Biblical plague of bees swarm Israel

He wrote a good biography, I have here somewhere.

South African opposition politician Julius 'kill the boer' Malema has been sentenced to five years after being found guilty of the illegal possession of a gun and firing it in public...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9wqeggd27yo

The gay couple are accused of murder, sexual assault of a child under 13, inflicting grievous bodily harm, five counts of child cruelty, and further counts of making, taking and distributing indecent images...

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/two-men-face-cruelty-abuse-33780336

In the twelve months to June last year, 6,365 farms closed in Britain. The highest number since records began. For every ten that shut, fewer than six opened to replace them. In the first quarter of this year alone, 1,890 agricultural businesses ceased trading while only 805 started.

The arithmetic is extinction-grade, and it has been accelerating since October 2024, when the Chancellor announced that the full inheritance tax exemption on agricultural land was over.

From this month, a 20% tax applies to inherited farm assets above £2.5 million. That sounds like a generous threshold until you price a working farm in Hampshire or the Cotswolds or the Welsh Marches, where the land alone will clear it before you've counted a single building, a single piece of machinery, or the farmhouse the family has lived in since before the Treasury existed.

These are not cash businesses. A farm's value is in the soil; its margins are in the pennies. The average farm income in England was £25,000 last year. The tax bill on a £3.5 million estate, which is a mid-sized arable farm, not a country mansion, would be £200,000. Eight years of profit, due on death.

The only way to pay it is to sell the land, which is the business, which means there is no business, which means the farm a grandfather built and a father maintained and the son was supposed to pass to his daughter is sold to a property developer or an institutional investor from abroad who will never set foot on it.

The government says only 185 estates will be affected in the first year. Farmers say the government is lying, and given the Treasury's recent record with impact assessments, and the fact that Labour has to lie to you every day to stop its world falling apart, it is not obvious why anyone would take the government's word for it.

But even on the government's own figures: 185 families forced to break up working farms so that Rachel Reeves can close a fraction of a fraction of a deficit that was caused by spending decisions, not by farmers. It is pain inflicted for the sake of it, and thereafter only for the sake of a chickenfeed financial expropriation, and the pleasure of destroying a lineage and a chain of ownership, which I suspect is the part that Labour, who hate history and hate landowners like the jolly faithful Pabloists they are, really enjoy out of all of this.

But leaving the psychopathology of the policy aside, think of it in terms of autarchy: Britain imports 40% of its food. That number has been rising for decades and will rise faster now, because every farm that closes is acreage that does not come back.

You cannot reopen a farm the way you reopen a shop. The soil takes years. The knowledge takes a generation and, like all knowledge, is very easily lost.

The people who are being driven out are the people who know how to feed this country, and they are being driven out by people who have never, in their lives, had to produce anything more consequential than a spreadsheet.

https://x.com/AllForProgress_/status/2044713912839614509?s=20

That's going to hurt

Look at the face of the male vs. female.

Lol

Huge news - Restore Britain has just hit a record 9% in a national poll. 9%. That is massive.

Restore Britain is the fastest growing political party in British political history. I am more and more confident that we will win the next general election...

https://www.facebook.com/share/1Ws68XBUqQ/

Dan Cohen, the Mayor of Leeds 🙄

Reform has squandered its lead. Is it intentional? We are starting to look like a continental country, where traffic light coalitions and short-term governments are inevitable. If this is to be believed Restore has risen from 4% (in a recent poll which didn't specifically mention them in the key metrics offered) to 9% here.

The best option here would be not to video this scene at all. Or, ideally, not to have a mobile phone near you at all.