LibDem Farm Minister Axes Agric Wages Board Days Before Xmas - Plunging Farm Workers Into Poverty

 

The Agricultural Question

Prime Minister:

"I'm sorry, my good man, I can do nothing for you"

LibDem Farm Minister Axes Agric Wages Board Days Before Xmas - Plunging Farm Workers Into Poverty

Huw Irranca-Davies MP, Labour’s Shadow Farming Minister, responding to the amendment tabled in the House of Lords to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board, said: 

“It is typical that the Government sneaked out this announcement just hours before Parliament shuts down for Christmas, ignoring the strong views against abolition expressed in the consultation, and with no regard to the will of the Welsh Government. The Government admits that the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board will take £240 million out of the pockets of farm workers and rural communities over the next ten years.  

“David Cameron’s out of touch government has delivered a bitter blow to the rural economy just before Christmas and to thousands of low-paid farm workers who will be worried about their pay falling. People in the countryside need a One Nation plan to create jobs and growth, not this Government’s approach that leaves our lowest paid workers out of pocket.”

Mike Walker Country Standard said:

"David Heath LibDem Farm Minister (Somerton & Frome) once stated that the Agricultural Wages Board was vital now he his happy to go along with the Coalition of Millionaires and drive rural workers into poverty"

"Its ironic that a Liberal Farm Minister established the Agricultural Wages Board and over one hundred years later the next LibDem Farm Minister axes it"

"The AWB acted as bench mark for many rural workers jobs and was a de facto  rural living wage"

"Labour's Shadow Farming Minister Huw Irranca-Davies MP,  has worked tirelessly to retain the AWB, he recently secured with cross party and NFU support  a Grocery Code Adjudicator with real power to protect farmers from the excessive power of the supermarkets, it's a real shame that cross party and NFU ethical approach is ignored when it comes to paying farm workers a living wage"

Supermarket Adjudicator Bill - No Fines - No Power - No Use

The rural Progressive journal Country Standard has warned that the Coalition Governments proposed Supermarket Adjudicator Bill had become a joke and was now a waste of parliamentary time.

Mike Walker Country Standard said

"The Supermarket Adjudicator Bill had been gutted by Tory Defra Farming Minister Jim Paice (Cambridgeshire), A Tory MP who said a lot in opposition, but has done nothing in government to support rural communities".

"The proposed watchdog will not be able to fine supermarkets, but will as a last resort simply name and shame them. Mike Walker warned "That this would do nothing for farmers and growers struggling against supermarket cartel's and whats worse is the Conservative Party know this".

"Once again Britain's rural communities find their elected representatives seriously failing to speak up for them, the Coalition is once again putting millionaires before the millions"

Note:
DEFRA is run by purely Conservative Ministers and is a Coalition free zone, because the LibDem's saw no need to have a LibDem DEFRA Minister, as they had the same rural policies.

Lib Dem Meltdown In South West - Labour Surge

LABOUR BECOMES SECOND PARTY IN THE WEST COUNTRY

Andy Newman
Socialist Unity Blog

For the first time in decades, the Labour Party has overtaken the Liberals to become the second party in the polls behind the Tories in the West Country.

The West of England has a unique position, that while the Labour Party has always polled well in a few strongholds, it never fully eclipsed the Liberal Party as it did in the rest of England. This meant that after the Urban District Councils were abolished in 1972, taking away the possibility of Labour controlling small towns in rural areas, the Labour vote has been in long term decline in West Country rural constituencies.

The Liberals were able to position themselves as the mainstream anti-Tory vote, benefitting from widespread tactical voting from Labour voters.

But not any more. According to the Western Morning News

A 17 per cent fall in support since the May 6 ballot underlines how voters in the region are deserting the party in the wake of the coalition with the Conservatives.

By contrast, the South West electorate views the Tories with less suspicion as its vote only dropped 4 per cent despite the deep and unpopular spending cuts.

Labour has reaped the benefits, leap frogging the Lib Dems to become the second most popular party in the South West, a status it has not held in the region for decades, thanks to a 15 per cent surge.

The findings will cause deep anxiety in Lib Dem ranks since the South West was the party’s power base long before leader Nick Clegg’s union with David Cameron.

While Labour is pleased to be the leading “challenger” to the Conservative’s South West dominance, they will be aware that the Tories stand to clean-up in the region.

According to the survey, the Conservatives are on 39 per cent in the South West, down from the 43 per cent it polled in the region in May.

The survey, carried out by pollster Marketing Means this month, puts Labour on 29 per cent, up from 14 per cent at the general election.

Lib Dem support, suffering from the student protests that followed abandoning a pledge to scrap tuition fees, is now just 18 per cent in the region, down from 35 per cent.

