On Fri, 13 Dec 2002 20:20:15 +0000, Tim Lamb
wrote:

In article , Torsten Brinch
writes
McSharry himself said in the broadcast, they always seemed to
negotiate the reform with delegations of mediumlarge to large farmers.
The thought of capping was unacceptable to them, it was held that
capping would not be fair to the large farmers -- that is, it was held
to be unfair if the man owning 10,000 hectares of land should not
receive 100 times the income support as the man owning 100 times less
land.

It was said in the broadcast, that NFU gets half their income from
small farmers, so NFU cannot stand up in public and say the policy is
to support big farmers at the expense of small, that would mean
losing half of the paying members. In public it would have to be held
that the policy was there to support the traditional family farm.

Not being a member, I could not possibly comment.

??

The situation is not helped by the UK Govts. reluctance to claim
the monetary compensation.

Which fraction of the subsidy gone missing on this account are we
looking at? (I am questioning the significance of it, in the
situation)