GOVERNMENT  SELF-BUILD  HOUSES  (GS-BH)

By Rev.  James Armstrong (who has self built two houses)

CONCEIVED,  THE FIRST OF MAY   1^st  May 2023

THE  NEW HOUSING PARTY

GOVERNMENT SELF-BUILD HOUSING TO  ACHIEVE GOOD HOUSING

 

1. AIMS AND NEEDS

The central policy of tomorrow’s Self-build housing (GS-BH) government will meet peoples’ greatest need -Universal access to good housing, throughout  UK , in sufficient numbers to meet demand  and at accessible prices and rents for working people.  Referencing  ‘Affordable houses” is  a confidence trick – Waiting lists for “A”  H can run to 10 years, That’s not  affordable.

 

2. ADVANTAGES OF THE SELF BUILD- FOCUSSEDGOVERNMENT  

Satisfy the need for houses that all previous post war governments failed to meet.

In 2009 each of 24 Self Build Houses at St Minver Cornwall cost £83k – less than half the (then) price of ‘commercial’ or ‘social houses’.

Grateful self builders in teams and streams  will have reason to support NS-BH Government.

NS-BH as HMG will report – in housing numbers end-year’s build totals–It can’t afford to fail.

HS-BH Bulldoze government housing scams – Build foundations of YOUR house and home

Under one system government can promote the most climate friendly construction system.

 

3. OTHER POLITICAL PARTIES SHOW THEIR AGE  

‘Labour’  is yesterday’s news. Few ‘labourers’ vote,  fewer Unions fund them.

‘Lib-Dems”are last century leftovers – Whig v Libs. Libs historically support Conservatives.

“Conservatives” feed the  City of London to conserve yesterday’s policies and riches.

Communists?  USSR has failed.   Russia is a malign autocracy.  All are  pathetic relics.

We target housing shortage, inflation. Ever rising house prices, and banks’ rising mortgage income . Each mortgage is  money c r e a t e d  by plc banks. This devalues the coinage,  yields dividends to the bank and hits the  unhoused with ever higher rents and house prices.

 

4. PRIVATE FINANCIAL INTERESTS USURPED DEMOCRATIC HOUSING POLICY

Behind the scenes, the autonomous City of London is in charge of policy. The Medi-evil ‘Rememberancer’ sitting behind the speaker’s chair with a £50million budget feeds each Select Committee with pro-City financial policies to legislate for them.

Examples are privatisation, banks’ mortgages swamp building societies’, selling off social houses to feed the mortgage lenders – the same crooked* (see below)  banks who c r e a t e money and so devalue it (mis-called ‘inflation’ and ‘growth’) They  charge high mortgage interest, invest the ‘funny money’ they are encouraged to c r e a t e to spawn multiple profit sources . This  process is masked from working people.  Only Westminster Palace knows it.

Incredible but true –

In contrast the householder  repays the loan monthly in real money from earned  wages and salaries. Families suffer as  the cost of living rises and wage packets buy less.

This giant City, B of E, HM Treasury trick on voters is backed  by weak governments and traditional economists.  ‘crook’ international banks -Goldman Sachs, JPM, HSBC…have had multi  £m and £bn fines.  As  corporations they are exempt from jail for life and hanging. Their crimes are unrecorded by Criminal Records Office (that’s for people only)

Entitling  the homeless with planning permission for building on ‘exceptional sites’

Nationalising land frees it from exploitation by Land Lords, Housebuilders, CAP millionaires

GOVERNMENT SCAMS EXPOSED-   Language is abused when they claim to build HOMES.

The panacea of “Affordable homes” are at prices and rents  out of reach of many , H.A.s output declines and some 16  premium priced houses are built to every one  ‘social’ leading to a waiting list of up to ten years.   Targets are set years ahead for revolving Ministers.

 

5. ‘ECONOMICS’,CREATING FUNNY MONEY, SECURITISING MORGAGES

They are  smoke screens hiding the truth – weapons forged by government to tax   houseneedy people with higher mortgages to reward plc’s and grow the privileged sector -second home buyers.

In five years GS-BH will cure the  problem and progressed  nationalising building land.

 

6.  FROM DAY ONE THE PRIME AIM OF DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT IS TO FACILITATESELF-BUILD HOUSING.  

• Enable groups to build good houses – detached, with garden, water, gas, electrics..…
• Houses wherever needed at half the cost – St Minver- of Wimpey’s or Persimmons’
• Recruit in your area Self Build teams of twelve  from any waged person in employ so s(he)  can repay reduced mortgage instalments. ( your unpaid labour is credited as the deposit to buy the house) Do it nationwide .  A local architect guides each group.
• You work, , assisted by friends and family, at weekends and holidays
• Housing Ass.’s supply land, in return have one extra half-price house built per team.
• Building Land is confiscated by fining ‘landbankers’ in land, as illegal monopoly land- owners  (Huge landbanks are listed on p81 of Barker Review of Housing)
• Office of Fair Trading and Monopolies Commission shelved by HMG will be reinstated.
• Rates will be reintroduced, as still in force in Northern Ireland, only on homes over 750 square feet (approx UK average) floor-space.

 

7. ARGUMENT FOR SELF BUILDING HOUSES AND FOR A GS-BH GOVT.

Multi £billionaire P L C  Housebuilders- monopolise scarce building land  and cause shortage to increase house prices dramatically – This an invitation HMG to nationalise  building land.

Person operated Self Builders’ output is ALREADY   bigger than corporate Wimpey,  and Persimmon,  and Barratt and Miller  (see OFT Housing  Report )

Land is a scarce resource, building-land scarcer. One profiteering plc builder controlled  33 years supply! (Barker p81 ).   Nationalising  designated ‘building land’,  is democratic and now vital. Not doing so invites ruin.  It’s either  ‘Tighten HMG control of plc builders’  or Hello to ever-rising site and house prices. Deathless ‘corporations’ were invented by idiots before air flight, radio, tv, ‘inter-nationalism’ or internet. Corporations outlive governments, people and nations. Huge annual profits of these foot-loose giants enable plc’s and the City  to control  HMG policy. This explains rising prices.  (an evil example is UK invading Egypt in1956- to protect UK Suez canal shareholders and  ‘Imperial’ connections in the east. )

 

8. TODAY’S AND FUTURE HOUSING NEEDS ARE MET BY NS-BH 

Think of the enthusiasm when people move in and own the house they built (and built more quickly  than my two- year National army Service stint at 28/6 per week.   JA

 

               Good Houses should be snug  and airy, building houses  isn’t  scary.  

