BS: What is it with townies?????

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: GUEST,ripov
Date: 28 Oct 15 - 06:02 PM

Dunno about farming - I'm told that round here you can afford a big mercedes just by growing weeds.

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Oct 15 - 12:20 PM

Sorry if I made you cross, Steve. I was just genuinely puzzled as to where Mercedes cars fitted into your postulations.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 Oct 15 - 12:16 PM

I'm not being pusillanimous. I'm just getting cross because I'm not allowed to be horribly prejudiced without someone having a go at me!

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Oct 15 - 12:04 PM

Agree with every word, S.S --

But 'answer!-answer!' to my (repeated) question about your denigration of the Mercedes, please. Not like you to be so persistently pusillanimously evasive...!

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 Oct 15 - 07:56 AM

It's probably fair to say that the smaller dairy farms struggle a damn sight more than the big boys who desecrate the country with their barley prairies. The latter also receive far more in subsidies. Round here, many smaller farms diversify by doing holiday lets or B&B and a few are doing more in the way of sheep and chickens. What I find obnoxious is the mad scramble by landowners large and small to get massive annual payments for doing absolutely nothing by allowing their land to be used for wind turbines or solar farms. Talk about a benefits culture. One large wind turbine on your field, that you didn't pay for and which has a very small footprint, can earn you more in a year than a primary school teacher. I know which one has more merit. It's also amazing how many farmers get their work done by contractors, who block the roads for mile after mile with huge slow-moving vehicles not designed for road use. They seldom allow the convoys they create to pass them, they often leave shit all over the road and quite often they have no number plates or proper lights. And they're using heavily subsidised red diesel that the rest of us are not allowed to use. You see farmland everywhere you go. Farming desecrates thousands of acres of land and destroys wildlife via bad practice and attracts much subsidy. When it comes to the big boys, of course, land ownership equals power (if only land was taxed as enthusiastically as people's blood sweat and tears). But do yer know summat? Agriculture in the UK generates just 0.65% of our GDP! We could almost buy our food from overseas and plant trees on the rest or turn it all into a big country park, and the country's finances would hardly notice!

Kudos to the little farmers who work the hours and eke out a living by doing it right. They make the best countryside and are beyond reproach. As for the rest...

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 28 Oct 15 - 05:12 AM

Fossil, I've nothing against Mercedes and I'm sure that some farmers are financially troubled HOWEVER we are told time and time again how poor all farmers are but when I drive past farms locally I often see top of the range expensive vehicles. I just used Mercedes as a typical example.

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Oct 15 - 05:01 AM

Sorry -- not a Shaw play, but Arthur Clennam in Dickens' Little Dorrit.

Don't know what' happening to my memory. Brain cells dying, I suppose...

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Oct 15 - 04:57 AM

Still no reply from Steve as to what is his particular beef against Mercs -- for which, see above, I carry no particular torch; but, like that man in the Shaw play, I just want to know, you know.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: Fossil
Date: 27 Oct 15 - 08:34 PM

I drive a Mercedes, Raggytash.

Bought and paid for, my choice, even if it is eight years old. Just like to drive a well-engineered, quiet, comfortable car with room in the back for my guitar and other kit.

You are a bumpkin.

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Oct 15 - 11:23 AM

"The truth is a small percentage of people move into an area where practices have been established for years and seek to change them. "
The 'Linda Snell' syndrome
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: Charmion
Date: 27 Oct 15 - 10:58 AM

If you lived there long enough, New York City would qualify as such a town, Guest #.

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: GUEST,#
Date: 27 Oct 15 - 10:35 AM

Live in towns of such size that regardless what you do someone always knew you would.

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Oct 15 - 10:05 AM

Just sayin'. You won't hear a farmer telling you what a good year he's had.

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: Megan L
Date: 27 Oct 15 - 09:39 AM

such a little ray of sunshine

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Oct 15 - 07:03 AM

Yeah, and he uses heavily subsidised red diesel.

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: Mr Red
Date: 27 Oct 15 - 05:47 AM

The farmer drives a very very old David Brown tractor! A decrepit JCB for hay bales. A 20 year old Landrover Defender for the livestock box on public roads. And the family car his wife uses (to do her day jobs!) is probably older than mine (13 year-old Toyota Yarris) and about the same size.

I am always amazed how he rarely shows anything even approaching anger, such an easy-going chappy. But he is nearing retirement and walks with a limp. If he didn't have a wife and sister helping him who knows if he would become a suicide statistic.

His mother was still bottle-feeding lambs 5 months before the cancer she was diagnosed with finally got her at 77. She had been running the farm from 1947.

All this so we can buy milk at barely above production cost (at the time of writing). It is sobering to me!

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 27 Oct 15 - 04:34 AM

Why is particularly twattish about driving a Merc, Steve? No particular horse in this race -- I drive a Vauxhall at present, and number Minis & Fords & Skodas & a Volvo among former vehicles. But never a Mercedes.

