powerrabbit

Temperature rose a couple of degrees last night and it's been raining overnight so all is well at present but the ground is still very cold so what snow we have will take a bit of shifting by natural forces. I hate snow.

Luckily it's a couple of degrees warmer and is raining at this time. Yes Paul, 10cms = 100mm. We were learning 'foreign' weights and measuremets in my last year of senior school but I left before anything sank in and were still using Impereal in farming for several years thereafter

Fridge running low in grub so went out the local town late this morning to re-stock. Roads out to the main road are treacherous and you need to be very cautious even on the main road, even with a Land Rover!

Doubt wheather I shall be going this time. Not an excuse but over night tonight and through tomorrow they forecast up to 10mm of snow for here so if the roads are like they have been over this last weekend no-one will be going anywhere, that's if they've any sense.

Watched the first one, didn't think much of it really, too disjointed and it would seem that some don't appear to live in the real world.

Still very cold here but has turned back to rain from this afternoon and is now a wet cold mess and thawing.

Well, they were right! The forecast was very accurate and here this morning we've woken up to 4 inches plus of snow coming in on a very strong S Easterly wind and it's still snowing quite hard. Here's a quick snap looking down the garden.

It's got a lot colder down here over the last few days, temperatures hovering between +5C during the day to +0.2C overnight. It did start to snow a little late last night with just a few flakes falling but turned back to rain by daylight this morning but the wind has been rather fresh from a NNW direction making it feel colder than it actually is.

All the tractors from the 'Hachette' and the 'Tractors of the World of Farming' series in 1.43 are produced by UH and for the physical size of the models they are very detailed. There is quite a good chance that they will produce the Field Marshall in either or both 1:32 and 1:16 sometime in the future, they've done it in 1:43, FM Series 111.

To be honest, I wouldn't buy those sort of things off fleabay/iternet, or halogen light bulbs (the long type) as they don't like travelling through the post!, they're sometimes even 'blown' before you get them in a shop so best to buy in person locally so's you can march it back if it don't fire up.

No good buying your camera equipment from Jessops now either, gone into liquidation 2 days ago.

Those knives will never wear out Robert. Bill, did you price up replacement elements for the halogen heater before you bought it? I bought one two years ago, very cheap at £10 but after a week 2 of the elements went, shop would not replace the heater and the elements to fit were £20 each so I dumped it!.

Them folding 'Stanley' type knives are really good, I bought a similar one a couple of years ago and have already worn out 2 packs of blades!

With regards to milk Barry, they all think that milk from grass can be produced for nothing because the grass grows for free! It's almost like the water authorities charging their customers through the nose for what in essence is a basic human need but the other way around from milk.

Here in the UK there is a vast difference between 'handouts', tax relief, tax credits and other payments, they are all seperate sections of the system. As for the Single Farm Payment, this is calculated by the amount of useable land you have and parts that have buildings and other permanent fixtures on are not included. With tax credits, the amount you are entitled to depends on your annual income from your work and was designed to top-up your income if you earn below a certain amount to a reasonable 'average' income according to the national average, this you calculate at the end of the year which is April and if you don't fill in and send in your return form by the end of that month then you loose any credits and any other income you may have has to be declared and your hours per week you work comes into it as well. There are different 'circomstances' also, like if you are employed, self-employed, have a family, are a carer, have any children and so-on. Anyone who rents land can only claim Single Farm Payment if it is in their tenancy agreement but goes back to the landowner from the tenant in the rent paid. Normally the payment goes straight to the registered landowner. You can as a landowner also transfer or 'sell' the right to someone else. What really bugs me is that all these spongers that won't work, excuse being that they can't, for whatever reason they give, do so because they get paid more than what they could earn on a basic wage so there's no incentive for them to work, the system in my opinion is wrong. Those that want to work but can't get a job in fact get less financial help than those that wont. Another thing, going back to the price of food, people go to the pub and spend £3 for a pint of beer, drink 10 pints or so and think nothing of it but when spending a pitiful £1 for 4 pints of milk think they are being ripped off and when you break it down, fuel is only (at £1.40 per litre) 63p per pint. People need to get their priorities right before the start complaining.

It's a vicious circle Paul in any trade or profession, if the customer doesn't buy your product then you don't earn anything to spend and pass on to the next trade and so-on. The public perception of farmers has always been 'look at all the rich farmers', I agree, farmers and landowners are rich, but only on paper as all their wealth is tied up in assets such as their land and machinery and the only way to release or realise that wealth is to sell off some or all of your assets and if you start doing that then you're on a downhill slide which you will never be able to climb back because the price of land and property is constantly on the increase and those prices can only be afforded by those in the city that have the disposable income and when they do buy land they invariably sell off parcels of it, farms concequently are broken up and never again go back into agricultural production and to a great extent that has been the main reason for the decline in British agriculture in more recent years. It's a very hard thing to do to sell yourself out after your family has been on the same farm for generations and pangs of guilt will always be there in your mind thereafter. I'm sure there will be a lot more added to this topic.