              College taught me  Greek and Hebrew, I taught myself to  build a  bijou.     

 

MAYDAY!  NATIONAL  SELF-BUILD HOUSING PARTY conceived to-day! 

*In MONOPOLY’ only the LANDlord wins ** Barker Review p81 lists plc’s huge land banks      

OTHERWISE, ARMAGEDDON AWAITS –

 

Hundreds of north London cottages in 1924 cost Dame Henrietta Barnett £250 each.

The  history of one – in 1924 it cost  £250, 1967 sold for £6,000, 2017 sold for £608,000.

-pro rata, In 2067 would cost  £62 million***  but won’t when GS-BH intervenes.   

***the  2067  buyer might pay an additional £9m Stamp Duty.  From the ONS website-

HMG’s Stamp  Duty  Income in 2022 was  £22bn , an eleven percent  rise on 2021.

Did your wages rise by eleven percent in 1922?   Food prices did.

 

REV James Armstrong  –   Let us Pray

–  THANK GOD FOR GOVERNMENT SELF-BUILD HOUSES, G S-B H.

As agricultural workers joined the fight against Adolf Hitler, imported American tractors took over from horse-power. Post-war, the drive for ‘efficient’ fertilisers and pesticides ended centuries of farming crafts and wisdom. Some of these skills were only retained by gypsies who have now themselves been almost persecuted out of existence.

Barely mentioned is the key role farming subsidies have played in these changes, making smallholdings, market-gardens and even the 100 acre farm barely viable. The industrial agriculturists, like the Duke of Westminster, private equity and Crown Estate, who never even cast eyes on 99.9% of their land, each get a estimated eight-figure sum annually.

The markets are moving in fast. Near Oxford, private equity is about to build an 11 mile long solar farm, the biggest in Europe. Investors are taking thousands of acres out of production on the back of a rigged electricity market.

in George Monbiot’s 2022 declaration that ‘farming is the greatest threat to humanity’ it is as if the environmental movement he claims to be part of, and its sixty year fight against industrial agriculture, never happened. Is George hoping we’ve forgotten? King Charles too seems to have abandoned his organic life, sacking Highrove’s organic farm manager and signing GM into law.

Farmers, and the surpluses they produced, created civilisation out of poverty, and without them, we starve. The simple and socially just solution is to cap subsidies at 400 acres or to subsidise the farmer rather than the acres … and to make all farming organic.

Time then to refresh all our memories about the great post-war campaigning journalists who chronicled these devastating changes which ended time-worn farming practices. Noting too the latest incarnation of enclosure, depopulation that meant many farm labourers never returned to the land.

Unacknowledged at The Guardian, some still fight for rural social justice and love of organic land… as today’s countryside becomes a playground for greedy individuals and their corporations. [TG, ed.]

Robin Page: ‘An asset to any cause’

The Decline of the English Village, by Robin Page (1974)
Extract from Chapter 1, the home and farm
ISBN 0-7067-0132-1

