Sam Goddard

Farming and @RoundTableBI 🌄🌾🇬🇧

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

After 18 months of “standing up to Putin” the Labour govt quietly issued a licence allowing imports of Russian oil refined in third countries.

Yesterday Labour MPs voted AGAINST UK oil and gas licences.

We are now importing from Russia instead of drilling in the North Sea.

Insane.

[Karen Braun @kannbwx]

🌾Due to poor crop health and a record-low planted area, the United States will produce the smallest wheat volume since 1972.

2026 winter wheat output (67% of total output) by class is seen at the lowest levels since:
All winter: 1965
Hard red winter: 1957
Soft red winter: 2020

[Sam Goddard @Saffron_Sam]

Actually the argument British farmers have been making for as long as I can remember is simply "one or the other please" @DanielJHannan

[Sam Goddard @Saffron_Sam]

Chagos giveaway to China (and US opposition to it) is the only lens through which Starmer's determination to appoint Mandelson as Ambassador makes any sense? @RossKempsell

[Kel Mansfield @tedkel]

Chagos wasn't mentioned in the 2024 Election, but one of Starmer's first acts as Prime Minister was to make Tony Blair's fixer, Jonathan Powell, his Special Envoy for Chagos.

Despite the huge international security implications, without informing Parliament, without the country having the slightest idea he wanted to give away British territory where a vital joint UK/US base is located, Starmer tasked the unvetted Powell with making the arrangements to transfer Chagos to Mauritius.

Powell has extensive contacts with China going back to 1985, when as a desk officer for the Foreign Office, he worked on the hand over of Hong Kong. in the ensuing years, Powel has been a frequent visitor to China.

Powell's first known meeting with FCDO officials as Chagos Envoy was on 2nd August 2024.
He was using his own private company email for Chagos business, receiving and sending government documents, and even forwarding some emails to employees at his private consultancy Inter Mediate, before it was officially announced he was Envoy for Chagos on the 6th of September 2024.

Powell, who still didn't have developed vetting, was appointed Starmer's National Security Advisor on the 8th of November, just three days after Donald Trump was elected president.

Powell is still working on Chagos, and just last week, on Wednesday April 22nd 2026, he reaffirmed the UK's commitment to Starmer's Chagos deal during a telephone conversation with Mauritius Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam.
https://t.co/H1aXkAjL40

[Alex Deane @ajcdeane]

In 1998, Abu Hamza sent a group of terrorists (including his son) to blow up the British consulate in Yemen.

They were caught. During their trial, others amongst Hamza’s thugs kidnapped foreigners in an attempt to bargain for their release.

Hamza was eventually convicted in the USA of, inter alia, ordering that kidnapping - during which four of the hostages (including three Brits) were killed.

Separately, amongst the gang convicted of the attempt to blow up the consulate alongside Hamza’s son was Shahid Butt.

Shahid Butt is now a candidate for council in Birmingham Sparkhill in May’s local elections.

This is where our suicidal empathy brings us. Someone convicted of explicitly targeting this country’s diplomatic mission for destruction is a political candidate in… this country, today.

[Stuart @StuartMaggs]

If you wanted to appear dodgy in public office you could do little better than claiming your phone was stolen and all messages lost long before the drama, and then it being found a few days later that you only reported a theft after you found out those messages might be needed.

[Victoria Atkins @VictoriaAtkins]

📢 RED DIESEL PRICES GOING UP

FARMERS - please comment below with your experiences of red diesel prices going up in the last week?

We’re putting pressure on the govt on heating oil and I want to raise red diesel too but I need your evidence.

[Sam Goddard @Saffron_Sam]

@podfoodfighters @LizWebsterSBF For certain people the answer will always be "rejoin the EU" no matter the question

[Sam Goddard @Saffron_Sam]

@MerrynSW It is clever but very power hungry.. that diesel tractor will be working hard to generate the high voltage electricity. Overall significantly more expensive and fuel intensive than selective herbicides

[Ross Kempsell @RossKempsell]

The Cyprus government is tonight essentially saying the UK is not properly defending Cyprus, a deep ally that we cooperate with over our sovereign base areas Akrotiri and Dhekelia. Starmer is risking the future of those assets - just as he did with Chagos. He is a total disaster.

