Andrew Blenkiron

Would you like Andrew Blenkiron sacked from the board of Red Tractor for his insulting comments.

  • Yes

    Votes: 273 94.1%
  • No

    Votes: 17 5.9%

  • Total voters
    290

texelburger

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Herefordshire
Not being rude or anything but how many actual farmers take the FW anymore? I dont know anyone who does, I stopped a long time ago. More info on here and quite a few topics covered here seem to get rehashed and appear in FW a month or so later. I guess there's more pretty pictures in the FW but the POA on kit in the back should be banned.
I do although I admit the time taken to read it gets less and less.Charles Flindts ramblings are worth the purchase price alone,I love his sense of humour.I must admit to knowing one of their editors too.
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
oh dear, there goes the MBE !

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ajd132

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Suffolk
I do although I admit the time taken to read it gets less and less.Charles Flindts ramblings are worth the purchase price alone,I love his sense of humour.I must admit to knowing one of their editors too.
Can’t I say I find charlie flindt yearning for the past a particular high point of that that magazine
 

Two Tone

Member
Mixed Farmer
Am I right in thinking he was also an ex Policeman?
I didn’t know of that. .....They say it takes one to know one and I became a farmer. Enough said!
I'm also guilty of having ben a FW focus writer. Sometimes the editing would mess up the whole article. I now have a very healthy scepticism of anything that anyone writes in the FW or elsewhere.
Ha-ha. They once took out the word “almost” in one of mine, as in “almost like”.
Which by definition turned from Not Quite but in effect definitely NOT, into Definitely!
It caused a bit of a stir and a lot of laughs at the same time.
Though from then on, I insisted that the edited version was sent back to me to check again before publication.

It was fun to write the articles though and I enjoyed it at the time. I’m convinced a lot of the other stuff written in FW was written a long time before it was published, mostly with an agenda behind it. Even then, there was a lot of doom-mongering about much of it. Farmer Focus articles are (supposedly!) written by real farmers, talking about events and issues that the are dealing with at that time, some of which can be quite amusing.

That Focus writer whose board and lodging ended up courtesy of the Queen - his articles were always, very amusing.
I’ll never forget his take on the smoking ban in pubs and Public places, he being virtually a chain-smoker himself:
“While it is illegal to smoke in pubs, prisoners are still allowed to smoke. Does the Government realise that it has turned Smokers into Criminals and Criminals into Smokers?”
Maybe this partially explains his next abode!

Before FW invited me to write for them, the Focus section was always the bit I’d head to first before reading anything else in it. In fact, it was them ringing to ask about how my harvesting results of a new variety of wheat was going, that they asked me which section of FW I read first and why. That is how and why I got the job.

Right up until the time I stopped buying FW, the Focus section still was what I went straight to. Or the Charlie Flindt bit.
Everybody loves @Charlie Flindt ‘s stuff, because he amuses us and makes us laugh. This is what FW needs a lot more of. It is a question of balance and too much of the depressing stuff make @Two Tone a dull and unhappy chap.
FW needed reading with an almost full pack of 20 and a lighter that worked!

......However, I now gather that even smoking in prisons has become somewhat restricted!
 
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Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
Can’t I say I find charlie flindt yearning for the past a particular high point of that that magazine


Does David Richardson still write a page? Someone told me he hadn't farmed for years and just had it all contract-farmed by others ? more "landowners weekly" than "Farmers weekly" if that's correct?


About time they got some forward-thinking young blood in IMO and I don't mean those obviously chasing NFU or gravy train careers either using it as a self-promotion weekly !
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
Thank God I’m not any more.
FW’s legal fees would put it out of business.

We had to write 350 words that would be edited down to 250 to fit the page.
If I was still writing for it now, they’d struggle to get more than a paragraph in it by the time their legal boys had further cut out what they might consider too risky to their own business, let alone the blasphemy.
It is a shame though when a trade magazine that supposedly represent your own industry puts you off wanting to read it, by turning itself into something akin to the doom-sayer, over-hyped, tabloid, sensationalist press.

Ha-ha. Are you sure you don’t want to edit this post and remove the 2nd sentence!

Want to write a piece for DD magazine ? we don't edit a word (spelling mistakes prove that !)
 

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
Does David Richardson still write a page? Someone told me he hadn't farmed for years and just had it all contract-farmed by others ? more "landowners weekly" than "Farmers weekly" if that's correct?


About time they got some forward-thinking young blood in IMO and I don't mean those obviously chasing NFU or gravy train careers either using it as a self-promotion weekly !

Yes, occasionally. There's a reasonable crew with page each on a monthly rotation. Liz Haines, Guy Smith, David Alvis, Will Evans, Ian Piggott to name a few.
 

