Also the City Ground gave the bugler and Remembrance Day the utmost respect #lessweforget #NFFC
Matt retweeted
It takes a thousand years to build 3 centimetres of topsoil, and the world loses a football pitch of it every 5 seconds.
A third of the planet's farmable soil is already degraded. The UN's own warning was 60 harvests left.
Iowa, the richest ground in America, has lost close to half its topsoil since 1850, ploughed loose and sent down the Mississippi.
Warming gets the summits and the placards. The soil that grows 95% of your food is washing away right now, and that is the one that starves you.
The deepest, blackest, most fertile ground on earth, the American prairie, the Russian steppe, the Ukrainian black earth that feeds the world, was built by one thing.
Herds. Tens of millions of bison, trampling, dunging and moving on, over roots 15 feet deep, packing carbon into the ground for 10,000 years.
The plough switched that off. The cow, moved like the wild herd, switches it back on. Graze it right and the carbon sinks, the soil thickens, and the rain soaks in instead of tearing the field down the river.
A tractor cannot build soil. A fertiliser bag cannot build soil. Only the herd ever has.
So saving the world's dirt means more cattle on grass, not fewer, and the best machine ever built for the job is the animal they want off your plate.
You will hear about the cow's burp right up until the last of the topsoil reaches the sea.
Climate change means we cannot drill our own oil and gas, rewilding means we can’t grow our own food, inclusion means we cannot protect our own borders, and the EU means we have no voice at a table that directs policies for what regulations we adhere to - even if you don’t export
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Matt retweeted
The ruminant family, and the one job each of them does that nothing else on earth can.
The cow turns a wet hillside into beef and milk, and leaves the soil better than she found it.
The sheep grows a fireproof, waterproof, compostable coat every year, out of grass and rain, and then gives it away for the price of a haircut.
The goat eats the bramble, the scrub and the invasive weed that strangles everything else, and asks only for a weak point in the fence.
The water buffalo makes the milk that becomes real mozzarella, standing in marsh a cow would sink in.
The yak gives milk at an altitude that would kill a lowland animal in a week, and carries your bags up there as well.
The reindeer feeds and clothes entire peoples above the Arctic Circle, on lichen and moss, in the dark, for months.
The bison built the deepest soil on the planet by walking across it and eating.
Seven animals, one gift each, and not one of them can be replaced by a crop, a machine or a sachet.
Every one of them is classed, this decade, as a liability on a spreadsheet by somebody who has never been cold.
Matt retweeted
Meet Ebby. He's a Nottingham Forest fan living in Germany, and he still travels over to England for every single game, home and away. 🇩🇪🌳
Most of us moan about a long coach trip to an away day. Ebby's got flights, trains and a border to cross before he's even started, then he turns round and does it all again for the next one. Not a few times a season, every match. Fair play, Ebby. That's a proper supporter. 👏❤️
Matt retweeted
Local piemaker explains how Burnham's first Budget will make things much worse:
"I don’t qualify for the business rates relief because I’m multi-site… I’ve got two shops, so I don’t qualify. The minimum wage has increased. I’m not saying we shouldn’t pay staff. I’m saying we can’t afford to pay them…
All my staff have been with us for years. So I’m going to have approximately a £700 a week increase. My suppliers are having an increase too. My supply bills are around £20,000 to £30,000 a week. That’ll go up 10%, so £2,000 to £3,000 a week. So that’s £4,000 a week I’ve got to find…
That’s about 20,000 to 30,000 pies a week. So my costs have gone up. I’ve got no business rates relief. The National Insurance is crippling me. The energy crisis is crippling me. I’m going to have to put my prices up,
Customers are going to get mad. I’m going to get less profit. As a family, as a director, I’ve got to take a 2% cut. So my family, my one-year-old girl. I’m taking a pay cut. The business is taking a pay cut.
How is that breathing room for me? Where’s my breathing space? John Healey, if you’re listening, where’s my breathing space? You promised me. You promised the UK breathing space. Where is it?"
Matt retweeted
Update:
In the 27 months since Labour came to power, we've seen;
• Employer National Insurance increased from 13.8% to 15%.
• The employer NI threshold cut from £9,100 to £5,000.
• The freeze on Income Tax and National Insurance thresholds extended to 2031.
• Capital Gains Tax increased from 10% and 20% to 18% and 24%.
• Business Asset Disposal Relief increased from 10% to 14%, then 18% – and now its lifetime limit halved to £500,000.
• Investors’ Relief raised to 18% and its lifetime limit cut from £10 million to £1 million.
• CGT relief on sales to Employee Ownership Trusts halved.
• Carried interest taxation increased and moved into the Income Tax regime.
• Dividend tax rates increased by two percentage points.
• Savings-income tax rates increased by four percentage points.
• Property-income tax rates increased by four percentage points.
• VCT income tax relief cut from 30% to 20%.
• Most unused pension funds brought into the Inheritance Tax net.
• Agricultural and Business Property Relief capped.
• Inheritance Tax thresholds frozen until 2031.
• The non-dom regime replaced with a tougher residence-based system.
• VAT imposed on private school fees.
• Business-rates relief removed from private schools.
• The Stamp Duty surcharge on second homes and buy-to-let raised from 3% to 5%.
• The Furnished Holiday Lettings regime abolished.
• A new annual surcharge on homes worth £2 million or more.
• Pension salary-sacrifice NI relief capped at £2,000 a year.
• The bank surcharge doubled.
• Capital allowances for plant and machinery cut twice.
• Online gaming duty almost doubled.
• The Energy Profits Levy increased and extended, and its investment allowance scrapped.
• Vaping Products Duty brought in and tobacco duties increased above inflation.
• Vehicle Excise Duty increased for many new cars, with electric vehicles brought in.
• A pay-per-mile tax on electric and plug-in hybrid cars legislated for 2028.
• Air Passenger Duty increased.
• Making Tax Digital extended to more landlords and self-employed people.
Together they represent one of the biggest transfers of wealth from households and businesses to the Treasury in decades – with little to show for it in public services.
Whether you're a business owner employing staff, a parent paying school fees, a farmer planning succession, an entrepreneur building wealth or simply someone trying to save for your family’s future...
- You keep less of what you earn.
- You keep less of what you invest.
- You leave less for your family.
Death by a thousand cuts.
