Open Letter to Boris Johnson

24 June.  An open Letter to Boris Johnson MP

Dear Boris and your fellow Brexiters.

Congratulations.  Well done. You’ve won the vote to take us out of the EU. I hope you’re proud of yourselves.  As I write this the pound is in free-fall, financial markets have crashed, billions have been wiped off the value of British companies, the Prime Minister has resigned, the Scots look set to reopen demands for independence (who can blame them – they voted to remain) while  nationalists in Northern Ireland are already agitating for unification with the Republic.  Furthermore, financial experts are warning about stagflation, recession, growing unemployment and rising mortgages.

I was proud of my 20 year son, out on the streets of Hastings and his university town, handing out “I’m In” stickers and “Remain” leaflets.  He could see clearly where his future and that of his country lay.  As could so many other young people.  But it was you and Farage, whipping up the fears of older voters, that have overridden the wishes of the next generation – a  Dad’s Army of has-beens re-evoking the spirit of the Blitz, harking back to ‘Plucky little Britain’ standing alone against the enemy across the Channel.

But the most egregious of your claims was that the EU is fundamentally ‘undemocratic’ and that we were being ruled by ‘unelected bureaucrats’.  Quite apart from evidence this is factually wrong, I would urge you to take the beam out of your own eye before banging on about the mote in Europe’s.

Throughout the campaign you denigrated these ‘bureaucrats’,  but just look at the figures.  The EU has 55,000 civil servants managing the affairs of 28 countries.  Britain has 440,000 civil servants managing the affairs of just one.

Perhaps you were talking about the ‘unelected’ European Commission. But every EU Commissioner is appointed by the democratically elected government of their country. The Council of Ministers consists of politicians democratically elected by voters in their own country.  The third tier of the EU, the Parliament consists of MEPs directly elected by all of us.

Consider for a minute how that compares to the democratic structure of your Little Britain.  We have a wholly unelected, hereditary, head of state. Half of our parliament is wholly unelected - in fact mainly appointed by the political patronage of a prime minister.  And we have our main parliamentary chamber invariably elected on a minority of the popular vote.  What proportion of ‘the people’ voted for your government?  Just 35%. Meaning that very nearly two-thirds of the electorate voted AGAINST you. Yet you still got in, with the result that the toxic infighting within your own party has now consigned our country to financial and political isolation.

And while we’re talking about the ‘democratic deficit’ just how is the new Prime Minister to succeed Mr Cameron going to be elected – or should I say ‘appointed’?  Only Conservatives will have any say. Tory MPs (who, as we have seen, a massive majority of the country did NOT vote for) will select two candidates and then one will be ‘chosen’ by members of your political party.  And that person becomes MY prime minister!  It’s an absolute farce that makes the EU look almost like a model of Athenian democracy.

So how are you proposing to persuade my son, who was motivated to get out of bed and campaign in the referendum, that it will ever be worth his while voting again?  If you are going to take us out of Europe, then Boris I suggest you start by reforming your own country’s antiquated and utterly unfair ‘democratic’ process.

Milkcarts and Happy Cows

TofTW March 2016

Happy Cows win Prizes

By Kent Barker

We had a wonderful milkman when I lived in Greenwich in the 1980s. His name was Doug Mullins, known to all as Dougie, and he followed his father into the trade, eventually replacing their old red and white handcart with one of those new-fangled electric milk floats.

I was thinking of Dougie just the other day and reflecting on how rare doorstep milk deliveries have become.  When he died in 1991 there was no one to take over his round.  But even as late as 1995 doorstep deliveries accounted for 45% of all household purchases of milk.  Now it’s less than 3%. 

The trend has been largely driven by the big supermarkets. The average price of home-delivered milk is currently 81p a pint, against 24.8p from retailers.  The downward pressure on prices has meant that milk production is simply uneconomic on its own. The average price paid to the farmer is 21p per litre.  The average cost of production is 27p.

So when I visited our local dairy farmer I was expecting a catalogue of woes, and predictions of imminent demise.  But not a bit of it, they’re busy expanding their animals along with their product range. The Manfords have been running a dairy herd at Hinxden Farm for eighty-five years.  Now they have two.  Holsteins and Guernseys.  250 cows in milk and another 150 younger stock waiting to be put into calf. The Holsteins are the more productive, each giving an average of 9000 litres a year, while the Guernsey’s come in at around 6000 litres – though many think it’s a creamier, tastier product.

The point is that they are only losing money on about half of their production.  That half they sell to a wholesaler.  Milk taken away by tanker from any dairy farm will be mixed with produce from a number of other herds. It may sit around for several days before it gets to the supermarket shelf.  And prior to that it will have been homogenised. A process where the fat droplets are broken down under pressure so the cream doesn’t separate.  But some worry that smaller fat molecules bypass the digestive system and instead are absorbed into the bloodstream.

The remainder of the Manfords’ milk has a rather different story.  It is simply pasteurised – heat treated - and then bottled immediately.  It leaves the farm within 24 hours and is delivered to local shops, schools and homes straight away.  The Channel Island brand comes from the Guernsey’s alone. Then there are three types of cream, two cheeses and a clutch of different yoghurts.  It’s quite labour intensive with 14 employees including drivers for the four vans that do the milk rounds.  And, naturally, it’s a bit more expensive, averaging 68p a pint delivered.  But Dee Manford, who’s married to one of the three Hinxden Dairy partners, says that people are becoming increasingly aware of what they are eating and are prepared to pay a premium for better, fresher products. “We have happy cows.  And if they’re happy and well fed and well cared for, they produce better milk”.