Life on the land was hard, requiring patience, resourcefulness and brute force. During a hot dry summer the thick grey boulder clay, which seemed to descend to unfathomable depths, would set as solid as rock, its adamantine crust blunting implements, wearing out horseshoes and causing frustration and despair. If ploughed late it would dry out, forming countless clods of varying sizes from marbles to footballs, and elsewhere it would crack, the heat from the sun drawing out the moisture, leaving the crops struggling for survival. In contrast, winter would show the full fickleness of its nature and it would become a squelching, glutinous mass, turning the farmyard into a sea of mud and making land work impossible; work was confined to ditching or hedging with hands numb with cold, cutting kale with clothing soaked by the chilling leaf-held water, repairing buildings, or shovelling out ‘muck’ from the cowshed and the stable.
Dolly and Diamond were housed in the stable; two fine carthorses, one the colour of burnt sienna, the other a dark chestnut. They were said to be a Clydesdale and a Shire, but time and hot blood had allowed other strains to creep in. Their confidence, bearing and strength, a living tribute to their ancestry, made them not only able and willing workers, but also valuable companions in the never-ending struggle with the elements. But, sadly, as they stood at their manger, snorting and stamping, proud and content, they were unaware of the significance of the blue tractor standing silently in the shed nearby. It needed no care when not working, its hunger was for toil not sustenance, it was strong, adaptable, and reliable. The adoption of the Fordson Major marked the beginning, and the end, of an era.
Because of the tractor Dolly soon left, sold to a dealer, who in turn sold her again, probably to a factory in Melton Mowbray where she would disappear inside tins of catfood, or to be exported to Belgium, destined for a butcher’s shop in Bruges. When I was eight, another lorry arrived, this time for Diamond, and she too was loaded up and whisked away.
It was a miserable day on the farm. Two tractors now stood in the shed and the stable was empty, save for memories and the smell of the past. I would have no more rides on that broad brown back, clinging with trusting arms to her shaggy greying mane, and she would pull no more cart loads of water along the road for the cows as they grazed languorously in a nearby meadow. The harsh facts of farming life meant that she had to go. She had worked willingly and well, but her coat was losing its lustre, her muscles were tiring and her reactions were slowing. The faithful horse that had toiled for hours in the fields, shifting tons of corn and earth, was finished, and her large mournful eyes seemed to know this. Father could not hide the sense of betrayal he felt in sending his helper to the knacker’s yard; a helpmeet who had aided him in bad times and good, and whose crime was that of old age.
Apart from her age she had only one minor failing; an almost uncanny sense of time. Regardless of her task, whether she was hoeing, ploughing or drilling, as soon as it was time to stop, her time, not her master’s, she would turn at right angles and head for home. Now she would be returning home no more.
Father felt that same sense of betrayal and guilt when he sent cows to market to be sold for slaughter. For ten or twelve years he would feed them and house them, in winter mixing their food with a shovel on the floor of the barn, turning over and stirring the multi-coloured mound of different meals like a builder mixing cement, and in return they would give him milk and every year deliver him a new calf. Then, as soon as their yield dropped or they became barren, they were sold off and killed. The economic facts of life did not allow for sentiment, and the saddest sound on the farm was that of the cattle lorry as it revved up and moved off to Cambridge.
He felt nothing for the pigs however, greedy, screaming and often brutal animals that would turn on the weakest of their number, sometimes leaving it streaming with blood and literally quaking with fear. He felt nothing, either, for the bull, standing in its pen looking cunning and malevolent. Its life alternated between periods of lust for the cows, when it would breath heavily and bellow out a message of virility, and periods of distrust when it would snort with anger and paw the ground at its human adversaries. The bull’s humour was worsened by the fact that around the farm buildings and some of the fields, the animals were kept in by an electric fence; a thin strand of wire through which an electric current passed every second. We normally kept well away from it, hating every time we accidentally received a shock, but greatly enjoying the sight of an unsuspecting visitor taking hold of it.
The bull disliked it, after allowing the chain from his nose to become entangled with it and then retreating backwards, only for another strand of wire to send a shock rushing up his tail.
The wire had hardly any effect on Father who would casually take hold of it, to check that it was not shorting, with no apparent discomfort. When moving the wire one morning, to allow the cows to get at some new grass, he was watched by several children, including an innocent boy from the High Street: ‘Get hold of that end for me will you, Paul?’ he asked. Paul picked it up with both hands; his eyes blinked in amazement, his mouth opened, and every time the current passed through him his whole body jolted. He was so surprised then to the roadside for collection, the pigs and hens had to be fed, and in addition the land had to be cultivated.
All this could not be done by one man alone and Father had two full time workers to help him, and sometimes three. Jim and Percy were the regulars, one a countryman born and bred, the other a townsman who would have been more at home delivering milk or repairing pavements. It was Percy who was out of place on the land, for he was unacquainted with the laws of nature and could not understand the animals. Land work had been for him a stop-gap, taken up when jobs were difficult to come by, but he worked happily, if fitfully, and used such words as ‘shite’, the meanings of which we were supposed not to know.
Jim was completely different, a small, one-eyed, well-meaning countryman, who could read the condition of the land or the seasons of the year like others read a book. His father, grand-mother and great-grandfather had all been tenants of the same farm and were from that ancient yeoman stock which had formed the stable backbone of English society for generations. Men of resolution and reliance who had farmed and fought with a resilience and a determination that had made them an asset to any cause, and who, when Oliver Cromwell had represented Cambridge in Parliament, flocked to his banner to overthrow what they saw as injustice and tyranny. Jim had maintained that tradition, and in 1914 he, too, had responded to the call of duty and went to do battle in northern France.
After just six months of active service he had returned home with honour, but also with a shrapnel wound in his right eye. He lost his eye, but gained a view of the French that time never changed and which, to him, the Second World War endorsed. The French were, he said, incapable of fighting, they were dirty and stupid, and France itself was not worth fighting for. ‘If I had been a bloody Froggie,’ he asserted, T d have given the bugger to Jerry.’ But he was proud of his sacrifice and even had a begrudging respect for ‘the bloody squareheads’ , who were, he admitted, good soldiers and workers.
His father had been turned out of the rented farm when the land had changed hands, and as there had been no security of tenure Jim had not been able to become his own master.
But this did not worry him unduly, and with a cigarette hang-ing from the corner of his mouth, and his one eye guiding him almost as well as two, he returned to the land as a worker, where he progressed with ease from horse to tractor, from harness to sparking plug, and became master of both.
Not surprisingly, after generations of independence and struggle, he was a Tory, who looked upon Socialism as a malignant cancer that ate into stability, freedom and self-respect. At the mention of certain politicians he would take off his cap, scratch his greying head in exasperation and recommend that the offending wretch be placed ‘head first in a barrel of runny cow muck’, or that a ‘hedgehog skin should be wrapped around a pitchfork handle and stuffed up his bloody arse.’
Apart from his love of the land and his hatred of Social-ism, his one abiding passion was cricket and he could talk for hours on the game, sounding like an encyclopaedia of all the great names of the past. He spoke of Hobbs and Sutcliffe, at Lord’s and Parker’s Piece, and recalled many memorable occasions on local village greens where amazing feats of batting had taken place, and where, on other occasions, teams had been skittled out for less than ten.
Charlie would occasionally arrive on his bicycle to work part-time. He was a signalman on the railway who rested while at work, and worked while he should have been resting at home. In his signalbox he could doze until roused by the warning bell, and at home he kept pigs, cultivated a large garden, as well as a plot of ground, and still had time to help out local farmers. At hay cart and harvest, others too would come for casual work or would be borrowed from neighbouring farms, so that the work could be speedily finished.
It was harvest time that we children liked the best, the sun always seemed to shine and there would be picnic teas ‘down the harvest field’. There, Jim would drive the tractor, father roped on, the loads would lurch and sway as the trailers were pulled along the rough cart tracks, and we children would conceal our fear with laughter as we rode on top.
The men worked long hours to get the harvest home and would finish each day tired and hungry. But the smell of corn being cut, the creak of horse and harness, the feel of stubble on bare legs, the sun, rabbits being shot as they ran for cover, and mother, forgetting briefly the evils of alcohol, buying quart bottles of cider, made it the best season of the year for us. The insects in the sandwiches, the horseflies droning menacingly in hungry search, and the fatigue of those working, were of little consequence.

John Seymour: High farming: no fertiliser, pesticides or diesel

The Countryside Explained, by John Seymour (1977)
Extract from Chapter 7 – crops of arable land
ISBN 0-571-11092-4

Late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century writers such as Arthur Young and Cobbett were constantly noting two-ton-an-acre in their travels. They took this as something good but not unusual in those days of High Farming.
No chemicals were used (there weren’t any) but enormous applications of farmyard manure kept up the high fertility of the land, plus the ploughed-in residues of nitrogen-fixing clovers, the bulk of humus-forming grasses, and the dunging and treading of sheep which were kept folded on turnips.
I worked on a farm in Essex as a pupil when a boy where two tons of wheat to the acre was the almost invariable rule and where hardly any chemical fertilizer and no other chemicals were used. There were, though, a hundred bullocks fattened every year in yards on this hundred-acre farm, a herd of six breeding sows, the dung of five horses and a couple of hundred free-range hens.
This was one of the last farms in Essex run on traditional High Farming lines. No fuel-oil [diesel – ed.] was imported on to the farm for there were no tractors or other engines. The only thing that did come over our borders was a ton or two of linseed cake for what Mr Catt the farmer called ‘its kindling effect’ on the bullocks to give them a finish for the butcher in the last weeks of the fattening period.
The input-output ratio of such a farm was simply marvellous-practically nothing came on but a great deal went off. But such farming is prodigal of human labour. There were seven of us working these hundred acres and we had to work in a way which no modern farm worker would tolerate.
Today this farm is probably part of a thousand-acre agribusiness with possibly two tractor drivers working the whole lot. But apart from the stunt members of the three-ton-and-over club (who are certainly costing the country far more in foreign exchange than they are saving by producing wheat) the average production of wheat per acre in Britain is still well below two tons an acre.

