Guardian Embarrassed by Farming Subsidy Cuts Fail
Earlier this month panicked reporting from The Guardian’s environment desk predicted that the “nature-friendly farming budget is set to be slashed” at the Spending Review. The Guardian must be well sourced on eco-matters – unless…
A half-billion cut was reported to be on the way:
“However, the entire farming payments budget including the EU acreage payments which were being phased out was £2.4bn, so looks like £400m a year cut.”
This prediction was later amended to a £400 million a year cut by the last year of the spending review. Scrambling…
DEFRA released a document yesterday going into the details of the funding settlement it had reached with Reeves. No surprise: the Chancellor kept subsidies up…
Combining tree funding along with some other measures and the total cut is a small £100 million. The Guardian was forced to publish all of the subsidy-guzzling farming groups favourable statements on the settlement: “Nature and farmers’ groups cautiously welcome spending review as there were fears Treasury wanted bigger cuts.“ Neglected to mention that the ‘fears’ were entirely manufactured by them…