfare. It’s ideology over reality And rural communities will pay the price.”

@maxecowave @JoeWStanley Independent retailers will take the biggest hit. Disgusting behaviour from the supermarkets

@JoeWStanley Every time I see prices like this, I wonder who’s paying the real cost. UK farmers and our environment can’t survive on 8p a kilo veg. This isn’t sustainable, it’s a warning sign.

What’s the actual point? When will retailers just start paying people to take fresh food out of supermarkets? Devaluing food; devaluing farmers; devaluing the environment.

The moment Joe Root reached his first ever century in Australia 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿😍 #Ashes

Another day of shame for Labour… Keir Starmer just KICKED OUT the only Labour MP to vote against the Family Farm Tax! He couldn't care less about our farmers. This cruel tax will destroy them.

The fact is @RachelReevesMP - no true working people feel your budget (or party) represents them. The engine room of the uk is also in charge of bankrolling. This has to change. Repost if you’re a working person like me and agree!

Britain crosses these lines brazenly now. No debate. No shame. A government decree, a police order, and suddenly the people who feed the country – the most rooted, law-abiding citizens we have – are the ones being marched away in handcuffs. Not for rioting. Not for violence. For turning up to protest a tax raid that threatens the survival of family farms. This is what decay looks like when it turns into something darker: the state deciding who may speak and who must be silenced. The images from Westminster should chill anyone with a sense of Britain's old freedoms. Dozens of tractors draped in Union flags. Farmers who spend their lives in mud, dawn light and hard graft, standing in the capital because Rachel Reeves has reached for the most brutal tool in the Treasury drawer – inheritance tax – and pointed it straight at the land itself. One death in the family and the farm breaks into pieces, sold off to pay the bill. That is the reality behind the Budget's polite language. These men aren't in London for show. They are there because their futures have been put on the block. And what did the state do? The Met, which can't find the strength to stand up to eco-fanatics or pro-Hamas mobs, suddenly discovered iron in its spine the moment it faced peaceful rural protest. Section 14 orders. Sudden bans. Farmers singled out and cuffed like criminals. Officers who were helping them park an hour earlier switched roles and started clearing them out. This is not policing. This is obedience enforcement – selective, political, and aimed squarely at the demographic this government thinks it can steamroller without consequence. The excuse was "disruption." As if tractors circling Trafalgar Square for a morning threaten the life of the nation, while city-blocking marches and flag-waving fanatics do not. It's the same double standard we've seen for years: indulgence for the activist Left; force for the ordinary citizen who dares to object. A country that treats its farmers as a nuisance is already half-lost. A country that arrests them for standing in public is well on the way to something worse. This isn't happening by accident. It's the logical end of a government drunk on its own authority. They raid family farms for cash; then they send the police to muzzle the people affected. They ban tractors for "serious disruption" while gutting the mechanisms that once protected the public from the state. Speech tightened. Protest restricted. Juries stripped from trials. Now this. One brick at a time, the wall between the government and unchecked power is being pulled down. Farmers don't protest unless they have been pushed to breaking point. A ruling class that still understood the country it governs would know that. This one doesn't care. It sees them as an obstacle, not a backbone. And that is why the images from Westminster matter: they reveal a state no longer restrained by shame or tradition. A state that believes it can handcuff the hands that feed it and get away with it. The truth is simple: a government that fears peaceful farmers fears the country itself. And a government that turns the police on them is not preserving order; it is testing how far it can go. Britain isn't at the end of this road yet. But the direction of travel is plain to anyone with eyes open. "Farmers singled out and cuffed like criminals. Officers who were helping them park an hour earlier switched roles and started clearing them out."

@TheBarmyArmy @davidwarner31 Hey @TheBarmyArmy I’m assuming you’re trumpeter is learning the mastermind theme tune for the next time Steve Smith comes out to bat

Nice one @davidwarner31 😂😂😂

@NFUPolitical @ProagriLtd Not easy to go against your own government no matter how misguided a policy maybe but as a MP in a rural constituency @Mather_Keir we should at least know your views even if we don’t have your support.

A MESSAGE TO LABOUR MPs: With the Government's Budget two weeks away, NFU President Tom Bradshaw (@ProAgriLtd) thanks you for calling to protect family farms and urges you not to give up now.