Jack Hargreaves: ‘The cleverest dog was now the poacher’s dog’

The Old Country, by Jack Hargreaves (1988)
Extract from Chapter 6 – a shining night
ISBN 0-946159-59-9

You may still find, in a country pub somewhere, an ancient who will talk with relish about the days of ‘sparrow-pie’. This really means ‘little bird pie’. When protein was short large numbers of little birds were eaten and they were not particular about the species. Dozens of them would be boiled until their flesh could be picked off and made into a pie.
Long ago when we moved to our first farm there stood in the corner of the barn an old clap-net. Two very long poles were tied together at their thin tips so that, if you held the butts under your arms, they formed them-selves into an arch. This arch was covered with a thin soft net of cotton. In the dusk of evening this was lightly beaten against the ivy of the house, the high hedges and the sides of the hay and corn-ricks. As soon as there came a flutter the net was closed by ‘clapping’ the two poles together.
When Pointers first came up from Spain their job was to find and put up birds for the falcon that was hovering above, but the Setter was the servant of the fowler. He developed his peculiar crouching habit for the purpose of netting partridges.
The partridge, when it senses danger, will always take refuge in concealment before flight. The whole covey – that is the partridge family – will crouch close together in the long grass” silent and unmovable. It is known as ‘jukking’ and nothing will make them juk tighter than the sight of a hawk in the sky. In the earliest writings on the fowler’s art there are instructions for making a kite in the shape of a falcon. When setting out to net the birds the kite was flown overhead to stop the birds from moving.
The setting dog would quarter the ground with the wind in his face, moving to and fro until he caught the scent of the hidden covey. Once he had it he would move stealthily forward. The fowler and his mate followed with a twenty foot square net, carefully folded. When the dog knew he was within four or five feet of the birds he would sink down to the ground and crouch with his nose pointing to them. The net would be delicately spread and the two men, one on each front corner, would slip it right over the dog’s back and drop it over the whole partridge family.
People who keep Setters today – and even win with them at Crufts – can scarcely imagine the thrill of working with them. Once ‘set’ to a close scent a good dog would not move a muscle until the job was done. There is an old story about fowlers who were working in the late evening when a mist rolled down the hill. They lost sight of the dog who was well ahead of them. After searching and calling in vain they went home. At daybreak the mist had cleared and they found the dog, still setting a scent that he had found the night before. They caught a covey of birds which had squatted while the dog held them for eight or nine hours! A likely tale! But you don’t have to believe it to understand that admiration for the dog caused it to be told.
I’m sure there is not a setter alive today that has a net pulled over his back. In any case it is unthinkable that the many arts of the fowler should be performed today. Still, to understand the problems of modern conservation, it is well to remember that seventy years ago when I was little birds of all kinds existed abundantly around us – after centuries of fowling. Despite the twirler, the skylarks sang in the sky all day over fields where they are now unknown.
Every evening we heard the Grey Partridge cocks calling the coveys to rest on land from which herbicides have removed the weed seeds on which they relied; and insecticides have robbed them of the insects on which their chicks were reared. In winter the small birds flew in clouds around the rickyard; but yesterday I read in our Country Bird Report that the sparrow must now be regarded as uncommon.
The art of fowling faded after the Battle of Waterloo as the percussion shotgun spread across the country, a weapon that would detonate a cloud of shot fast enough for feathered game to be shot on the wing. Instead of hawks and nets it was now the shooting – men who went out with pointers and setters – including Mr Pickwick. And soon the privileged among them found a way of shooting in which somebody else did the walking.
As so often in English history a new set of people assumed the role of country gentlemen. They moved in with East Indian spoils, Admiralty prize-money, the profits of coal, sugar and iron, and the fruits of banking. Land was no longer to have the monopoly of riches and power and with but a modest estate you could – by following the new fashion of driven-game shooting – put up a show of being a shooting host.
It meant rearing game birds by the thousand, and crowding them into the coverts in numbers for which Nature could never provide. It meant keeping the locals off your land and closing the footpaths which their ancestors had walked. It brought an obsession with trespass that developed over the years into a malady which the Old Man used to call ‘Landowners’ Disease’. Kipling is said to have been most seriously afflicted. On his small Sussex estate he sat at a top window with field-glasses, scanning his boundaries in fear of invasion, yet hoping that someone might cross the border who could be prosecuted.
But it also meant that a man need no longer walk hard all day in company with a yokel and two dogs in order to bring home three or four brace of birds. He could invite a dozen of the elite and influential to stand fifteen yards apart while the birds were driven over their heads. And he could have them all roistering at his lunch table while the Head Keeper sat outside, growling at his pocket watch and cancelling one after another of the afternoon drives.
His work was to be judged by the hundreds of birds shot and also by the scores of wild creatures, said to be competitive in the game environment, that he himself killed and hung on gibbets for his employer to see.
This time of new riches in the country houses brought hardship to the rural poor. And since the yokels were needed on shooting days to beat the woods and put the birds over the line, they became aware of the vast numbers of quarry, and more familiar with their habits than those who stood to receive them. It was quite natural that the fashion for driven game gave birth to the great age of poaching. Within fifty years two generations of country lads had grown up knowing every trick of the game, and taking a pleasure in it that amounted to ecstasy. ‘It’s my delight on a shining night in the season of the year’.
The cleverest dog was now the poacher’s dog – though he usually looked just a little ragamuffin. The pointers and setters died gradually away, to be replaced by the fetch- and-carry retrievers that ‘Stonehenge’ – writing in The Field in the eighteen-fifties called ‘Servants Hall Dogs’. While the poacher worked his dog would crouch on watch and if he noticed the sound or smell of anyone else he would creep up to his master and, in the dark, touch his hand with a cold nose. When the man with the needle- pole wanted a hare for his own pot he would go out with a gate-net inside his trousers – a soft, wide-meshed net about the size of a single bedspread. This he hung loosely in a gateway or a hedge-gap on anyone of the hare’s habitual routes that he knew by heart. Then he lit his pipe and walked on. His dog would slip through the hedge and quarter the field until the hare was put up and then drive it – sheep-dog fashion – into the net. Having killed it there he would return to walk respectably at heel. The hare could be fetched when the coast was clear.
One of the satisfactory things about poaching was that it did not involve guilt. No poacher ever thought of himself as a criminal. Of course, if you were caught you would be in trouble. But it wasn’t fair to the village Bobby to get caught. It was embarrassing for him. Even the keepers would turn a blind eye. They were, on the whole, contemptuous of their masters. But you shouldn’t put your trust in that. The Old Man used to say – ‘If the keeper lets you take a hare you’ll never finish paying for it.’
Poachers were hard to catch up with – except for the gangs that came from the towns and openly challenged the keepers to violent encounters. The standard of skill of the country poachers was very high indeed. Why, then, did the night when Great-Grandfather went out with his needle-pole turn out so fatefully?
The outcome of it was decided on the other side of the world. Australia had been used as a place to send the ‘criminal classes’ and, now the time had come to open up and develop the country, the Governor General said it could not be done with his work-gangs of thieves and pickpockets. Now he needed good men who could move out into the country.
So the word went from Westminster to the Lords- Lieutenant and from them to the squires who were magistrates. The search was on for good men who could be caught poaching.
Great-Grandfather could milk and plough and thatch and like most farm-hands had a dozen different rural skills.
The day he was taken – on information extracted from the drover – was his last free day in his native land. On the ship he joined hundreds of others swept up in the same cynical operation. It was a bad day for the man but perhaps a very good one for his descendants. I hope that their sheep-station may be called ‘Needlepole’.

