Spot on, Stu. Us country dwellers can tell these bloody townies a thing or three!

Fields are often regarded as factory floors. The extensive use of biocides has eliminated, in their minds, the need to rotate crops. We see awful practices such as planting maize, the most environmentally-unfriendly crop, on sloping ground. Then we have oilseed that requires huge chemical input and attracts every pest in the book. "Free-range" chickens in barns in their thousands with pop-holes that they're too scared to come out of. When we get a gentle east wind we have the worst stink of pigshit imaginable from the intensive pig unit (which means pigs that never see the light of day that produce flavourless pork) half a mile away. Poignant when you consider that pigs are clean, fastidious animals by nature. Huh. What nature. The Westcountry is probably the least offensive region in England when it comes to environmental vandalism by agriculture. But I haven't seen a greenfinch all summer and the barn owls we had round here for twenty years are long gone. Today I saw only the second comma butterfly of the year and only the second painted lady, hardly any small tortoiseshells either. Bloody farmers. Only making a living, eh? Only making a killing, more like.