A resurgent Labour could clear the path for the Tories to take marginal Lib Dem parliamentary seats in the Westcountry such as Torbay and St Austell and Newquay.

Graham Dumper, research director of Ashburton-based Marketing Means, said: “The formation of the coalition Government has seemingly hurt the Lib Dem brand as the main opposition to the Conservatives in the South West.

“The party has spent years building up its credentials as a defender of ordinary people against the interest-based politics of the ‘Big Two’.

“This approach chimed with many voters in a region that values its distinctiveness and independence.”

The poll comes ahead of May’s local elections, when ballots could re-shape Plymouth and Torbay unitary councils, as well as districts across Devon and Somerset.

The next Cornwall Council votes is not until 2013. Teignbridge District Council is the only Lib Dem-led local authority in Devon and Cornwall after disastrous 2009 elections. Mr Dumper added that, for the sake of the coalition, some Conservative officials might be hoping that the Lib Dems avoid a drubbing across the country.

He said: “The Conservatives would not want to see their coalition partners wobbling at this stage, raising the prospect of an early general election before the recovery they hope their policies will bring.”

The detailed analysis, the first in a series of monthly South West polls by the firm, surveyed around 600 people in the wider South West.

Even in Cornwall, where the Lib Dems have held every parliamentary seat, only 18 per cent would vote for the party now. There Conservatives are on 36 per cent in the county and Labour 27 per cent.

Taunton Lib Dem MP Slams Rural Communities as "Deficit Deniers

Jeremy Browne Lib Dem MP slams all those who oppose cuts to rural communities as "Deficit Deniers". This from an MP who allegedly represents a constituency with rural areas.

With the Lib Dem's facing meltdown in the local District Elections in May and opinion polls showing the Lib Dem's losing all but three seats in the South West, at least we wont have to listen to Mr Browne's Westminster rants for very much longer.

Browne is well known for preferring the comforts of London rather than listening to his electors in Taunton, even local Lib Dem activists have been moaning about his absence in the local paper. Local activists who are in many cases opposing cuts.

Roll on May Local Elections

Jeremy Browne writes…

Britain can’t afford to avoid radical change

Lib Dem Voice

By Jeremy Browne MP | Published 22nd March 2011 - 10:23 am

‘One of the things the RSPB are calling on you today to do is to not cut funding for nature conservation. Can you promise that despite the 30% cuts to your department, you won’t cut nature conservation costs?’

In a typical week earlier this month, the Radio 4 Today programme, having set itself against police reforms the previous day, had just found yet another deficit denial frontier. And it was only Wednesday.

Labour official spokespeople are the same: Exhibit A, DCMS Shadow Minister Gloria De Piero writing on why we should not reduce the arts budget in Total Politics magazine last month:

‘It is as simplistic to accept the inevitability of cuts to arts funding as it is to make those cuts, as the coalition has done – too deeply, too quickly.’

I enjoy the countryside, and the arts. I also see the obvious value in core public services like schools, the NHS and our armed forces.
But when Ed Miliband delivers his cop-out for all people who prefer their sums not to add up – ‘too much, too soon’ – he is so dangerously wrong that he actually threatens our national well-being.

In this budget week, if there is an overall criticism to be made of the government, it is certainly not that it is being too radical.

Britain is still borrowing an extra £425 million every day. Just the interest on that debt is now almost £1,000 million a week. That is money from ordinary taxpayers, not spent on public services, but poured away. We are still living way beyond our means with the national debt continuing to rise.

Meanwhile, an aging population is pushing up the cost of pensions and healthcare, while the percentage of the population of traditional working age continues to fall.

We cannot wish this all away. It is always a good idea to manage the national finances responsibly, but in an era of dramatically increasing global competition, it is absolutely essential.

Last week, before crisis struck Japan, I was due to be in China and South Korea.

China is now the second largest economy in the world. Its economy doubles in size every 7-8 years.

South Korea has world-class companies like Samsung, which alone is bigger than the entire economy of Malaysia. In the last two years, South Korea applied for more patents than Britain and Germany combined, despite having less than half the population. This inventiveness and enterprise is driving rates of economic growth way in excess of those in Europe and North America.

In these circumstances, Britain really cannot afford not to undertake radical change. If we carry on with a ruinous budget deficit and unreformed public services, and if we duck every opportunity to improve efficiency and reduce waste, and if we avoid asking ourselves any tough questions about raising education standards and promoting enterprise, Britain will be left behind.

Anyone who shares my ambitions for a more prosperous, just, liberal and socially mobile society, with the necessary resources to support strong public services and improving standards of living, has a clear responsibility to prevent that from happening.

It is not the Government’s bold and necessary programme that is the threat to Britain’s future; it is the opposition to it that represents the real high risk option.