I agree with you Paul on a lot of points but for the general public to be able to buy British, packaging has to be labeled British produce, not hoodwinked by the label stating 'packed in the UK', there's the difference. The public has been so used to buying cheap imported food for so long now that they are reluctant to pay just that bit more for home grown and the reason that foreign imports are cheaper is that they get far more in subsidies and their labour costs/wages are lower, thats why the Poles and Ukranians come over here to work! Our farmers don't receive as many subsidies as you may think, some get none at all and as for grant aid, most grants have now gone and those subsidies that are available depends on you geographical location within the Country, your type of farming practice and your land management system all of which attract various levels of payments, these payments also depend on which 'sheme' you're in as you can't be in more than one over a given period of time. It's not all black and white.

Farmers themselves are caught in a catch 22 situation or stuck between a rock and a hard place. Several years ago when the first dramatic milk price reduction and sheep prices slumped, several farmers did a 'drive through slow protest' through the streets of the local market town (Newton Abbot) and I was there to observe it, they did it on a Wednesday as that's market day in Newton. In one of the shops there were two men and a few other people discussing this rather loudly amongst themselves and I just couldn't help myself trying to put them right on the comments they were making, they were saying 'bloody farmers, what do they need money for?, look at all this new expensive tractors and machinery and Land Rovers they're driving around'. I told them, in no uncertain terms, that farmers kit nowadays is not purchased outright, it's like you buying a house, you invariably need to take out a mortgage so the farmer needs to realise a decent price for his produce in order to service these costs plus the equipment has to be reliable and roadworthy, if they came driving their yard tractors they would immediateley be stopped by the Police for the state of their machinery, so think about these things before you pass judgement and think before you open your mouths. I think they got the message!

A few more bits and bobs for the Nintendo Wii from fleabay, a few nice hunting and shooting games together with some controler add-ons. A brilliant way to pass the winter nights when there's so much rubbish on the TV plus it hones your skills such as eye/hand co-ordination, your reflexes and keeps you fit. Also bought a pair of spare battery units for two of my laptops for a tenth of the price of new ones, very handy.

French farmers have a little better respect in France as farm produce over there accounts for a substantial amount of their GDP and have a greater political voice plus they are more militant and stand together when they feel the need. In the UK, although the farming community voice their woes, when it comes to standing together and being militant, for some reason, they don't although they have to a degree mor recently. The problem here is that the buyers, such as the supermarkets and processors (in the case of milk) have the power over the farmers to dictate prices and supply, they don't care, if we say we want more for milk, they say they can import it cheaper from Holland, lamb from New Zealand, pork from Denmark, beef from Ireland or Argentina and potatoes from Israel etc etc. A very valid point, yes, it's the general public that need educating on the whole and get them behind the producers and give them undivided support and backing but as long as they can keep buying cheap food they never will and in these tight times you'll probably never be able to convince old dogs new tricks.

VHS to DVD converter from fleabay, comes with a USB extention cable and the software, plug the phono type plugs and the S-Video in plug into the corresponding TV sockets and the USB end of the 'magic box' into the computer and load up a disc, load your VHS tape in the player and go from there. Don't know the exact procedure yet without loading up the software to read the instruction manual part. Will be interesting to see if it actually works as I've some good farm related VHS tapes that you can't get on DVD.

Stick to the PC Sue, it's better at spelling and English!

Shouldn't the title date of this topic be changed to 2013 now? A Nintendo Wii system. I was so impressed with the setup that my 10 year old Neice had for Christmas that I bought a secondhand kit for myself. It arrived today and after half an hour setting it up is all up and running. If you like sports games and shooting games or whatever you like games then I would recommend it. I've been ten-pin bowling, playing tennis, shooting ducks, clay pigeons, tin cans and targets most of the afternoon.

Talking about the ages of the soldiers and how young they died don't forget that a great number lied about their age and managed to get accepted for service, some were as young as 14 so when you see 'private Joe Bloggs 4th Infantry aged 21' on a headstone he could just be one of those. Sobering thought.

I believe Neils that the War graves site at Menin looks the way it is because it is the site that is being 'constructed' if that's the right word, to bury soldiers remains that are still being discovered by archaeologists that are working on excavating the old trenches, there was a very good TV programme screened here last year showing the excavations and when remains were discovered they were meticulously excavated, any personal belongings preserved and DNA taken in oeder to try and identify the remains hoping that a name could be put to them. The families of the soldiers lost with no known grave were asked, if they wished, to give a DNA sample to create an archive for the purpose of identifying any remains that are found that cannot be identified by any other clues. I have no knowledge of any of my family relations being involved in the Great War as many of the male side were farming and it was never mentioned although I did have a Great Uncle that was in the Army at this time in the Catering Corps but wheather he saw any action or no I don't know, he was born in 1896 and died in 1988 aged 92, I still have very fond memories of this wise, dry humoured old man. No-one should ever be allowed to forget the period 1914-18, they said that it would 'be the War that ended all Wars', how wrong could they be? And to me, how ironic it is that our Monarchy is decended from the German leader (Keizer). I remember from history lessons that when the troubles started that if only our Royal Family at that time accepted the Keizer and his family to come to the UK as 'refugees' that the conflict would probably never happened, but they refused to. I hope that history will never repeat itself, although it has a nasty habbit of doing so. Conflicts nowadays have shifted from the political to that of religon but all through history conflict between nations and peoples have always swung between the two.