Preparedness for when

[Deleted User]

We're seeing an increasing number of 'Londoners' buying the more expensive houses in the village. In a very few cases they've integrated with us locals and become very much part of the community but in most cases they buy the big house, spend another small fortune having it rendered hideous by cosmetic renovations that would be more appropriate to Beverley Hills, take no part in village life whatsoever except to be terribly obnoxious to us in a very superior way and then complain about most apsects of life here being unsophisticated. They tend to become stalwarts of the Sailing Club and the Tennis Club, thier children go to private schools out of the village and thier day to day needs are shipped in from the more expensive shops. Some aspects of this are helpful as in our local builders and craftsmen have lucrative commissions and can employ local youngsters which is a positive but the downside is that knowing there is a market for 'Executive Luxury Properties' any building now done here seems to be of the 5 bedroom exclusive type which means OUR youngsters can't even buy a flat in the village or most of the surrounding areas. I think a lowering of the prices in London would keep people there rather than moving here and perhaps our house prices might then drop to a point where our young folk could buy a home here, not exactly rocket science!!!

pineapple

I've been considering trying to save money by downtrading to a property which is not within sensible commuting distance of ANYWHERE.
This used to be a lot more do-able before the days of people on short working weeks or being able to network from home. Plus a lot of properties in pretty Yorkshire Dales villages have been bought for silly money as second homes - sending up the price of properties generally and making local housing unaffordable for youngsters (or people like me).
Of course the local people themselves have had a hand in this by selling to non residents in the first place.

GreyQueen

Lyn, in various villages known to me, incomers have sometimes integrated very well and become stalwarts of village life, and often seem to appreciate its charms more than many of the indigenes, although most have ample wealth to cushion the occasional inconviences, which does help to shape their views.

Howsomever, some incomers have very strange ideas about the countryside and are agitating about things like mud on the road, muck-spreading on the fields, tractors or cows in the lanes, church bells, cockerels, piggeries and chicken factories, anything which might reasonably be expected in a rural area, in fact.:rotfl:

I've no desire to live in any of the handful of villages where my people have been for centuries. Which is just as well, really, as the minimum buy-in is a quarter of a mill for the most modest home and you're stuffed for work opportunities.

thriftwizard

Hear hear, MrsLW, GQ and pineapple. Our area is "blighted" or "enhanced" depending on your viewpoint, by being within a 2hr commute from London, and a half-hour drive from the nearest big city. We also have a lot of financial sector employers; several big banks & insurance houses have big computer centres, etc. down here and the trainee bigwigs are sent down for 2 or 4-year stretches at the silicon face. They snap up any village & rural properties that come on the market - and they still do, from time to time - posh 'em up beyond all recognition, infest the local primaries with their Boden-clad young and then sell up at a vast profit & return triumphant to the Home counties. The kids often remain down here at the public schools, and they may keep the cottage as a rural retreat, but chances are they will "flip" it, buy another undeveloped one on the coast & "camp" in it at weekends to enjoy the simple life. So even a wreck will sell for £400K+. Homegrown kids with ordinary jobs need not apply.

I'll be selling to them at our local big music festival in a couple of weeks so I suppose I shouldn't complain! But they really don't contribute much to the local day-to-day economy or cultural life, and they do complain about chicken noise, muck on roads, bell ringing and people who grow fruit instead of petunias. ("It attracts wasps! Not fair to the children. And we'll never win ******** In Bloom...")

As GQ so rightly says, there are honourable exceptions. But the majority quite clearly see the rest of us as something rather nasty just underneath their noses; The Country would be so much nicer without its inhabitants!

GreyQueen

I was once at Nan's village fete and the church tower was opened up as a fundraiser. It wasn't one with proper stairs, so didn't normally have access onto its roof, you had to climb up three ladders roped among the beams and it was a bit hairy squeezing past the bell.

One up there, I was admiring the view with half a dozen others, when a courtly old gentleman, an incomer, asked if I was local? He didn't recognise me, because Dad left this village when he married, and I have mostly been raised in town, because that's where the jobs are. I just stared at him for a moment, wondering where I should start.

The churchwarden who'd taken our admission money at the foot of the tower was my Nan. Her bungalow was about 150 yards away. Even nearer was the house where she and Grandad had raised my Aunt and Dad, and Aunt and Uncle's marital home was about 50 yards from that.

Beside Aunt and Uncle's house was his brother, wife and family. Opposite was Uncle's sister and her hubs. Just by the church was the church school, where several generations of one side of my family were educated. In the fete on the meadow below were also several generations of my relatives, some as organisers.

Looking out across the fields, we could see my Nan's village of origin, just over a mile away. And several farms where my rellies worked, and one we even owned until the 1920s. Both sides of my Dad's family have been there for 400 years as a matter of record, and probably a lot longer than that, off the record. We've ploughed and harrowed, threshed and hoed, cleared ditches and installed land-drains, polished church brass and cleaned in the Big House. We've raised children and chickens, and veggies, and none of us under 50 have been able to afford to live there because of the price of housing - we've all emigrated to towns or even Provincial City.

And this incomer gentleman gets to ask me if I'm local? Sheesh.:mad:

I pointed down to a row of graves about 20 yards from the foot of the tower and asked if he could see those? He could. Told him that's my great-grandparents, my grandad and my great-uncle, so yes, you could say I was local. And that's just the start of it. Lots of other rellies planted down there and in other village churchyards nearby, but with no stones due to poverty.

He wasn't a bad person, but he was part-and-parcel of a very real problem which is causing enormous hardship to a lot of people in this country.

pineapple

I've mentioned this before but a resident from one of the new housing developments in a nearby village was complaining to me about the increasing traffic - with no awareness at all that people like her were part of the problem :wall:
Closer to home a newish neighbour was complaining about noise from shooting (which happens rarely) 'because she came here for a quiet life'. They'll be fitting silencers on the sheep next....:rotfl:

mardatha

It's just the same here GQ

GreyQueen

pineapple wrote: »

They'll be fitting silencers on the sheep next....:rotfl:

And nappies on the cows, so they don't poop when driven a short distance down the lane from pasture to milking parlour.

I may just have heard tell that one particular farmer made a point of spraying chicken s**t on a field which was beside an annoying incomer's house...........In order of pungency, chicken poop takes the top prize for stinkiness. Gave the locals a laugh, anyroad.

cornishchick

I'm so excited... No not another tomato.
But my Kelly kettle has arrived. I have been storing sticks for a week ready for this moment, and now I have no time to play today as work calls soon. .
Oh well something to look forward to tomorrow

I am a country girl, you can trace my family name back to the dooms day book in the same village, but I can not afford a house in said village. In fact there are roads and an old mill with our family name lol. There is an estate of social houses , but I'm not entitled to one.
The house prices are so huge, that locals have built in the large back gardens to take advantage of it.
My mum was offered a large sum of money for one of the gardens with her property, which was owned by my grandmother and generations before her. She wouldn't take it .

jk0

Today I received an On Her Majesty's Service letter from The Office for National Statistics.

They inform me that someone will be calling to interview me, and that my address has been selected at random.

Now, I might be happy to help, if I didn't know that the government have quite enough of my information about me, collected without my consent, as it is.

There is a 'charter' for respondents:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/about-ons/get-involved/taking-part-in-a-survey/information-for-households/respondent-charter---households-and-individuals/index.html

This says they will be honest with me about my participation being voluntary. Is it?