Buying Local

[Onchanguy]

Presumably your partner/spouse is also working so you don't have to worry about price as much as me as a single person on less than half your wages. Granted I don't have a family to pay for but that is both our choices but I still have bills such as rent, electricity etc. to pay for.

 

Sadly not. One income family.

 

OK, but £39,000.00 plus is still a bloody good wage. You can afford not to worry greatly about price. Many others of us cannot.

 

Not if your spending a quarter of it on bloody food it isn't. By the time power, heat, electric, petrol and other stuff is taken into account I live on about £2,500 a year. Its f**king rubbish. Still I'd be happy to pay more for vegetables delivered in the back of a local farmers own Range Rover Vogue so its done less food miles.

 

The original thread was "Can you afford to spend more on local food in the current climate". Clearly not ....

 

We're all in the same boat. Prices are the same for everybody. Shoprite don't sell me a pint of milk for 25p and you 57p because I am earning half what you are. Total don't sell me petrol for 60p a litre do they?

 

How you choose to spend your money is your business. The point was not how you spend your money but the amount of money you have to spend compared to others. I'm sure most people on here would agree £39k is a bloody good wage.

 

Besides, you don't live on £2,500.00 per year as you have clearly stated that is after your outgoings have been taken out (food, mortgage, power etc). You live on the £39k per year and have £2,500.00 left over after expenses. I'm sure many people on this board would love to have £200.00 per month left over after paying their bills.

[Onchanguy]

"Quastion" what a brilliant word ! It even reads like the way a farmer would pronounce it!

 

 

You must be a farmer Gazza>

 

ha ha close but not quite right, ex farmer but still involved in it,

 

question is that better ( i know how if you dont spell perfectly on here you never make it in the real world), i type 2 fast but o well

 

Ah, the mist is clearing.

 

Now we see why the unwillingness to change anything and, God forbid, actually be forward thinking.

[gazza]

"Quastion" what a brilliant word ! It even reads like the way a farmer would pronounce it!

 

 

You must be a farmer Gazza>

 

ha ha close but not quite right, ex farmer but still involved in it,

 

question is that better ( i know how if you dont spell perfectly on here you never make it in the real world), i type 2 fast but o well

 

Ah, the mist is clearing.

 

Now we see why the unwillingness to change anything and, God forbid, actually be forward thinking.

 

well no you see if i wasent forward thinking, i would still be a farmer in your book, i woulden have got myself a gd trade

or set up a company i should be still sat rd asking for more cash if i was like you say we are,

 

your soultions to all the problems just dont add up thats all, thay dont get anywhere near,

but of course you will never belive that

[Skeddan]

If the local farmers got together and formed a co-operative and sold meat and veg in a shop they ran they could bring the retail price down by not going through third parties and people would buy the local produce as it would be fresher and better than you buy in supermarkets and hey ho everyone is happy. The farmers would get more money as they would get the full sale price rather than the middleman, the customer would get better produce and the economy would benefit because people would buy locally.

 

Not difficult. Just takes someone to get the ball rolling, but no, the farmers would rather maintain the status quo and keep whinging about how bad the life is. My heart bleeds. If they are not prepared to do something about it then I am not prepared to take any notice of their complaints.

 

thumbsup to that.

 

one quastion on that, how would u make sure that u got the volume of ppl there in the first place,

i cant see a lot of ppl going down to tescos,shoprite to buy there normal goods, and walking past all the fruit veg meats, and saying to themselfs i know i get them somewhere eles,, some will but not a lot,

 

the shop would have to be quite big, with parking closeish to town cant see that happining

 

Better to have smaller shops close by where people can easily shop daily if they want. (The produce would then work out cheaper for them than buying at the supermarket once a week or less). It would also reduce domestic waste from unused food, so would work with that 'challenge' that IoMG are now trying to meet.

 

There's lots of different ways it could be done - perhaps start with fruit and veg market stalls - no big investment. Maybe you could have these set up in afternoon by schools (or in the playground) so parents picking up kids could pick up fresh fruit and veg for the next couple of days. Whichever way it's done, small easy-reach local outlets are the way to go.

[gazza]

If the local farmers got together and formed a co-operative and sold meat and veg in a shop they ran they could bring the retail price down by not going through third parties and people would buy the local produce as it would be fresher and better than you buy in supermarkets and hey ho everyone is happy. The farmers would get more money as they would get the full sale price rather than the middleman, the customer would get better produce and the economy would benefit because people would buy locally.

 

Not difficult. Just takes someone to get the ball rolling, but no, the farmers would rather maintain the status quo and keep whinging about how bad the life is. My heart bleeds. If they are not prepared to do something about it then I am not prepared to take any notice of their complaints.