Just curious.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Oct 15 - 03:53 AM

The old joke round here is that you never see a farmer down the pub drinking a half.

Why shouldn't a farmer drive a Merc? To avoid looking like a twat? And I thought that all farms were growing concerns....

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 27 Oct 15 - 03:26 AM

Is there a reason why a hard working person shouln't drive a Mercedes ?

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: Megan L
Date: 27 Oct 15 - 02:50 AM

There is growing concern about the high suicide rate among farmers.

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 26 Oct 15 - 10:43 PM

While I have no doubt that many farmers work extremely hard how is it they can invariably afford to drive Mercedes. Just a thought.

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: Mr Red
Date: 26 Oct 15 - 08:09 PM

LOL

Said farmer works 7 days, morning and evening milking. Afternoons maintenance, &/or form filling. And repairing fences deliberately distressed so people can climb over and walk their dogs (illegally).

Anyone care to volunteer for a 14 hour, 7 day week of hard manual labour?

Quite. Me neither!

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Oct 15 - 11:54 AM

"If man can't piss in his own front yard, then he's living too close to town!"
― Tom Russell

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: Rapparee
Date: 26 Oct 15 - 11:54 AM

Sign.

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: GUEST,#
Date: 26 Oct 15 - 11:42 AM

Everybody lives downstream.

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Oct 15 - 11:12 AM

"The truth is a small percentage of people move into an area where practices have been established for years and seek to change them. "

Every few years somebody moves into the flats opposite Cecil Sharp House and then complains because there is a major music venue across the road.

Where I live a pub recently closed down through lack of trade (genuinely). There was uproar over the loss of the "communuty facilily". Alternative uses proposed included a cafe (complaints - because of of possible disturbance from people using it) or a convenience store (complaints because of noise from deliveries and it would be open after 6 causing disturbance from people using it) Presumably the pub had none of these problems because no bugger went there anyway.

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: Mrrzy
Date: 26 Oct 15 - 10:47 AM

Another meaning of townie, at least in the US, is people who live (in their natural habitat) in small towns which have huge colleges or universities in them - town vs. gown, in this sense. And these townies complain a lot about what the hordes of students are like during the school year, and how nice the parking situation is over the summers when they are gone, etc. I came to such a town as a student, but have lived here far longer as a person who lives here; my kids are townies.

I guess one difference might be, the town-gown townies are in their natural habitat and the students have chosen to invade, while in the farming communities farmers are in their natural habitat and the people-from-the-town townies are the invaders.

I agree that, either way, the invaders earn a lot less respect for their complaints about the habitat!

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Oct 15 - 06:23 AM

"This is driven by the public's demand for cheap food "
Not necessarily
An enormous amount of produce grown in Britain is for export - only 58 percent of the food eaten in Britain is home grown.
The Norfolk coast has been devastated over the last few decades by the multinationals buying up the farms and tearing down the hedgerows - result - a combination of the east wind and no protection has lost much of the rich topsoil.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Oct 15 - 07:28 PM

Some farming practices are the worst examples of environmental hooliganism

This is driven by the public's demand for cheap food which has a major impact on land use. Farmers in developed countries would not be able to compete with those from developing nations with lax or non-existent environment laws.

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 25 Oct 15 - 02:47 PM

Ah yes -- the farmer looks after his animals OK. They are his stock-in-trade. This is not meant in any way cynically -- I am sure humane considerations enter also, but you take my point? I used, by a train of thought not entirely drift-ish — it is a sort of townies' point — to have a friend who was sincerely religious, but would still find a perverse and contradictory humour in that description of Jesus as "the Good Shepherd". "What are a shepherds' motives for looking so carefully after his flock?" she would say. "Why, to preserve them till they are of an age and a succulence to be sold to the butcher to be slaughtered!"

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: GUEST,Sidney Smith
Date: 25 Oct 15 - 02:38 PM

'Please don't tell townies they're disqualified ( from complaining)'

Perhaps using the word 'townies' is too restrictive. The truth is a small percentage of people move into an area where practices have been established for years and seek to change them. The one that comes up every few years is the bells in the church. Either a clock striking or bell ringers practising. It may be a failure to research an area before moving there or simply the arrogant assumption that my requirements supercede any or everyone else's.

''Some farming practices are the worst examples of environmental hooliganism'.
I have never been a farmer so I do not know the pressures that prevail in that profession. Because of that I would hesitate to sit in judgement on them. I do know that my friend, who is a farmer and has a herd of pedigree Murray Greys expends a huge amount of time and effort on their welfare and I have no reason to believe that her commitment is not mirrored by others.

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 25 Oct 15 - 02:12 PM

I think GF as used at beginning of OP just meant "girlfriend", Joe.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Oct 15 - 11:42 AM

"My sister's just had a new baby!"