[Sam Goddard @Saffron_Sam]

Why would the Speaker be entitled to this sort of travel on expenses? @CommonsSpeaker

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

Speaker Lindsay Hoyle was on a jolly to the British Virgin Islands when he says he learned Peter Mandelson was apparently a flight risk (unlikely).
No surprise he was in the Caribbean. Long been branded ‘long-haul Hoyle’ at our expense, spending more than £320,000 of taxpayers’ cash on foreign jaunts up until last summer since becoming Speaker in 2019.
He spent more than £200,000 on first and business class plane tickets plus tens of thousands more spent on chauffeur-driven cars, stays at luxury five-star resorts and restaurants.
During a previous Caribbean tour in March 2023, he shelled out nearly £5,500 chartering private planes to hop between the islands of St Maarten, Montserrat, Anguilla and Antigua.
In 2024, he spent £22,000 for a five-day trip to meet his counterpart in the Cayman Islands, staying at the Westin Grand, where his room was billed at £679 per night.
His snout. Our trough.
They really do take us for fools.

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

Speaker Lindsay Hoyle was on a jolly to the British Virgin Islands when he says he learned Peter Mandelson was apparently a flight risk (unlikely).
No surprise he was in the Caribbean. Long been branded ‘long-haul Hoyle’ at our expense, spending more than £320,000 of taxpayers’ cash on foreign jaunts up until last summer since becoming Speaker in 2019.
He spent more than £200,000 on first and business class plane tickets plus tens of thousands more spent on chauffeur-driven cars, stays at luxury five-star resorts and restaurants.
During a previous Caribbean tour in March 2023, he shelled out nearly £5,500 chartering private planes to hop between the islands of St Maarten, Montserrat, Anguilla and Antigua.
In 2024, he spent £22,000 for a five-day trip to meet his counterpart in the Cayman Islands, staying at the Westin Grand, where his room was billed at £679 per night.
His snout. Our trough.
They really do take us for fools.

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

We already run a massive trade deficit with the EU on food and agricultural products.
This deal will make that deficit even bigger.
I will also place UK food and agribusiness under EU rules, regulations and ECJ court judgements once more, processes in which this time we will have no say.
And it will undermine UK technological advances in agriculture, in which we are becoming world leaders, because it returns such research to the dead of Brussels’ ‘prudential’ approach, which regards all innovation as a risk unless it can be proven otherwise.
Hugely retrograde for UK, huge win for EU.

[Sam Goddard @Saffron_Sam]

@JRDSills @robertwiblin Have you found practical ways to use these programs as part of the day job now James? Or mainly for research/interest?

[James Sills @JRDSills]

Remember to make your voice heard on the combinable crop contract consultation. Closes 4th Feb.

[Sam Goddard @Saffron_Sam]

@waitbutwhy @DouthatNYT It is possible to imagine that this is how some kind of AI superintelligence comes about..

[National Farmers' Union @NFUtweets]

A government review to tackle unfair practices in the combinable crops supply chain is a real opportunity to address the current imbalance of power and give arable farmers a stronger voice and fairer terms. Please respond to the consultation now.

👉https://t.co/xPRUgfVZLT

[Karen Braun @kannbwx]

Trump just confirmed that U.S. farmers will receive $12 billion in economic assistance.

He said he recently spoke with Xi, and he thinks China will do even more soybean purchases than originally promised.

Trump told Xi that U.S. soybeans are more nutritious than the others.

[Kemi Badenoch @KemiBadenoch]

Rattled Keir Starmer is suspending his MPs again. This time for standing up for farmers...says everything about his priorities.

Last year he suspended 7 MPs for opposing the two-child benefit cap, and we all know how that ended.

How long until a u-turn on the family farm tax?

[Victoria Atkins @VictoriaAtkins]

I have written to The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, expressing my serious concerns about how yesterday’s farming protest was managed👇