 

thumbsup to that.

 

one quastion on that, how would u make sure that u got the volume of ppl there in the first place,

i cant see a lot of ppl going down to tescos,shoprite to buy there normal goods, and walking past all the fruit veg meats, and saying to themselfs i know i get them somewhere eles,, some will but not a lot,

 

the shop would have to be quite big, with parking closeish to town cant see that happining

 

Better to have smaller shops close by where people can easily shop daily if they want. (The produce would then work out cheaper for them than buying at the supermarket once a week or less). It would also reduce domestic waste from unused food, so would work with that 'challenge' that IoMG are now trying to meet.

 

There's lots of different ways it could be done - perhaps start with fruit and veg market stalls - no big investment. Maybe you could have these set up in afternoon by schools (or in the playground) so parents picking up kids could pick up fresh fruit and veg for the next couple of days. Whichever way it's done, small easy-reach local outlets are the way to go.

 

thats what is happing at the moment with the farmers markets,

there doing the local schools and markets at the moment,

 

but if your a poduces of say 30 tons a week of spuds, i cant see them all being sold in tha markets

[Sebrof]

I don't want to prolong this too much further, but what was the reason for the concession if not because small amounts are uneconomical to collect?

From what I can make out, the EU regulation was set up to aid importers of small, low-value goods into the EU.

 

see e.g.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2905142...-exemption.html

 

More Telegraph lies.

 

It doesn't take a moment's thought to realise this statement is nonsense:

 

"The legislation was set up to aid importers of small, low-value goods into the European Community."

 

Does the nitwit who wrote this really believe that importers (ie: businesses) are going to be importing goods in quantities worth less than £18.00 per consignment? And does he not know that these importers will almost always be VAT-registered. This means they will get back all the VAT they pay out on what they buy, so there is no need for VAT not to be levied?

 

Who was it who claimed: " I'm not content with lazy ill-thought-out uninformed bogus bullshit 'explanations' "?

 

S

[Sebrof]

I don't want to prolong this too much further, but what was the reason for the concession if not because small amounts are uneconomical to collect?

From what I can make out, the EU regulation was set up to aid importers of small, low-value goods into the EU.

 

see e.g.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2905142...-exemption.html

 

Did you read down to the end, Skeddan, to the only bit that made sense?

 

"But, even if such a change were made, HM Customs & Excise would then be confronted by an even bigger problem: how to collect the VAT.

 

"That would be extremely fiddly," says Dennis Knowles, a partner at Deloitte. "The cost of collection could exceed the amount it nets."

 

You're guilty of selective quoting.

 

S

[WTF]

If the local farmers got together and formed a co-operative and sold meat and veg in a shop they ran they could bring the retail price down by not going through third parties and people would buy the local produce as it would be fresher and better than you buy in supermarkets and hey ho everyone is happy. The farmers would get more money as they would get the full sale price rather than the middleman, the customer would get better produce and the economy would benefit because people would buy locally.

 

Not difficult. Just takes someone to get the ball rolling, but no, the farmers would rather maintain the status quo and keep whinging about how bad the life is. My heart bleeds. If they are not prepared to do something about it then I am not prepared to take any notice of their complaints.

 

thumbsup to that.

 

one quastion on that, how would u make sure that u got the volume of ppl there in the first place,

i cant see a lot of ppl going down to tescos,shoprite to buy there normal goods, and walking past all the fruit veg meats, and saying to themselfs i know i get them somewhere eles,, some will but not a lot,

 

the shop would have to be quite big, with parking closeish to town cant see that happining

 

Better to have smaller shops close by where people can easily shop daily if they want. (The produce would then work out cheaper for them than buying at the supermarket once a week or less). It would also reduce domestic waste from unused food, so would work with that 'challenge' that IoMG are now trying to meet.

 

There's lots of different ways it could be done - perhaps start with fruit and veg market stalls - no big investment. Maybe you could have these set up in afternoon by schools (or in the playground) so parents picking up kids could pick up fresh fruit and veg for the next couple of days. Whichever way it's done, small easy-reach local outlets are the way to go.

