| The news this week that the Executive is to dole out £326m of your
earth pounds in (ahem) "support" to Scotland’s (ahem) "family"
farms has been welcomed by right-thinking people the length and breadth of this our own,
our native land. With agri-business scooping up to £300K a well-fed skull, other
taxpayers are asking : "How can I benefit from such largesse?"
The short answer is you can’t. |
It's only on planet farming that the usual procedure of paying tax
on income is reversed, as a senior civil servant now explains : "The system is
designed to provide much-needed income support to our farming community on a means-tested
basis i.e. the less you need the money, the more you get. Which might seem neither logical
nor fair but how cares what you think? Think of it like a substantial lottery win with
only giant fermers allowed to buy a ticket." |
With the scheme
costing the average Scottish non-farming family a whopping £150 a year, plans are in
place to re-balance the books in favour of the consumer. The new scheme involves you in
doing a massive food shop at Tescos and, at the check-out, requesting the assistant to
charge the bill to the account of your nearest big farmer. Try it, you never know, it
might work. |