Since it's conference season, here's a scene from the 2023 @NFUtweets conference when @Keir_Starmer came into the press room after addressing farmers at the conference. Here's a brief reminder of what he told farmers - enjoy 🧵(1/7)

Well, isn’t this just a monumental disaster! Associated British Foods have gone and pulled the plug on their bioethanol plant in Hull, and let me tell you, it’s not just a minor inconvenience—it’s a proper slap in the face for everyone involved. Farmers, suppliers, workers—the whole blooming supply chain’s been left in the lurch, and it’s all because of the absolute numpties running the show in Westminster. This catastrophe comes courtesy of a so-called “trade deal” with the Americans, cooked up by our illustrious Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, and Donald Trump. Back in May, they decided it’d be a brilliant idea to ditch the 19% tariff on a colossal 1.4 billion litres of US bioethanol flooding into the UK. That’s right—1.4 billion litres! That’s the *entire* UK ethanol market, handed over like a cheap pint at a dodgy pub. So, of course, our plant in East Yorkshire, already scraping by, has been left high and dry, like a fish flopping on the dock. The NFU’s wailing about what a “huge blow” this is, and they’re bang on. But honestly, what did those clowns in government expect? Did they think our farmers and factories could just shrug off a tsunami of cheap, tariff-free ethanol from the States? A load of bloody idiots, the lot of them! They’ve gone and gutted an entire industry just to crow about “free trade.” This is what happens when you let a bunch of pen-pushing bureaucrats meddle with people’s livelihoods. The Hull plant’s finished, the supply chain’s in ruins, and all we’ve got to show for it is a smug handshake between two politicians who wouldn’t know a biofuel from a bottle of bubbly. Utterly bonkers. #post-9914882" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?thre…

In 2002 Labour introduced a 0% starting rate of corporation tax. This meant people earning £15k (£27k in today’s money) could be self employed and pay about 18% tax, or work through a company and pay no tax. To no-one’s surprise but the Treasury’s, thousands of people set up companies and reduced their tax bills to zero overnight. Complex rules were brought in to try to stop this until eventually the government was forced to abolish its own mistaken policy, having lost a significant lump of tax revenue. With the expected changes to IHT and SFI it feels like we’re in a similar place. Is anyone carefully thinking through the consequences of the superficially attractive ideas being leaked or announced? With IHT, no one seems to have considered the impact on the succession of businesses between generations, the mental health of elderly business-owners, or the commercial strategies of those now being forced to divert funds that were going to improve productivity into instead shoring up their business against the proposed changes. Stripping funds from investment inhibits the very growth the Treasury says is vital to success. With the SFI leaks, again there seems to have been no consideration of how medium and larger farmers will react to being told that the current government now views the environmental work they have been doing as valueless, by withdrawing important support. Previously it was a sufficiently vital public good to support it with public money. If that support is withdrawn, why would businesses that are being urged by Ministers to be run ‘in a more businesslike manner’ exclude significant areas of their land from commercial food production? If the Government would only pause, reflect, consult and improve these policies they could likely achieve the underlying aims they are seeking. Until then, the unintended consequences of their proposals will inevitably manifest into mistakes that someone in the future will have to spend even more money to correct. It would be easy to fix these issues by asking industries to help refine the proposals into workable regulations. Is the Government strong enough to ask these sectors for help, or will it just plough on regardless?

Government moved Heaven and Earth to save working people’s jobs in the Steel Industry. Not so much for those ‘working people’ in the UK bioethanol industry and its supply chain.

@song2thesiren Thanks for the heads up 👊🏼

this album is really good

@nickhat75 @BurnCC_Linnets Marathon not a sprint Nick 😂

@davidbramley5 we better pull out our finger if the lads see this @BurnCC_Linnets

@RealJamesWoods Momentous day when Terry was released

I came across this photo today.

@Keir_Starmer Jesus! We’ve bollards in our town centre with more charisma!

You can’t have tax breaks for some of the wealthiest if you want NHS waiting lists to come down.

@StuartMaggs Land grab! Government have no interest in negotiating a deal. Their comments (re uk ag) are dismissive, unhelpful and come across as arrogant. They want to break up the UK family farming model to redistribute land. At least Mugabe had the decency to come through the front gate!

Having proposed drastic changes to inheritance tax rules for farmers and other family businesses, Rachel Reeves challenged the industry to suggest an alternative that raised the same tax. Today the NFU and other organisations from across the industry met with the Treasury to provide that alternative. They presented a clawback model which could capture the same tax from those who sell up after inheriting which would target tax avoidance and protect family farmers. James Murray MP refused to listen. A proposal that protects the elderly and unfortunate, improves food security and promotes growth in the rural economy was rejected out of hand. Not only does this make no sense, but the Government is throwing its own rural Labour MPs under a bus. Voters do not forget that their business might be lost to inheritance tax, they wake every night worrying about. They don't move on to other matters, they throw their support behind other political parties who promise to change the rules, who clearly support rural voters. Has Labour decided it doesn't need the rural vote to remain in power, sacrificing its own MPs to avoid Rachel Reeves losing face?