Preparedness for when

candlelight_2013

Oh Mar I love windfarms, they are so majestic. Unfortunately I live in a City so I only see them when I am away on holiday.

Candlelightx

GreyQueen

I like windfarms, too, I could sit and watch them for hours, they're mesmerising.

The trouble with villages round this way, including the close-clustered dozen or so where my paternal family have had their roots for centuries, is that they're not proper villages any more. You don't have a village comprised of a majority of farm workers and a minority comprising the vicar, the squire, the odd (very odd, usually ) retired major and the random Arty Person (potter, painter, writer).

Instead, you've got the peasanty priced out and a lot of very opinionated and affluent people who've bought into their piece of Rural Heaven (paying north of a third mill for a former farmworker's cottage) and who want to draw up the drawbridge behind them.

Common folk are priced out of housing and have moved into towns and cities because the modern countryside has very few agricultural jobs and the NIMBYs won't allow any development which might provide alternatives; you can't run a vibrant rural economy on the ye olde crafte shoppe/ tea room/ antique shops and software developers in converted cart sheds.

The incomers clog up the letters pages in the county newspapers and lead campaigns against this and that. Some of them are decent enough people and have rejuvinated some flagging places, but there have co-opted too much of the countryside and are trying to keep it frozen like something made of plastic stuck under a snow-globe. And stalled at some imaginary point no later than the 1950s when everything was so much better than it is now.

A well-preserved country park of my acquaintance, which most visitors probably imagine had been unchanged for centuries, used to have a s0dding brickworks - and other industry - on it in the 19th century. You can't even have a coffee shop/ public lavvy on it now, to protect it's rural purity. It's enough to make a cat laugh.

nuatha

GreyQueen wrote: »

I like windfarms, too, I could sit and watch them for hours, they're mesmerising.

The trouble with villages round this way, including the close-clustered dozen or so where my paternal family have had their roots for centuries, is that they're not proper villages any more. You don't have a village comprised of a majority of farm workers and a minority comprising the vicar, the squire, the odd (very odd, usually ) retired major and the random Arty Person (potter, painter, writer).

The perfect description of the next village over as I was growing up. The old major was most peculiar, the young major (his son) inherited his job and was simply odd. (For a short while the vicar was obnoxious, but was replaced with someone who understood he didn't live in a big city and things were a "bit" different.

Common folk are priced out of housing and have moved into towns and cities because the modern countryside has very few agricultural jobs and the NIMBYs won't allow any development which might provide alternatives; you can't run a vibrant rural economy on the ye olde crafte shoppe/ tea room/ antique shops and software developers in converted cart sheds.

The incomers clog up the letters pages in the county newspapers and lead campaigns against this and that. Some of them are decent enough people and have rejuvinated some flagging places, but there have co-opted too much of the countryside and are trying to keep it frozen like something made of plastic stuck under a snow-globe. And stalled at some imaginary point no later than the 1950s when everything was so much better than it is now.

A local landowner has announced if he can't find tennants for his estate properties then he'd rather bulldoze them than sell them. Too many people buy a place in the countryside then sue to stop cows mooing before 8:00am or combines working from first to last light (he doesn't allow overnight combining).

A well-preserved country park of my acquaintance, which most visitors probably imagine had been unchanged for centuries, used to have a s0dding brickworks - and other industry - on it in the 19th century. You can't even have a coffee shop/ public lavvy on it now, to protect it's rural purity. It's enough to make a cat laugh.

A few years back I looked at buying a falling into ruin building with the intention of restoring it as both a living and working space. I was told that living there wasn't on as it would ruin the tranquility of the area and that software development wasn't a tourist friendly business, therefore I wouldn't be considered a suitable buyer. When I pointed out that its wasn't just my family name over the door, but that of my great grandfather and that he'd not only built it and lived there but operated a blacksmiths there and that his son had turned it into a foundry, I was told that it had to house a business in keeping with the area. And if I wished to open an internet cafe, then I would be welcome. 20 miles from the nearest actual village by road, no mains water, no electricity and possibly 2 or 3 hardcore hillwalkers a month. and the surrounding land scared by lead mining. (There's half a wall still standing)

Most human behaviour is enough to make a cat laugh, that and our thumbs are the reasons they keep us around.

greenbee

nuatha wrote: »

A local landowner has announced if he can't find tennants for his estate properties then he'd rather bulldoze them than sell them. Too many people buy a place in the countryside then sue to stop cows mooing before 8:00am or combines working from first to last light (he doesn't allow overnight combining).

That's a huge problem here. People complain about the combining, the tractors driving through the village constantly (including... shock horror... on SUNDAYS :eek:), the smell of the cows/sheep, the smell from muck spreading (and the worst we have is chicken/turkey - no pig, no 'biosolids' :cool:). Some of them even complain about washing being on the line at weekends...