Record net migration and the UK housing bubble

Migration Watch: Record net migration and the rising demand for housing [follow this link to Migration Watch site for dynamic graphs]

Sputnik brings you all the latest breaking stories, expert analysis and videos from North and South America.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20230606/lula-unveils-plan-to-legalize-indigenous-lands-halt-illegal-amazon-deforestation-by-2030-1110962675.html

Brazilian President Luiz Inᣩo Lula da Silva made major moves to reverse the environmental course set by his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, including unveiling a plan to halt illegal deforestation in the Amazon and to set aside huge amounts of the rainforest for government protection.

Brazil will once again become a global reference in sustainability, tackling climate change, and achieving targets for carbon emission reduction and zero deforestation, Lula said on Monday.

Called the Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Amazon (PPCDAm), the plan will coordinate policy across more than a dozen Brazilian ministries. It calls for ending illegal deforestation by 2030 and achieving net zero deforestation, meaning just as much forest is being replanted as is cut down.

It will use satellite images to track criminal activity as well as to regularize land titles, and will create a rural registry to monitor correct forest management. It also aims to help degraded forests recover and increase the growth of native vegetation to undo some of the damage done by deforestation, which is driven in large part by cattle ranching.

The Brazilian Federation of Banks (Febraban) also announced that it would begin tying future lines of credit to Brazilian meat producers, including meatpackers and slaughterhouses, to environmental monitoring requirements. By the end of 2025, Brazilian meat companies that purchase cattle from Brazilian Amazon supplies will have to create a traceability and monitoring system for connections to illegal deforestation and the use of land in protected areas.

Febraban President Isaac Sidney said on Tuesday that banks are at the center of [Brazils] supply chain and that the move will encourage actions to foster an increasingly sustainable economy.

The financial sector is aware of the need to advance in managing and mitigating social, environmental, and climate risks in business dealings with their clients, while also directing more resources towards financing the transition to the Green Economy, he said.

Lula also announced that an Amazon reserve would be increased by 4,400 acres, and that another 140 million acres of public lands without special protection would be allocated – an area roughly the size of France.

In late April, Lula announced the creation of six new indigenous reserves, banning mining and most farming operations there. The areas cover some 1.5 million acres of the Amazon. Environment Minister Marina Silva said on Monday the government would begin the process of study toward creating more conservation units.

In addition, Lula also announced that Brazil, the worlds fifth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, would commit to reducing carbon emissions by 37% by 2025 and 43% by 2030. The commitment is a substantial increase from the levels set by Bolsonaro, who retreated from prior commitments.

Roughly half of Brazils carbon emissions come from deforestation, which often uses a crude slash and burn method that pours carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. One recent estimate found that 800 million trees were felled in two years to make way for cattle ranching.

The 77-year-old left-wing president returned to office in January 2023 after defeating Bolsonaro in the presidential election. Lula was previously president from 2003 to 2010, part of the wave of left-wing governments that swept Latin America in what was called a Pink Tide. Since returning to office, Lula has set about reversing course on many of the right-wing Bolsonaros policies, including on the environment, and pushing new efforts to build economic and political systems not centered on Europe and North America.

The Amazon represents half of the planets remaining rainforest, and 60% of it sits inside Brazils borders. Scientists have said that preserving the dense forest is key to efforts to combat climate change and keep the planet from warming to a level that could be dangerous to humans.

EU approves controversial Dutch farm buy-out plan to ‘meet climate goals’

Farmers have protested against the government scheme that will offer them 120 per cent of the value of their company if they agree to close

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/eu-approves-controversial-dutch-farm-buy-out-plan-to-meet-climate-goals/ar-AA1aDs7t

By Joe Barnes, BRUSSELS CORRESPONDENT 2 May 2023

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/05/02/eu-approves-controversial-dutch-farm-buy-out-plan/

The Netherlands has been given the go-ahead to start buying out thousands of farmers businesses in a bid to meet the European Union mandate on climate goals.

Under the 1.47 billion (1.3 billion) plan, entire farms located near nature reserves could be purchased by the government, with hundreds more farmers compensated for voluntarily closing their operations.

It forms part of the Hagues wider strategy for slashing nitrogen emissions in half by 2030 to comply with EU targets.

On Tuesday, the European Commission approved the Dutch governments proposals under the blocs state aid rules.

Brussels ruled that the buy-outs would not give farmers who receive them an unfair leg-up against international competitors on the Single Market and thus violate EU regulations.

Justifying the move earlier this year, Christianne van der Wal, minister of nature and nitrogen policy, said that the Netherlands had to cut nitrogen emissions from farms to build new housing and produce green energy.

There will first have to be nitrogen cuts before there is room for new development such as new houses and sustainable energy investments. It is our economic lockdown, she said. My message is not the message [farmers] want to hear.