Two Tone

Member
Mixed Farmer
Want to write a piece for DD magazine ? we don't edit a word (spelling mistakes prove that !)
Yes, by all means. Even though spell-check should hide my appalling spelling and grammar, I’m sure I can still make an utter twit (this where spell-check goes wrong by turning an “a” instead of an “i”, or is it TFF?) of myself and make the rest of you long time truly dedicated DD’ers cringe at my idiocy, ignorance or “he’s still got a lot learn” tripe!
 

Hooby Farmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
roe valley
I have written a few pieces for countryfile over the last few years to do with social farming although never featured. It is particularly strange as my writing style tends to be in points and is likened more to an engineers report than waffly warm fuzzy read. By the time it's aired, it is almost diluted to a point I don't recognise anything that has been said.
 

Two Tone

Member
Mixed Farmer
Does David Richardson still write a page? Someone told me he hadn't farmed for years and just had it all contract-farmed by others ? more "landowners weekly" than "Farmers weekly" if that's correct?


About time they got some forward-thinking young blood in IMO and I don't mean those obviously chasing NFU or gravy train careers either using it as a self-promotion weekly !
In his hay day David Richardson was a dammed good, on-the-ball presenter of Farming Diary. Also wrote some very good stuff in FW after its sister owned monthly magazine became part of FW, in which he wrote first.

We all get old and some get bitter and seem to moan more and more. Before you all tell me “You are already there!”, I do hope somebody tells me when it’s time to hang my gun up.

We hope we will be remembered of most, when we were in our primes.
 

teslacoils

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
Last thing fw needs is an overly cheerful young farmer with four goats, a tearoom, and half an acre of lavender to make smelly candles writing in it.

None of those "disappointed at only 13t/ha when it looked like it might do more" types either.

More of those "the man arrived with his clipboard and showed me his badge, which I promptly tore up before setting the dog on him" types.
 

yellowbelly

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
N.Lincs
In his hay day David Richardson was a dammed good, on-the-ball presenter of Farming Diary.
(y)
Sunday dinner at 12 noon.
Switch the telly on in the front room, so the valves could get warmed up and then the BBC farming programme at half past followed by the ITV one at 1pm.
David Richardson, John Cherrington, Henry Fell, Phillip Wrixon et al (y)

Proper farmers talking about proper farming - we didn't know we were born.

How the hell that morphed into Countryfile, God only knows :facepalm:
 

Two Tone

Member
Mixed Farmer
(y)
Sunday dinner at 12 noon.
Switch the telly on in the front room, so the valves could get warmed up and then the BBC farming programme at half past followed by the ITV one at 1pm.
David Richardson, John Cherrington, Henry Fell, Phillip Wrixon et al (y)

Proper farmers talking about proper farming - we didn't know we were born.

How the hell that morphed into Countryfile, God only knows :facepalm:
Also Oliver Walton. Didn’t David Richardson move from the BBC Farming program to Anglia TV’s farming Diary?

Countryfile: The most anti-farming, farming program ever invented.
Oops.... It’s Cue that acoustic guitar, straight after the opening theme tune, time again!

Wasn’t / isn’t it an absolute sign of the times when both TV Channels decided to dump their serious farming programs, because helping Farmers wasn’t that important any more?
Let’s turn it into something fluffy for people to watch whilst stuffing their faces with food and booze that all drives from farm produce!

Makes you want to throw up your Kentucky fried Dog-burger and fries, doesn’t it?
 
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ajd132

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Suffolk
Last thing fw needs is an overly cheerful young farmer with four goats, a tearoom, and half an acre of lavender to make smelly candles writing in it.

None of those "disappointed at only 13t/ha when it looked like it might do more" types either.

More of those "the man arrived with his clipboard and showed me his badge, which I promptly tore up before setting the dog on him" types.
7 sheep and artisan peacock eggs for sale at the end of a gate and a big Instagram following being paid to advertise fairfax and favour boots appears to be what constitutes a mover and shaker in my age bracket in agriculture!
 

traineefarmer

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Mid Norfolk
There are some good contributors still in FW, sadly some of them have completely cancelled their sense of humour since Brexit - Stephen Carr comes to mind.

The best writers can find humour and offer advice based on sharing their own failings, this makes them relatable and human. When I come in for lunch after having rounded up some escaped calves and scratching my head about the hectare of beet I've killed off after forgetting to wash the sprayer, I can read a column and think, "Ah, good. It's not just me then!"

Controversies aside, Blenkiron's column was always a bit too self congratulatory for me.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 77 43.5%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 62 35.0%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 28 15.8%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.7%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.7%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 4 2.3%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

  • 1,286
  • 1
As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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