 

thats what is happing at the moment with the farmers markets,

there doing the local schools and markets at the moment,

 

but if your a poduces of say 30 tons a week of spuds, i cant see them all being sold in tha markets

 

the snag being the farmers can't sell meat to the public and all the meat the public can buy has to be processed through the abatoir, it's the law. if a farmer wants to kill and butcher something himself he can only use it to feed his IMMEDIATE family, no passing on cheap to distant relatives or friends. then you also have the fact that milk prices along with other stuff has the price set by government regardless of where it comes from or who sells it. all this is done to allow us our own abatoir and milk/cheese plant and also keep butchers in business. from an animal welfare /boat trip point of view i am for a local abatoir, but as we are effectively an 80K population town and the abatoir has to meet EU specs ( but they can't do horses there) it makes our meat expensive for us. couple that with far more farmers looking to make a living from the land than the land actually needs to use it all and it all gets more expensive.

[MarcusAurelius]

I would have thought a shop-keeper registered for VAT would have been a little bit better informed than you were. But if you felt I talked down to you, I apologise.

 

I have great sympathy for small shop-keepers trying to provide a service in an Internet-dominated world. But, as another poster pointed out, the world moves on and what was a good business yesterday may not be good today. We have to adapt to survive.

 

S

 

I didn't feel as though you talked down to me at all , it was more of a general observation with some on this forum.In the same way that you made the observation about manners being bad on this forum.

 

We use Teare's butchers in Parliament Street and the quality of the meat in my experience seems to be better than the Supermarkets generally.They do a superb Rump steak for something like £4 a lb.We have just had a cut of topside this afternoon and both my wife and I noted how tender the beef was.

 

As regards my lack of knowledge on VAT , we use a local firm of accountants that I give a purchase ledger to once every 3 months and they calculate all the VAT.

 

However Slim , I do all the ordering , I hire all the staff we have , I decide what special offers we do , I pay all the bills , I pay the TAX & NI , what do you do ? I think its pretty poor that you offer opinions from the safety of your pc , yet in the real world what do you actually contribute ? Not very much I suspect !!

[Frances]

the snag being the farmers can't sell meat to the public and all the meat the public can buy has to be processed through the abatoir, it's the law. if a farmer wants to kill and butcher something himself he can only use it to feed his IMMEDIATE family, no passing on cheap to distant relatives or friends.

does this follow on from a single abbatoir - it certainly wasn't the case up in the Scottish Islands as I recall all the butchers proudly displayed in the window the farm from where the meat on sale derived - also I understood under current EU regs it is supposed to be possible to determine the origin of each carcase and I understood that butcher's shops generally bought meat by the carcase and not ready sliced into joints etc

Admittedly it is all academic to me as I havn't eaten meat for many years

[Skeddan]

I don't want to prolong this too much further, but what was the reason for the concession if not because small amounts are uneconomical to collect?

From what I can make out, the EU regulation was set up to aid importers of small, low-value goods into the EU.

 

see e.g.: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2905142...-exemption.html

 

Did you read down to the end, Skeddan, to the only bit that made sense?

 

"But, even if such a change were made, HM Customs & Excise would then be confronted by an even bigger problem: how to collect the VAT.

 

"That would be extremely fiddly," says Dennis Knowles, a partner at Deloitte. "The cost of collection could exceed the amount it nets."

 

You're guilty of selective quoting.

 

Oh Sebrof - it's no big deal. I saw this as the reason why the EU introduced it somewhere else as well, and can't be arsed to look it up, and this said much the same. Whatever the reason it was set up in the first place is not really relevant. It was back in the days before online purchasing, CDs, DVDs and so on. I'm not too interested in trying to understand the rationale or logic behind EU regulations of the 80s - they often don't make sense. Butter mountains, milk lakes, millions of tonnes of fish dumped at sea.... only a nitwit would think there has to be any rational sense to these regulations.

 

No I didn't quote the partner at Deloitte. It's not worth quoting anyway. (IMO) Deloitte's are accountants and know f** all about systems and processes or transaction management other than to make a meal of it all - usually with an SAP 'solution', and they don't even seem capable of learning from their own mistakes (e.g. LA Payroll system). He's obviously given a comment to the paper without having done any study into how to do this. Just a little thought (though some need whole big consulting teams) would show it's not hard. Go back to my earlier posts.

 

(Do you think if admin fee for cost of processing import duty were charged, the cost of collection would exceed what is collected? Not "extremely fiddly". Plain bloody simple.)

 

But if you want to put your faith in Deloitte as an authority be my guest - and let's agree to differ.

[Snaipyr]

Why are you two having a boring argument about VAT when everyone else is talking about food!?