She has previously described the scheme as wildly attractive.

Farmers operating near nature conservation areas will be offered 120 per cent of the value of their company if they agree to close their operations and promise not to restart elsewhere in the country or within the EU.

About 3,000 farmers who are considered among the countrys highest polluting have been identified under the scheme.

Dairy, pig and poultry farmers will be offered 100 per cent of their company’s value if they agree to close under a similar programme.

Protests from farmers

Dutch farmers have been on a collision course with the government for more than a year, while it grappled with the consequences of forcing its lucrative agricultural industry to cut emissions.

Protests against the climate-change targets have often turned violent, with manure and blazing hay bales used to block highways and supermarket distribution centres, leading to empty shelves on numerous occasions.

In March, Mark Rutte, the long-serving prime minister, received a major defeat in the regional elections as a farmers protest party scored a victory.

At risk of being undercut

Despite its small size, The Netherlands is one of the worlds agricultural powerhouses, being only second to the United States as a food producer and agricultural exporter.

Its farmers have argued that the new climate change rules placed them at risk of being undercut by cheap foreign imports.

They also complained that agriculture was being unfairly targeted compared with other polluting sectors such as transport.

The Dutch government has earmarked 25 billion (22 billion) to tackle nitrogen emissions, including compulsory buyouts and payments for reducing livestock numbers.

The courts have blocked an increasing number of construction projects designed to ease the countrys housing crisis until nitrogen levels have been reduced.

Improve the environment

Brussels decided the Dutch plan did not amount to a breach of the blocs state aid rules, which have been significantly loosened as a result of the interventions made by European governments during the coronavirus pandemic.

Margrethe Vestager, a vice-president of the European Commission, said the plan would lead to the voluntary closure of those farms most responsible for nitrogen emissions.

The schemes will improve the environment conditions in those areas, and will promote a more sustainable and environmentally friendly production in the livestock sector, without unduly distorting competition, she said.

The EUs approval of the scheme, which runs until February 2028, will last as long as Dutch farmers agree to a definitive closure of their operations.

The exact conditions for the buyout scheme will be published by the end of the month, with the government also exploring targeting other industries amid uproar from farmers.

‘The way the Windsors got their millions is a Royal RIP-OFF more in line with Henry VIII than a modern democracy,’ writes author and former government minister NORMAN BAKER

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-11910185/The-Windsor-millions-right-Royal-RIP-says-former-government-minister-NORMAN-BAKER.html

• Author has led the way holding the Royal Family to account over huge wealth
• But they ‘use the tax system to their advantage’ and ‘evade awkward questions’
• Read here: Charles cant hide behind aides. His fingerprints are all over this

By Norman Baker Former Government Minister

Published: 07:00, 29 April 2023

It is a curious thing that our Royal Family was effectively bankrupt in 1760 when George III came to the throne, so much so that did a deal with Parliament to hand over Crown lands in return for an annual grant known as the Civil List.

Yet today, the Windsors are fabulously wealthy in their own right, with every senior member worth at least 20 million. One recent calculation put King Charles’s wealth at up to 480 million.

You have to ask how such a transformation came to pass.

There was a big hint recently when The Mail on Sunday revealed that the whole of Queen Elizabeth’s estate had been bequeathed to her son, King Charles, without a penny of tax being paid. Uniquely, the monarch does not pay death duties.

The Scilly Isles have been owned by the Duchy of Cornwall since the beginning of the 14th century. Today, all income from the Duchy goes to William, the Prince of Wales

And how much money was involved? Even back in 2001 The MoS calculated that the Queen was worth 1.15 billion, almost certainly an underestimate then, let alone now. Her stamp collection alone was put at 100 million. It is a safe bet to assume that what she bequeathed to Charles will have increased substantially.

At any rate, we can assume that the latest Monarch-to-Monarch transfer of wealth is a considerable loss to the exchequer.

So, just how much money have the Windsors accumulated?

Exact figures are hard to come by and no wonder: the Royal Family likes it that way. At every turn they have used the tax system to their advantage and a culture of secrecy to prevent awkward questions.

The highly unusual way they treat legacies is a good example.

Wills are public documents, as everyone knows. Indeed, they have always been open for inspection in this country as an essential safeguard to prevent theft and malpractice.

But uniquely the royals have secured an exemption meaning that, since 1911, their wills have been hidden from the public.

Royal wills are locked up in a metal safe behind an iron cage in Somerset House. And while over the years the scope of the Freedom of Information Act has been generally been extended, allowing enquiries about a greater range of public bodies, secrecy about the royals has gone in the opposite direction. Uniquely.

After pressure from Charles, the supply of information has dried up to a dribble.

The National Archives are releasing ever more of our historical documents as the years go by, and from earlier and earlier.

The Duchy of Lancaster, including the Whitewell Estate in the Forest of Bowland, is owned by the monarchy. It was passed directly from the late Queen to King Charles with no tax paid

But not royal ones. When I visited Kew, I found there were 3,629 closed files on the Royal Family. Some are closed for 100 years.

Worse, some files, especially those containing embarrassing financial information, are kept in the private royal archives in Windsor where they will disappear into a black hole, perhaps forever.

Where has all the Windsors money come from? The simple answer is that it all originates from the public purse, either directly or indirectly through unique tax breaks, then augmented by investments (again not properly taxed).

Take Balmoral Castle and Sandringham House, for example. Prince Albert had gone to the government, cap in hand, to say the Civil List the public subsidy in place since 1760 – was insufficient to cover royal duties.

But that was not true. When Parliament handed over more money, it was instead used to buy these two private properties, plus Osborne House, a Palladian mansion on the Isle of Wight.

Then there are the fabulously beneficial tax breaks. Unlike everyone else in the country, monarchs are exempt from death duties. So nothing was paid on the estimated 70 million left by the Queen Mother. (And where did that come from? Not winnings on the horses).

And nothing has been paid on the vast legacy, including private property, from the Queen to Charles. The cash-strapped Treasury is being deprived of millions by possibly the richest family in the country. Between 1952 and 1993 the Queen paid no income tax or corporation tax, and no income dividend tax.

In 2001, statisticians from Barclays Capital calculated that the 2m stock investment made by the Queen in 1951 would, 50 years later, be worth 1.4 billion. If tax had been paid, the residual figure would have been less than 300 million almost a billion pounds lost to the public purse from this one source alone.

