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Pick For Britain: UK workers needed as foreign workers flown into UK amid crisis in farming sector

Do you dispute the essential validity of my statement though?
(Bear in mind that in general, I avoid any militant or pushy postings in veggie/vegan threads)

No, I think you're right, and the post it was in response to was at least as wooly. :)

Just that some of the language was reminding me a little of that McD executive in the McLibel trial who, when asked to justify the advertising of McDonalds' food as "nutritious", claimed confidently that "it contains nutrients".
 
Just that some of the language was reminding me a little of that McD executive in the McLibel trial who, when asked to justify the advertising of McDonalds' food as "nutritious", claimed confidently that "it contains nutrients".

:oops: :oops:

But I can truthfully state that I've only been once into a McDonalds since 1980 ..... and that time (early nineties?) was for boring and horrid "fries" :hmm: only :(
I can report that they were not very nutritious at all! ;)
 
At that time didn't the fries have beef fat in?

Fuck knows! My friends said not, but I didn't ask the staff myself :oops:
And how would friends know even?
This was after a Sunday football match (Swindon v Oxford! -- we'd won).
At which point there was very little choice of places in such hostile territory for us away Oxford fans to grab better food.
I still regret going in though <still :mad: at self, 25-plus years later :( >
 
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Back when I was a teenager and then in my student days, I had the advantage of a great-uncle with a market garden in Dorset. He also ran a market stall, in Salisbury or was it Shaftsbury ? three days a week, inc Saturdays. I spent several months during the summers staying with his household (my mother was quite ill with heart trouble and me and my brother were loaned out often over the summer to several relatives ... ) Getting up early wasn't a problem then ...
Don't know about little bro, but I quite enjoyed the work - hoeing late beans, picking lettuce, peas, beans and fruit, I wasn't strong enough to dig spuds or root crops by hand but I could pick up afterwards ... for the first few years I did this, he had a wonderfully sweet tempered heavy horse - officially retired, but still quite capable of drawing a small tip-cart over short distances. Uncle kept him mainly for the manure - to force rhubarb, and feed the soil generally (the nag's party treat was to nick the heart out of a lettuce whilst it was still in the ground, so you had to watch him carefully !) ...
Since then, I've done a lot of PYO soft fruit ...
 
My dad worked at a feed mill, remember him once describing the ending of the Milk Marketing Board. IIRC it involved getting farmers to vote it down having been promised sunny uplands of the free market then of course squeezing life out of them when it was gone. Might be misremembering.
 
6 charter flights from Romania are coming to bring 450 people to pick our fruit for us.
Where’s Farage when you need him.
 
My council tuns a few small 'farm plots' between 30-100 acres. They are available to rent but will have to be returned back to the council, on retirement. My friend, S, has one of these...and also has a market stall in a couple of local towns. He does not pay the Soil Assoc. premium (a scam) to be named as 'organic' but can call his produce 'pesticide free'. He makes a decent living running his 42 acres as a market garden...and supplies a whole heap of people (myself included) with seasonal vegetables. Entirely doable without exploitation. Capitalism is the problem...
 
6 charter flights from Romania are coming to bring 450 people to pick our fruit for us.
Where’s Farage when you need him.

I trust this is true, because you post sensibly on here :)

But if I saw this being spread around as random gossip on Facebook or wherever, I'd be really suspicious.
 
I trust this is true, because you post sensibly on here :)

But if I saw this being spread around as random gossip on Facebook or wherever, I'd be really suspicious.

they havent announced their Pick For Britain thing yet then...or did i miss the fanfare?

6 planes with 150 people on board each? thats 900. Still short of the 70k the Farmers Union want by 69k
 
Crazy times indeed.
Romanian workers are being flown in to help feed Britain amid a continuing recruitment crisis in the agriculture sector.

Special charter flights have started flying into the UK from Bucharest with desperately needed workers for British farms that risk losing their crop of early summer fruit and vegetables because of the coronavirus lockdown.

One plane was due to land in Stansted airport on Wednesday afternoon, with another landing on Thursday with 150 people onboard.

Matthew Purton, the head of commercial aviation at Air Charter Services, said the company had tendered for six more flights “for a mixture of farms” in the coming weeks, which could see 450 workers flown to help avert food shortages.

Romania lifted restrictions to allow farm workers fly to overseas, and ACS started flying workers into Germany three weeks ago, with eight flights so far and more on the way.

It only seems like yesterday this was in the news

 

they havent announced their Pick For Britain thing yet then...or did i miss the fanfare?

6 planes with 150 people on board each? thats 900. Still short of the 70k the Farmers Union want by 69k
Those Eastern Europeans, coming over here, taking our unpaid work.
 
But it isn't is it? It's entirely normal, has been for years...Foreign born workers coming into the country to prop up the farming industry. Picking/labouring for low pay and poor conditions. Often backbreaking work, much of which our population doesn't want to do. Been this way for longer than my lifetime. The fact that we are even talking about it is the very heart of the problem.
 
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