It's not just the "townies" who have lost contact with rural traditions. The farmers and agricultural industrialists who brought us BSE, GM crops, rapeseed monoculture- literally the rape of the countryside- battery chickens and turkeys, rooted-out hedgerows, nitrate and insecticide saturated aquifers, and rural depopulation have spent the last 50 years conducting an uncontrolled experiment which has assisted successive governments in bringing disaster to the countryside.

Most rural villages are now little more than middle- class dormitories with no economic connection with the countryside, usually not so much as a shop selling local produce. Their inhabitants, the green welly mob, are often far worse than urban inhabitants in their disregard for the country code- where I live, most of the dog detritus is left by local dogs. The townies usually pick it up, the ones who come out to the country are used to the idea.