- Location
- Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
With nothing much doing one evening lately- other than our nightly game of scrabble- I took my lucky little wife on an outing. We’d been invited to attend a talk by some self-proclaimed guru called Clark, entitled ‘Is less more?’ I seldom go along to such things, being of the opinion that Shaw had it right… those who can do, while those who cannot teach – or in this case, pontificate. And sure enough, this twerp was just such a one.
Now a part time farmer himself, he’s fought his way up through life to buy himself a 400 acre farm high up some lonely Yorkshire Dale –presumably thinking he’d ‘made it’! With the steading at 1200’, and barely enough in-bye to carry 2-3 cows and the tups, those who’ve farmed this kind of country could see at a glance it’s a desperate place, where the most tenacious would barely persist. By his own admission, the first thing he did was swap the Swaledales on the place for something he thought would be better ….which always rings alarm bells - as if he was going to know better than all of his predecessors and the locals. It’s a classic mistake a newbie hill farmer makes, and sure enough he couldn’t make things work.
However, he’s a super whizzo businessman, and is now living by selling ‘ready meals’ and doing a bit of B&B…oh, and talking about how clever he is. Too pretend he’s still farming, he runs half a dozen cows and their progeny, and thinks he’s re-invented the wheel. He’s apparently also good at selling himself, and he’s been asked to produce a report on the parlous state of farm incomes in the hills. And astonishingly, he’s discovered that we’re all reliant on the EU subsidies to make any kind of profit.
The way he tells it –and boy does he like to dress it up in acronyms and management gobblegook- you’d think that we hadn’t noticed, and are blindly sitting like dazzled rabbits in the headlights. What a pompous patronising little creep. I won’t bore you with the full detail, but he makes a mistake common to people outside the world of hill farming. He imagines that because we’ve worked within the subsidy framework all our lives, that we’re incompetent businessmen, and wouldn’t know how to make our own way. Now in some cases, of course he’s right…but as a generalisation, he’s hardly seen what he’s been looking at. At one point, he scoffs that most of his neighbours down the valley owned a round baler, when less than half of the balers could have done the required work*. Those chaps are foolishly overcapitalised. It was an insulting display of ignorance, especially as a quick mental tally indicated that the % of round baler ownership in the valley where we sat was exactly the same. So he was calling us idiots as well.
*for the uninitiated, when you’re miles from anywhere, in a catchy summer, waiting for a baler when the weather is closing in again…..the capital tied up in a baler is often less than the value of a well saved crop.
Anyway, we sat through his presentation, waiting for him to finish so we could have another beer, and chat with pals. I couldn’t care less about such egotistical waffle, other than I understand some of the great and the good are listening to this bloke, and his ‘Clark Report’. I can only hope that they see through the hooey. If they really need the inside gen, they’ve only to ask.
On to more important stuff, I’m perplexed. I hear on’t news that in the US, the actor who voices ‘Apu’ in the cartoon show The Simpsons has capitulated under pressure, and won’t continue to portray the Indian shopkeeper, as it reinforces racial stereotypes. What tosh! Every single character in the Simpsons is a caricature…it’s what the show is. Greedy washed up Jewish clowns, rich gun totin’ Texan yee haws, drugged out school bus drivers and overweight Italian American mobsters everywhere would have to be outraged. Chain smoking lesbian civil servants, desperate bachelor head teachers and bar owners, nerds of all flavours, and of course, incompetent bumbling balding twits –hey, that’s me!- must all be hurt by these vicious portrayals.
Well I adore the Simpsons…it’s brilliant- the best thing on TV by a country mile, and there’s hardly a characterisation they don’t explore. And here’s the thing, not only is it pretty even handed in the leg pulling, it also treats the issues that arise with an honest and gentle humour. Allowing one group to demand special treatment is a mistake. Don’t have a cow man.
-------------------------
Anton's articles are syndicated exclusively by TFF by kind permission of the author and WMN.
Anton also writes regularly for the Dartmoor Magazine
Now a part time farmer himself, he’s fought his way up through life to buy himself a 400 acre farm high up some lonely Yorkshire Dale –presumably thinking he’d ‘made it’! With the steading at 1200’, and barely enough in-bye to carry 2-3 cows and the tups, those who’ve farmed this kind of country could see at a glance it’s a desperate place, where the most tenacious would barely persist. By his own admission, the first thing he did was swap the Swaledales on the place for something he thought would be better ….which always rings alarm bells - as if he was going to know better than all of his predecessors and the locals. It’s a classic mistake a newbie hill farmer makes, and sure enough he couldn’t make things work.
However, he’s a super whizzo businessman, and is now living by selling ‘ready meals’ and doing a bit of B&B…oh, and talking about how clever he is. Too pretend he’s still farming, he runs half a dozen cows and their progeny, and thinks he’s re-invented the wheel. He’s apparently also good at selling himself, and he’s been asked to produce a report on the parlous state of farm incomes in the hills. And astonishingly, he’s discovered that we’re all reliant on the EU subsidies to make any kind of profit.
The way he tells it –and boy does he like to dress it up in acronyms and management gobblegook- you’d think that we hadn’t noticed, and are blindly sitting like dazzled rabbits in the headlights. What a pompous patronising little creep. I won’t bore you with the full detail, but he makes a mistake common to people outside the world of hill farming. He imagines that because we’ve worked within the subsidy framework all our lives, that we’re incompetent businessmen, and wouldn’t know how to make our own way. Now in some cases, of course he’s right…but as a generalisation, he’s hardly seen what he’s been looking at. At one point, he scoffs that most of his neighbours down the valley owned a round baler, when less than half of the balers could have done the required work*. Those chaps are foolishly overcapitalised. It was an insulting display of ignorance, especially as a quick mental tally indicated that the % of round baler ownership in the valley where we sat was exactly the same. So he was calling us idiots as well.
*for the uninitiated, when you’re miles from anywhere, in a catchy summer, waiting for a baler when the weather is closing in again…..the capital tied up in a baler is often less than the value of a well saved crop.
Anyway, we sat through his presentation, waiting for him to finish so we could have another beer, and chat with pals. I couldn’t care less about such egotistical waffle, other than I understand some of the great and the good are listening to this bloke, and his ‘Clark Report’. I can only hope that they see through the hooey. If they really need the inside gen, they’ve only to ask.
On to more important stuff, I’m perplexed. I hear on’t news that in the US, the actor who voices ‘Apu’ in the cartoon show The Simpsons has capitulated under pressure, and won’t continue to portray the Indian shopkeeper, as it reinforces racial stereotypes. What tosh! Every single character in the Simpsons is a caricature…it’s what the show is. Greedy washed up Jewish clowns, rich gun totin’ Texan yee haws, drugged out school bus drivers and overweight Italian American mobsters everywhere would have to be outraged. Chain smoking lesbian civil servants, desperate bachelor head teachers and bar owners, nerds of all flavours, and of course, incompetent bumbling balding twits –hey, that’s me!- must all be hurt by these vicious portrayals.
Well I adore the Simpsons…it’s brilliant- the best thing on TV by a country mile, and there’s hardly a characterisation they don’t explore. And here’s the thing, not only is it pretty even handed in the leg pulling, it also treats the issues that arise with an honest and gentle humour. Allowing one group to demand special treatment is a mistake. Don’t have a cow man.
-------------------------
Anton's articles are syndicated exclusively by TFF by kind permission of the author and WMN.
Anton also writes regularly for the Dartmoor Magazine