[Skeddan]

the snag being the farmers can't sell meat to the public and all the meat the public can buy has to be processed through the abatoir, it's the law. if a farmer wants to kill and butcher something himself he can only use it to feed his IMMEDIATE family, no passing on cheap to distant relatives or friends.

does this follow on from a single abbatoir - it certainly wasn't the case up in the Scottish Islands as I recall all the butchers proudly displayed in the window the farm from where the meat on sale derived - also I understood under current EU regs it is supposed to be possible to determine the origin of each carcase and I understood that butcher's shops generally bought meat by the carcase and not ready sliced into joints etc

Admittedly it is all academic to me as I havn't eaten meat for many years

Frances - I may be wrong, but I think what WTF outline about use of an abattoir applies pretty much everywhere. Butcher's might show the farm from where the meat on sale was derived, but it would still go through an abattoir.

 

from an animal welfare /boat trip point of view i am for a local abatoir, but as we are effectively an 80K population town and the abatoir has to meet EU specs ( but they can't do horses there) it makes our meat expensive for us. couple that with far more farmers looking to make a living from the land than the land actually needs to use it all and it all gets more expensive.

 

WTF - I thought what makes the abattoir expensive is under-utilisation. If so, the problem isn't the size of the population of people, it's that the size of the population of livestock isn't enough to allow the abattoir to run competitively.

[Onchanguy]

If the local farmers got together and formed a co-operative and sold meat and veg in a shop they ran they could bring the retail price down by not going through third parties and people would buy the local produce as it would be fresher and better than you buy in supermarkets and hey ho everyone is happy. The farmers would get more money as they would get the full sale price rather than the middleman, the customer would get better produce and the economy would benefit because people would buy locally.

 

Not difficult. Just takes someone to get the ball rolling, but no, the farmers would rather maintain the status quo and keep whinging about how bad the life is. My heart bleeds. If they are not prepared to do something about it then I am not prepared to take any notice of their complaints.

 

thumbsup to that.

 

one quastion on that, how would u make sure that u got the volume of ppl there in the first place,

i cant see a lot of ppl going down to tescos,shoprite to buy there normal goods, and walking past all the fruit veg meats, and saying to themselfs i know i get them somewhere eles,, some will but not a lot,

 

the shop would have to be quite big, with parking closeish to town cant see that happining

 

Better to have smaller shops close by where people can easily shop daily if they want. (The produce would then work out cheaper for them than buying at the supermarket once a week or less). It would also reduce domestic waste from unused food, so would work with that 'challenge' that IoMG are now trying to meet.

 

There's lots of different ways it could be done - perhaps start with fruit and veg market stalls - no big investment. Maybe you could have these set up in afternoon by schools (or in the playground) so parents picking up kids could pick up fresh fruit and veg for the next couple of days. Whichever way it's done, small easy-reach local outlets are the way to go.

 

thats what is happing at the moment with the farmers markets,

there doing the local schools and markets at the moment,

 

but if your a poduces of say 30 tons a week of spuds, i cant see them all being sold in tha markets

 

the snag being the farmers can't sell meat to the public and all the meat the public can buy has to be processed through the abatoir, it's the law. if a farmer wants to kill and butcher something himself he can only use it to feed his IMMEDIATE family, no passing on cheap to distant relatives or friends. then you also have the fact that milk prices along with other stuff has the price set by government regardless of where it comes from or who sells it. all this is done to allow us our own abatoir and milk/cheese plant and also keep butchers in business. from an animal welfare /boat trip point of view i am for a local abatoir, but as we are effectively an 80K population town and the abatoir has to meet EU specs ( but they can't do horses there) it makes our meat expensive for us. couple that with far more farmers looking to make a living from the land than the land actually needs to use it all and it all gets more expensive.

 

That's the way. Don't look for opportunities to do something. Just come up with reasons not to.

 

This is why you'll never see a Manxman on the panel of Dragon's Den or getting knighted for services to industry like Sir Gerry Robinson, Sir Richard Branson, Sir Philip Green etc..

[Skeddan]

That's the way. Don't look for opportunities to do something. Just come up with reasons not to.

Onchanguy - nothing wrong in getting the 'snags' and problems etc. - these are things that have to be dealt with. High price of meat - because the abattoir is under-utilised - is a 'snag'. These are solvable, but unless solved the opportunities won't be realised. You could also see the snags as opportunities in themselves. WFT and gazza know what they're talking about - so hearing what they have to say is very worthwhile in understanding what opportunities there might be.

 

Other snags - what does a farmer do with 30 tonnes of spuds a week? Multiply and you have more spuds than domestic needs. So farmer is back to selling commodity produce at commodity prices. Wouldn't it make sense to have some form of manufacturing - 'traditional Manx potato cakes' would probably make considerably more per tonne than bare spuds. 'traditional Manx potato cakes with cheese' might be quite popular too. Look at Nairns Oatcakes as example.