This land is our land
In all the noise about retiring farmers and their children, I’m surprised (or maybe not!) that no-one in the mainstream media has discussed the alternative of land nationalisation.
If all agricultural land were to be state-owned, with initial compensation paid only to enable the retiring farmers to live on the current median pensioner’s income, then there would be no question of future generations of farmers having to pay any tax at the end of their working lives: they would simply be able to save for retirement like everyone else.
Future tenant farmers could be chosen on the basis of their record in the industry and their study at agricultural college, etc, and be able to rent at a nominal level for as long as they personally worked the land concerned.
Sometimes, when he was in a good mood, my father was known to break into the chorus of the (Liberal Party) land song from the early 1900s: “Why should we be beggars with our ballots in our hand, when god gave the land to the people?” Although then of working age, well over 12, he would have been too young to vote in 1906. But it was during that Liberal government that he became an active Labour supporter.
Solidarity!
Steve Cawley, Cambridgeshire
Can’a do that
I had a text from my sister who lives in Canada, saying she will send no Xmas cards as the postal workers there have been on strike for a month. They do not seem to do things by halves there.
Pete McNally, Worcester
