The unholy countryside alliance

Shut up disagreeing with me

To their absolute discredit, the BBC and some newspapers are reporting as serious the opinions of that unholy countryside alliance. An alliance of the ultra-wrong ultra-rightwing, the “get orrf my land” dog-shooters, and that one fat lady that isn't dead yet.

Their opinion is that celebrities shouldn't voice their opinions.

That is, if the celebs happen to disagree with them.

No, much more valid are the opinions of the ministers and secretaries of state. After all with their degrees in history, and, er, history, and...history, they're ideally placed to comment on the science, the biology and zoology of exterminating badgers and hunting foxes. After all, they've devoted a lot of time achieving their qualifications in, er, history.

The politicians are no more qualified than the celebrities. They just happen to be better disposed towards the cruel, nasty and evil treatment of animals.

Then there's the princess that looks like a horse. “Gas the badgers” she says. She is eminently qualified to hold an opinion, because...well, because her mum and dad happen to be her mum and dad. She's genetically qualified and chock-full of hereditary expertise.

Then there's the farmers' lobby. A cabal of loons if there ever was one. They're either farming the better part of East Anglia with intensive machinery and chemicals and are spreadsheet jockeys who can't tell a cow's arse from a fox burrow. They're money men who would hand their grannies over to Somalian Pirates if they got a couple of quid more per head at market, let alone worry about exterminating large numbers of any species. Or they're hands-on. To be precise, that's hands-up. Hands up a sheep's arse at ungodly o'clock every morning, then milking the cow's arses, then getting the eggs out of the chicken's arses. You'd have to be barking to want to get up at four every morning, look out onto the tractor scrapyard, and set off with the border collie for a day of various animal behinds, all, if they're to be believed, to lose money hand over fist. That is, I think, if you discount the EU subsidy. The custodian of the countryside subsidy. The no rates subsidy. The poll tax subsidy, and the cow's, sheep's and chickens' arse subsidy, and the leaving the fields alone doing nothing and still get a subsidy subsidy.

So, their point of view isn't really valid because they're all mad.

It is different in even semi-rural areas:

There's a strong smell of horse, only occasionally overwhelmed by the dodgy stables owner burning the insulation off those bails or wire he mysteriously accumulates, and sells for scrap.

There's next door but one. He isn't always out with his chainsaw. Sometimes it's his tractor. Sometimes it's other hand-held, two-stroke, petrol appliances.

There's all the birds. They like a between three o'clock and four o'clock kick off in the summer months. Not all of them sing. Some tap dance on the roof tiles.

There's the rats. Every time they seem to clear off, there's another horse parked out the back and the hay (or the straw or whatever the technical term for that dried stuff they eat or sleep of crap on) provides a rat-squat they just can't turn down.

There's the road in the winter months. An adventure in itself. Never seen a gritter. They did send a snowplough down once. It cleared the road. In doing so it blocked everyone's drives so we couldn't use the road.

Most of all, though, it's a place of beauty, made all the more beautiful by the birds, the foxes, the badgers, the mice and the rats, and, sadly, infested with people who seem intent on wiping them out.