So why, Teribus, can't this country produce ALL of what we need? You can't keep blaming the EU forever, you know. It isn't EU commissioners who till the ground and sow the crops. It isn't EU commissioners who cause supermarket chains to force prices down so low that small farms are put out of business, is it? (Not "socialism," either, eh? Sounds a bit more like your pet capitalistic "blind workings of the market" to me). It wasn't EU commissioners who devastated the cattle industry by spreading foot and mouth via corner-cutting and ignorance of good practice, was it? (And, as with those silted-up rivers, it's the poor old taxpayer who pays the farmer the full market price for every cow that had to be killed, as it is with TB, blamed on badgers in spite of the bleedin' obvious fact that you're asking for big trouble if you keep your cows crowded together in filthy, damp, unhygienic barns for half the year). It isn't EU commissioners who have wiped out 75% of our songbirds and who are well on the way to killing all our bees, is it? Profit motive, gigantism, ignorance and bad practice steered by land-barons who don't actually know one soil type from another. Oh no, they'll look after the "books" while their "estate managers" are given free rein to do anything they can to maximise those profits. We don't produce more than 60% of what we need, in spite of having some of the finest soils and best climatic conditions for arable farming in the world, because we use perfectly good arable land for growing cattle feed, one-seventh as efficient as using it to grow food for people, or, even worse, growing crops for "biofuels" instead of conserving energy, all in a world of seven billion with billions of those malnourished. A lot of that forty percent shortfall is imports of cash crops from countries that can't adequately feed their own people. Capitalism and the "global market place" reign supreme!

And don't come back preaching to me about farmers "having" to grow this, that or the other in order to get their EU subsidies. Yes it's just about the biggest absurdity of many EU absurdities so don't bloody start. I hold no candle for the CAP and never have, but I've not exactly seen a farmers' revolt over it, a downing of ploughshares. The little farmers I know round here work hard, do the best they can and get little in subsidies. The big boys upcountry, the ones you champion, moan and groan, take the subsidies, get someone to stick up those lucrative windmills, then vote leave. They'll bloody regret that last bit, sure as eggs is eggs.