2012: Royal Gravy Train Kicks In

But it was from 2012 that the royal gravy train really picked up speed. Because this was the year the Sovereign Grant Act came into force, sweeping away the long-established Civil List and replacing it with a generous new source of public funding.

The figures speak for themselves. Between 2001 and 2011, the old Civil List had been set at 7.9 million annually. In the most recent financial year, the Sovereign Grant payout to the Royal Family reached a staggering 86.3 million.

And the annual amount can only ever stay the same or go up. It can never go down. The Sovereign Grant Act overturned a settled way of doing things that had lasted more than 250 years.

In 1760, George III did a deal with the government: he would surrender land across Britain to the nation in return for money from the government to support him and his lifestyle.

As part of the deal the government would take over responsibility for funding the Armed Forces, the secret service, the judiciary and other public functions. Over the years, however, some Royals have looked at the performance of its former land and property, which is today known as the Crown Estates.

They have seen it prosper and have started to regret George III’s arrangement. If only the clock could be turned back

Royal wills are locked up in a metal safe behind an iron cage at Somerset House, London

The Duchy of Cornwall even owns the Oval, a test match venue and home to Surrey

Successive governments of all colours had resisted this suggestion, until former coalition Chancellor George Osborne disastrously agreed to re-establish the connection.

Now, 25 per cent of the profits from the Crown Estates go straight into the royal coffers.

Of course, if Charles really wants to recreate the position before 1760, that would require the monarch once again to personally fund the salaries and pensions of Ministers, judges and civil servants, and the costs of the Armed Forces and secret services, too.

It was to lose that heavy burden that George III agreed to a new arrangement.

But the current agreement concerns only in the beneficial side of that equation the one that that would enrich the Royals, not the one that would entail liabilities.

And what a pay day it was. As the Crown Estates holds the rights to the seabeds around Britain, the explosion in offshore wind, the biggest offshore windpower development in the world, is giving the royals a massive windfall, billions that before 2012 would have gone into the Treasury to help pay for schools, hospitals and defence of the realm.

The royals also benefit from what in effect are royal slush funds: the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall. The only reason they were not handed over to the state in 1760 is because they were basically worthless.

Lancaster was worth less than 20 at the time. Now they are hugely profitable estates, covering large swaths of the country. The Duchy of Cornwall even owns the Oval cricket ground extra cover for Charles to hit the taxpayer for six.

The royals are at pains to say these estates are ‘private’, yet in the past they have been classified as government departments. There is in fact still a minister for the Duchy of Lancaster. And if they are private, how come they are exempt from corporation tax, unlike any other private estate?

When it comes to royal money, secrecy is king.

The Royals are not cheap to run. Besides the ballooning Sovereign Grant, they demand expensive security, even for minor Royals whom most people have barely heard of, costing the taxpayer an estimated further 200 million a year.

Then there are the official properties – way in excess of what is needed to sustain a constitutional monarchy.

The State supports not just Buckingham Palace but also St James’s Palace, Clarence House, Marlborough House Mews, Kensington Palace, Windsor Castle, Frogmore Cottage and Hampton Court Mews, to name but a few. In total, the taxpayer pays for more than 100 Royal buildings.

NORMAN BAKER: In fairness to Charles, he appears keen to rein in royal expenditure, having ordered non-working Windsors, such as Andrew, to  live more prudently

Meanwhile, the public purse funds the whole sprawling network of 99 Lords Lieutenant (not to mention hundreds more deputies) who act as the King’s personal representatives.

In fairness to Charles, he appears keen to rein in royal expenditure, having ordered non-working Windsors, such as Andrew, to either live more prudently or earn some money of their own.

Yet this is no more than scratching the surface of his rather medieval arrangements in which the State should provide him with copious amounts of public money, free from taxation, with no questions asked.

Its a royal rip-off more in line with the practices of his ancestor Henry VIII than a modern democracy.

Norman Baker is a former minister and MP, and a serving Privy Counsellor. He is author of And What Do You Do? – What The Royal Family Doesnt Want You To Know published by Biteback, 10.99

 

Governments strategy for tackling climate change includes proposals for thousands more hectares of plants and trees to be grown to burn in power stations

By Daniel Capurro Environment Correspondent https://inews.co.uk/news/environment/net-zero-plan-land-biomass-crops-woodland-2257380

The Governments new climate change plan includes annual targets to plant more crops for burning to make electricity than woodland.
Green experts have warned that the focus on biomass risks distracting from proven technologies and increasing inequality in rural areas.

Planet of the Humans, the full movie by Michael Moore. Taken down by YouTube. The movie is about the lies and hypocrisy of ‘green energy’ and biomass.

The proposals for greater biomass use are part of a major new Government strategy launched last month in an attempt to get the UK on target to hit net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

As part of the plans, ministers are making a major bet on Beccs, or bioenergy with carbon capture and storage.

The technology, which has never been deployed on a major scale, claims to generate negative emissions.

The theory given is that the crops for burning usually fast-growing grass and trees would absorb carbon from the atmosphere while growing, which would then be stored underground in perpetuity once they have been burnt.

The technology also promises to provide electricity at times when less reliable forms of generation such as wind and solar are subdued.
Overall, the energy strategy makes a call to plant an additional 9,600 hectares of perennial energy crops and 8,900 hectares of woodland annually by 2030, increasing to 15,000 extra hectares of energy crops and 10,300 hectares of new woodland a year by 2035.

The Climate Change Committee has said that there is a place for Beccs in the UKs energy mix. However it has warned that the supply of sustainable feedstock is limited and that more of it needs to come from the UK rather than overseas.

Currently, biomass burning sites without carbon capture, such as Drax in North Yorkshire, import their wood from overseas.

Nevertheless, critics have questioned why ministers are placing so much emphasis on an expensive technology that is yet to be shown to work at the necessary scale.

Dr Lydia Collas, a policy analyst at Green Alliance, told i: The Government appears to be gambling heavily on bioenergy crops, even though these provide few environmental benefits beyond carbon. Planting new woodland, by contrast, is cheaper and better for nature and rural communities.

Critics of the biomass plan say finite subsidy money should be used to plant woodlands, which sequester carbon and also boost biodiversity, while energy efforts should focus on cheaper and proven technologies.

We shouldn’t be overcomplicating things. New technology will play an important role in tackling change, but we need to capitalise on the simple yet potentially transformative things already available to us, said Dr Collas.

