You might think BW are a cunning lot. But their masters - DEFRA - are more
cunning, sneeky and downright nasty in their efforts to make money.
Owning a smallholding we have to fill out copious DEFRA forms in answer to
their ever changing agricultural rules - each change coming with half a tree of
paper to go through to find out what we write there. As DEFRA is the ultimate
in not joined up - having lots of bits in lots of places linlked by e-mail - a
lot of this stuff gets creatively changed causing us to have the wrong land,
incorrect boundaries and even the farmer next door (who's identity is a mystery
to us as it is not the one who lives there and DEFRA (or one of their arms)
occassionally write to us demanding we tell them. (This while another arm says
the farmer is disputing the boundary but says his details are confidential.)
But land or not yet another group in DEFRA has always sent us a cheque for a
few pound as payment for our land - until now.
This year the various books and forms arrived late and (as usual) our
boundaries had been altered with DEFRA now saying that new rules (not sent)
said only only allowed half the land to get the payment. After 20 years we know
there is no point in complaining about such things as this lot of form senders
will have no contact with the ones deciding on what land (and we often get two
completely seperate sets of forms giving different details on that. (At one
time we got through to a sane guy in a tower block over a station in a town who
told us they could not even get his land right and he was the one who created
the records - but then they went god knows where and got mucked up.
So we filled in the forms - which takes a few hours and having finished found a
final comment that although we were expected to fill the forms or face fines
the latest rules ment small amounts of land (like ours) would not recieve
payments as the processing cost to much. The lady whose sheep are on our land
had been told as much by her union rep BUT he explained that those with too
little land could allow their nighbour to add it to theirs and so claim the
money. So we could get it via her BUT according to the DEFRA rules to do this
we had to order a form by phone and this took 6 weeks to come while all the
stuff had arrived well in time for the money deadline but but much too late for
the 'takes 6 weeks form deadline' as that form must be in at DEFRA a week after
the original stuff to fill in about our land had arrived.
This means we and she gets no money but it gets better. In a really sneeky move
any small packets of land to small to be claimed for and not added to the
neighbours was counted by DEFRA as theirs to sell to other farmers to add to
their allocations and claim money for. So DEFRA will, this year lump our land
with lots of others and sell the right to claim money for it to some fatcat
landowner (many being foreign) and so collect a nice bit of dosh off him so he
can claim the money for ours and other bits of land from the farm fund. And, as
this money is less than he pays he makes money from DEFRA while DEFRA actually
loose out on the deal - and so have to screw BW and you and I for more.
If you think the BW books and rules are screwy they are rank children compared
to DEFRA..
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