Who gives wealthy men £1,000 a day each to subsidise their farms? The taxpayer

 The Duke of Westminster, Britain's richest man, receives a daily handout
 from the taxpayer of £1,000 under a welfare system for some of the country's
 biggest landowners.

 The duke receives the hourly equivalent of eight times the minimum wage,
 according to research published today. 

 In a report the aid agency Oxfam says that payments from taxpayers amount
 to £3.9bn a year - equivalent to one penny on the standard rate of income tax.
 The charity contrasts the subsidies with the £7 a day a single mother receives
 in tax credits. 
  
 Although taxpayers foot the bill, details of subsidy payments are a closely
 guarded secret between landowners and the Department for the Environment,
 Food and Rural Affairs.  Oxfam used data from the department's rural payments
 agency and the land registry to discover some of the largest beneficiaries of
 the system, which pays out £3bn a year in Britain. 

 The Duke of Westminster, who owns large chunks of the West End, in addition
 to his farmlands in Cheshire, Lancashire and Scotland, heads a list of seven
 subsidy magnates highlighted in the report. 

 Others enjoying the taxpayers' largesse include Sir Adrian Swire, whose company
 owns Cathay Pacific; the Dukes of Marlborough and Bedford, and the Earl of
 Leicester.  Between them they earn £2m a year in subsidies under the CAP.
 "Public subsidies to the country's richest farmers outstrip payments to its
 poorest people by a very wide margin," the report says. 

 With an estimated net worth of £4.9bn, the Duke of Westminster regularly tops
 Britain's rich list.  Taxpayers keen to see how their hard-earned contribution
 is being spent can take a two-hour boat trip through the Eaton estate, near Chester,
 where the Grosvenor farm attracts £37 an hour in subsidies from the CAP.
 
 Further south, the Blenheim Estate, one of the country's largest farms and the
 birthplace of Winston Churchill, reaps around £369,000 a year in subsidies for the
 Duke of Marlborough. 

 "Large landed estates, created several centuries ago during the feudal era, have
 become lucrative sources for the collection of agricultural subsidies under the CAP,"
 the report says.  The subsidies encourage intensive farming with damaging side effects
 for the environment, while the resulting food mountains are dumped in the developing
 world, pushing down prices and destroying local farmers' livelihoods. 

 Indefensible

 "The CAP costs British taxpayers nearly £4bn a year, not to mention the extra costs
 to the environment, and to consumers  through higher prices," said Adrian Lovett,
 Oxfam's head of campaigns. "It is indefensible that the public are not told how
 their money is being spent."

 Charlotte Denny, Larry Elliott and Charlotte Moore
 Thursday January 22, 2004
 The Guardian 

 http://politics.guardian.co.uk/economics/story/0,11268,1128502,00.html

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 "Perceptions" note:

 Oddly, UK's `brave' media have always covered-up UK's practice of taking from the
 poor to `support' the rich and powerful.

 BBC has particularly poor record - suppressing live comment when it threatens to
 reveal uncomfortable facts.

 www.perceptions.couk.com/manip.html and
 www.perceptions.couk.com/coverup.html
           
 Politicians stealing poor people's taxes to favor the rich is common in UK.
 While in Europe subsidies are given to small-holders and tenant farmers that
 the CAP scheme was designed for, in UK these funds are taken by the rich and
 the agri-businesses. 

 www.perceptions.couk.com/review.html#errors

 In UK a corrupt bureaucracy and venal politicians funnel taxpayers money to
 themselves and to their rich & powerful friends.

 Old-age pensioners are being unfairly taxed into starvation, while greedy politicos
 and incompetent `officials' award themselves incomes & pensions at millionaire levels.

 Try www.perceptions.couk.com/tax.html#2 - simple demonstration `how every Prime
 Minister (& President?) lies about taxes while enriching themselves'; 

 George Monbiot's protest (and evidence) is at

 www.perceptions.couk.com/agro-ind.txt

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