"Ooh, has she?"

Lovely little fellow he is!"

"Ooh, is he?"

"Cries all night, though!"

"Ooh, does he?"

"Bawls like a bull!"

"Ooh, has he?"

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 25 Oct 15 - 11:23 AM

I think GF is gravitational field, Joe.

So the townie could be told that the bawling won't go on all the time or at any time. Answers my question.

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: Joe Offer
Date: 25 Oct 15 - 11:06 AM

What's a GF? Grandfather?

I hate townies. They use all those abbreviations, and then expect people to understand them.

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 25 Oct 15 - 10:52 AM

Me and the mrs have watched sufficient late night Horror Movies
to never ever want to move to the country... 😨

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: Llanfair
Date: 25 Oct 15 - 08:52 AM

Jeeneia, dairy cows bawl their hearts out for 2 or 3 days every year when their calves are taken away from them. If the calves were left with them, it dramatically reduces the milk output.
Like it or not, farming is business, the concept of self sustaining small farming is enchanting for families who want to get away from it all, but the townies need to be fed cheaply, and techno farming is the only way to do it.

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: DMcG
Date: 25 Oct 15 - 08:35 AM

Where my sister lives in Germany it is illegal to use lawn mowers, electric drills, leaf blowers and all such sources of noise at all on a Sunday.

But the social oppriibium is probably more severe than any law.

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 25 Oct 15 - 08:24 AM

Mr. Red: Do dairy cows often bawl in the night? I don't suppose so.

And when they do, don't people come out to find what's wrong? (They are valuable animals, after all.)

The tenant should be told those things, and she'll probably be calmed.
============
Here in the city, we complain about those who mow lawns or blow leaves early in the morning. Making a racket when people are normally sleeping is inconsiderate anywhere.

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 25 Oct 15 - 07:37 AM

Someone in my town moved next door to the pub and complained about the noise. They managed to get a restriction on the pub which meant that we could not sing in the front bar at all and in the back bar only until 11pm. The place next door was a shop!!

Subject: RE: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Oct 15 - 07:09 AM

Some farming practices are the worst acts of environmental hooliganism. Removing hedges, flailing at the wrong times of year, growing hundreds of acres of damaging maize, intensive pig rearing and soil degradation by chemical use, and a lot of the farms upcountry from here often get huge subsidies that I regard as entirely inappropriate. I won't go on. I dislike the attitude I occasionally encounter that townies don't understand the ways of the country. Well sometimes we understand them all too bloody well.

I was a townie for half my life but I've lived right out in the sticks for almost thirty years now. I've lived on this farm for 29 years but it's not my farm. When there's an east wind we are regaled by the revolting stench from the neighbouring intensive pig farm. Pig farms don't have to smell like that. Pigs kept in humane outdoor conditions are clean and fussy animals. We don't mind the stink of the chicken manure from the farmer's free range setup but we pray for rain once he's spread it! We've had escaped sheep in our garden this week but they haven't done any real harm and I have a nice bucket of sheep droppings to start my compost heap. We had a good laugh with Andrew, the farmer, about and he's fixed the fence. I wish someone could tell me how to catch that bloody mole that's been digging up my front lawn for weeks. We are lucky in that we are away from road noise and that our farmer has planted lots of woodland and kept the hedgerows. Our little area is fantastic for wildlife and I can see the sea from my garden. Nothing to complain about, but please don't tell "townies" that they're disqualified from doing so. They are not, as long as they argue, as everyone should, from an informed viewpoint.

Subject: BS: What is it with townies?????
From: Mr Red
Date: 25 Oct 15 - 06:34 AM

my GF is renting out a flat in the family farm. The new tenant havered then came in in a rush. First night in, a cow was bawling during the night. Now she is off in a huff. She wanted a quiet place, so she chose a working dairy farm!
A couple of years back a neighbouring householder came and complained about the fertilizer company doing the field at 6am on the Saturday morning, they decide when, where and how in the UK, not the farmer! This is a guy who bought overlooking farmland (how twee) and drives 40miles each way to work. I bet he complains about the price of milk too. Maybe it is not him who thinks he (and his dog) has a "right to roam". He doesn't!

Now I am a townie, I was awakened each morning to the sound of the factory bull (hooter) and when we moved I heard Bescot marshalling yards (second only to Crewe) all night, wagons crashing.

Which is why I do feel people are getting above themselves in the moderately monied classes. Farms are businesses, farmers wish they could earn at the rate these inconsiderate idiots do, they just can't get out of it, chasing their debts, filling in endless government forms on the provenance of livestock, digging slurry pits only to find the rules changed the week before the inspector arrives (at his convenience), and having their fences destroyed by car drivers who ignore speed limits and can't see white ice! "Wots black ice mate?"

Geeze, and I still don't feel any better for getting that off me chest! 'Praps it for the better they don't have to confront me!