Analysis by Green Alliance showed that, even if costs fell significantly, it was still cheaper to remove carbon via woodland planting.

As well as potentially distorting the UKs energy market, Green Alliance said that the emphasis on biomass crops risked channelling taxpayer money towards already wealthy farmers and away from poorer ones.

The agricultural land suitable for growing biomass crops tends to be of higher quality than that used for woodlands, which is often upland territory with poor soil, while much of the subsidy money would go to power generators.

The Government was approached for comment.

This debate between Simon Fairlie and George Monbiot organised and hosted by the Dartington Trust was held at Schumacher College, Dartington earlier this year.

Simon and George have been debating meat eating, veganism, rewilding and now precision fermentation of food for many years. Both speakers offer very persuasive and different visions of where our food should, in their opinion, come from.

The Speakers:
GEORGE MONBIOT
George Monbiot is an author, Guardian columnist and environmental activist. His best-selling books include Feral: Rewilding the land, sea and human life, Heat: how to stop the planet burning; and Out of the Wreckage: a new politics for an age of crisis. George cowrote the concept album Breaking the Spell of Loneliness with musician Ewan McLennan. His viral videos include How Wolves Change Rivers (viewed on YouTube over 40m times) and Nature Now, co-presented with Greta Thunberg (over 60m views). George’s latest book, Regenesis: Feeding the World without Devouring the Planet, was published in May 2022.

SIMON FAIRLIE
Simon Fairlie worked for twenty years variously as an agricultural labourer, vine worker, shepherd, fisherman, builder and stonemason before being ensnared by the computer in 1990. He was a coeditor of The Ecologist magazine for four years until he joined Tinkers’ Bubble community in 1994 where he managed the cows, pigs and a working horse. He now runs a micro dairy at Monkton Wyld Court, a charity and cooperative in rural Dorset. Simon is a founding editor of The Land magazine, and he earns a living by selling scythes. He is the author of Low Impact Development: Planning and People in a Sustainable Countryside (1996) and Meat: A Benign Extravagance (2010) and a memoir, Going to Seed (2022)

This debate was about the sustainability of livestock farming in view of the environmental crisis and not limited to striking the balance between agricultural sustainability and maximising agricultural production capability. However, interesting perspective may be further obtained by cross referencing with an older article Can Britain Feed Itself? by Simon Fairlie published in 2007 in Issue-4 of The Land Magazine which, in posing the question of whether or not Britain could feed itself within its existing agricultural acres, compared different farming systems such as Chemical with Livestock (no good), Chemical Vegan, Organic Vegan, Organic with Livestock, Livestock Permaculture & a system (referred to as “Mellanby’s Basic Diet 1975”) in which the population would hypothetically be restricted in their consumption to a basic diet (less meat) based on the analysis by Scottish ecologist Kenneth Mellanby in his 1975 book “Can Britain Feed Itself?”

Reference:
Can Britain Feed Itself? by Simon Fairlie (2007), The Land Magazine
https://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/articles/can-britain-feed-itself

In moving away post-Brexit from the the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the UK government planned to move the agricultural-subsidy system for the UK farming industry towards one which linked subsidies to land protection, environmental protection, enhancing biodiversity and conservation measures – all under a new system named the “Environmental Land Management Scheme” (ELMS). The scheme will provide payments for farming that improves the environment and relieves climate change, such as hedge planting and river management initiatives and initiatives to increase biodiversity, restore landscapes, promote animal welfare and increase productivity through investment in new equipment and technology. The Act provides for a seven-year agricultural transition period (although that can be extended) from 2021 to 2027. The Agriculture Act, passed in November 2020, set a legislative framework for the new subsidy regime in England, including the list of ‘public goods’ for which subsidies may be paid. Shortly afterwards, Defra published an updated plan, The Path to Sustainable Farming: An Agricultural Transition Plan 2021 to 2024.

To transition to this new system, a Basic Payment Scheme was put in place with funding for Direct Payments for 2020 continued at the same level as 2019 to supplement the remaining EU funding that farmers will have received for development projects until 2023. During that time, BPS will be phased out and new financial assistance schemes will be phased in. The Environmental Land Management (ELM) scheme will replace basic payments to farmers in England. In late September 2022 Defra rushed to quash news stories that its new Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS) farming policy to replace the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was being halted.

 

ELMS: Where are we now?

Source: https://thelandapp.com/2023/01/26/elms-where-are-we-now/

The government has announced its long-awaited system of subsidies for Environmental Land Management (ELM). So, what’s new? We break down the progress made with ELMs to date, and where it’s heading in the future.

Having caused widespread concern by announcing a review into the viability of the ELMs scheme in late 2022, there was speculation that the subsidy would be axed entirely, with a return to a CAP-style system defined by area based payments. Nonetheless, it was confirmed that ELM would be implemented, split into three unique, but integrated levels; Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI), Countryside Stewardship “plus”, and Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS). Despite this confirmation, however, it was unclear not only who could access the schemes and the specific details of their implementation, but exactly how much farmers and land managers would be paid for certain actions.

Today however, the government announced the payment rates for the three tiers. Therese Coffey, alongside this announcement, told land managers that “we are speeding up the rollout of our farming schemes so that everyone can be financially supported as they protect the planet while producing food more sustainably.” It is hoped that this will allow the sector to have a clearer picture for the future, and can finally start making plans for getting paid to create “public good” such as clean water, biodiversity uplift and woodland creation.

Applications for some of the payments will open in February, with others to follow in March, and some will be rolled out later in the year and next year. LNR is being trialled throughout 2023 with the hope that all eligible applicants can apply from the end of 2024. Payments under the English Woodland Creation Offer continue to be available, as well as Countryside Stewardship applications having recently opened. Land managers hoping to apply will have to keep a close watch for Defra’s announcements, given the staged rollout of availability. Nonetheless, the ELM announcements represent a crucial step forward for environmental-based payments in the land sector, bringing some much needed clarity and long-awaited peace of mind.

In such a critical time for the land sector, though, it is imperative that land managers and farmers are continued to be empowered to make sustainable decisions and access funding to produce public goods.

To avoid a piecemeal approach to restoring ecosystems through ELMS, interventions must be designed collaboratively and at the landscape level, to ensure maximum ecological and financial benefit is brought about by these schemes. Having the ability to assess and baseline your land, habitat assessment and co-design land management plans has never been more important.