Although I'm an incomer, I'm from a rural/agricultural background and have moved because there are no jobs where I grew up. As most of the remaining natives understand this scenario I've been made very welcome. And the incomers all accept me because they see me as one of them... it's nice to have a foot in both camps. And can be handy... (I do also have family locally - both incomers and locals who have been here for generations).

GreyQueen

You'd've thought that the historic value of having a scion of one of the old families living there would have had some clout, wouldn't you? Barstewards.

Small list of things which I know incomers have tried to stop in these here parts; mud (on roads), tractors, ditto. Cows mooing, cows crossing from pasture to milking parlour, cockerels crowing, bells ringing, pubs having the odd band on, percussive bird-scarers, fishing, muck-spreading, hedging, bottle-banks, delivery lorries (the co-op have the cheek to have some small stores in villages, why on earth can't everyone shop at W8rose, dahling?!), family parties at the village hall, street lights unless faux-Victorian pretend gaslights, buses coming through......... you name it, someone's agin it.

Things which irritate this ex-rural person about incomers;

1. Your Chelsea tractors clogging up the lanes.
2. Your lah-di-dah ways.
3. Converting everything into something me & mine can't afford.

Oh, and the Chelsea tractors.

Never mind, the only relatives of ours left in those villages are between 70-95 and in council accomodation, so natural attrition will soon sort us out. We may make occasional pilgrimages back to the family graves (assuming we can get down the lanes past the yummy mummies carting little Emily and Timothy to their piano classes).

And yes, I am a trifle bitter about the situation.

moneyistooshorttomention

On the other hand - sometimes incomers can help keep a place alive. I can think of three villages near me - each with a different scenario.

VILLAGE 1 - high proportion of incomers, but most of them live there. Lots of activities going on and its mainly the incomers fighting to keep the village alive (with a pretty reasonable degree of success). I spend a noticeable amount of my time over there - because I like it - and am doing my own bit to help keep it alive. The incomers are the ones lobbying for houses not to be sold to people wanting them as holiday homes.

VILLAGE 2 - a very "local" village and it feels pretty dead and unfriendly and I cant think of one single thing I could do there. There's nothing I could even buy there (bar a daily newspaper). I'm not sure which I would die of first if I lived there - boredom or starvation (amend that - I'd be buying darn nearly all my food from Amazon).

VILLAGE 3 - now that one is a bit more problematic. A lot of houses have been bought by incomers and its pretty often the case that they are holiday homes (rather than being lived-in year round). There are some things to do and some goods to be bought there and its much easier to "live in" than village 2.

Whichever village we are talking about - it seems to be basically incomers generating work - as we are providing most of the work for building firms, etc, in the area (ie renovating our houses). Fishing = can I buy some please? Parties = wonder if I can get an invite? Cows = teacher of class coming in laughing as she has been held up by a "traffic jam" of cows and we all joined in laughing with her.

So - its not possible to generalise as to how things go - as it will vary from village to village.

Frugalsod

greenbee wrote: »

Don't forget the positive side of electronic payments. Mobile phone micropayments are changing lives in developing countries. It's only with the advent of mobile phone technology that communication has been made possible for some remote communities as the cost of fixed line infrastructure was unsustainable, but mobile infrastructure is less problematic. Combined with solar technology (for power) and micropayment systems modern technology is finally bringing benefits to populations that have been sidelined for generations.

The M-pesa system is not really about cashless banking it is about banking for the average person. It enables transfers of payments with East Africa for far lower costs than traditional banks there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa

While it has benefits over cash that is primarily its ability to transfer money home for a fee substantially less than a bank.

GreyQueen

nuatha, I wonder if they put something in the water in the officers' mess because the retired majors seemed to be, to a man, as mad as a box of frogs.

Anyone grow up on the coast, and d'you have retired (and bonkers) sea captains harrumphing around the place?

greenbee

GreyQueen wrote: »

nuatha, I wonder if they put something in the water in the officers' mess because the retired majors seemed to be, to a man, as mad as a box of frogs.

Anyone grow up on the coast, and d'you have retired (and bonkers) sea captains harrumphing around the place?

You wouldn't be referring to the mad Admiral would you? :cool:

Incomers to my parents' village wanted pavements and streetlights.

GreyQueen

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Mad admirals, I knew it! Must be a personality type across all the services.

Or perhaps it's a side effect of village life. Last weekend, Dad and I were tidying up some of the family graves in a village churchyard (the great-grands are sinking :eek:) and he was filling me on on some of the back story to some of the fancier 19th and 20th century graves.

Can't say too much (real world identifiers and all that) but some of gentry and clergy were no better than they ought to be............. and also falling into box of frogs territory.

Pavements in a village, hey? What will they think of next? I'm expert at walking on verges and stepping over the land-drains. Heck, some of those were dug by family, it's my ancestral right not to wring my ankle in them.