Now you may think this is bunkum.  How can you tell a happy cow from an unhappy one?  Well, all I can say is that, walking round the farm, it’s hard to avoid the impression that they are pretty content.  It’s too wet for them to be turned out to pasture so they’re still in roomy cattle sheds or wandering freely around the yard munching silage.  And they keep coming up to nuzzle or lick your hand.  There’s a nursery where the young calves are raised with nanny caring for both black and white or tan-brown wards.

Dee would say the results speak for themselves.  At the International Dairy Festival in Cheshire, their Guernsey Whole Milk won first prize and their Holstein Whole milk took second.  Then at the recent ‘Taste of Kent’ awards their Channel Islands (Guernsey) cream won the Dairy section.

So the point of this story is that it’s really rather nice to be able to report something positive in farming and to see a small business buck the trend and find a niche that enables them not just to survive but grow. The herd started with 5 cows on 35 acres. Now they’re expanding beyond 400 cattle, with more than 700 acres available.  Nationally we have a million fewer dairy cows than we did 20 years ago – a 27% reduction.

Mind you it’s hard work. At Hinxden they milk at 4.00 am and 3.00 pm 365 days a year.  Dee says she sometimes finishes calving around 1.00 am, just in time to greet the early shift arriving to prepare the milking parlour.  Such discomforts are quite clearly compensated by the huge pride in their achievement – and in the quality of their product.

ends

Alice Down the Pot-hole

T of TW March 2016

Alice in Wonderland World of Pot-holed Roads

By Kent Barker

The answer that came back over and over again was simply “there is no money for it”.  It didn’t much matter what the question was.  The response was the same.  We’re sitting over coffee in the newly refurbished Village Shop and Café - four members of my parish council’s Highways Committee and three people from Kent County Council’s Roads and Travel Department, two whom are officers and the third a senior elected member.

Now the appalling state of the highways around here is of considerable interest to many.  In fact ‘interest’ is hardly the right word.  Even ‘incandescent fury’ might not be strong enough.  Few can remember when any road was fully re-surfaced.  Patched yes, but actually planning off the top tarmac and relaying a whole new surface? Well it simply doesn’t happen any more.  Hasn’t done so for years.  And each winter the pot-holes get bigger, and after enough people have broken wheels or springs and have inundated the council with complaints, then a team may come along with some lose ‘blackstuff’ on the back of a lorry and chuck it in the hole and flatten it in a desultory sort of way.  Sure it evens things out for a bit.  But then the telephone people or the water people turn up and dig a trench and don’t fill it in properly, or a succession of those huge ‘Chelsea tractor’ 4x4s churn it up, or the frost gets to it and, before you know it, you are not just back where you started, but worse off even than that. And just don’t get me started on what it’s like for cyclists on the national bicycle ‘route’ that runs through the parish.  We used to have a joke when we were doing our cycling proficiency at school, someone showing off would say ‘look no hands’ and someone else would reply: ‘look no teeth’.  Well on our designated cycle routes the pot-holes are so big that it would be more a question of “look no bike … or rider”.

So we invited the people with responsibility for our roads at KCC to come and see for themselves just how bad it was.  We hired a mini-bus and took them on a tour, but it didn’t begin very propitiously.  As our vehicle was weaving around the holes and bucking over the sunken camber like a demented bronco, the main man from the County Council could be heard to say “It’s much worse round where I live.” 

Anyway, having demonstrated as best we could the deplorable situation and demanded “something must be done”, the County Councillor began his mantra of “there is no money for it”. The roads in the county had not been properly maintained for years, and it was estimated that it would require £230 million to bring Kent’s highways up to ’standard’.  So it’s simply not going to be done because “there’s no money for it”.  County Hall tells him to fill in pot-holes, ignore minor roads and concentrate on the main roads. 

Isn’t that, we asked, a bit unfair on areas like ours where there are loads of minor and almost no major roads? Ah well, he explained, it’s all down to central government funding.  Basically the Shire counties have been ‘screwed’ by central government. Whitehall recently changed the rules and now we get money depending on how well we maintain our ‘assets’.  Main roads are classed as assets, minor ones are not. Put simply, the more you maintain your assets the more money you get to maintain them. We stand to lose £13 million if we don’t keep them up to scratch.

Sorry, did we hear right? If the roads are well maintained, you get more money to maintain them, which you don’t really need because they are well maintained. BUT, if they are poorly maintained because you can’t afford the maintenance, you LOOSE the money you really need to carry out that maintenance.  Yep, that makes a lot of sense.  And who determines if they are well maintained or not.  Ah, that will be the Country Council itself.  It ‘self-judges’ its own performance, and then is judged on the self-judging!

By now the collective heads of the parish councillors are spinning.  Perhaps we’ve fallen down one of our own potholes and emerged, Alice like, in some un-wonderland where big is small and less is more. 

"Take some more tea," the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly. "I've had nothing yet," Alice replied in an offended tone: "so I can't take more." "You mean you can't take less," said the Hatter: "it's very easy to take more than nothing.”

On that basis, substituting road repair for tea, we should really be quite pleased.  We can hardly be any worse off than we are.

ends.

Republican or Monarchist

TofTW Feb 2016

The Royal Conundrum

By Kent Barker

The invitation, when it arrived, posed something of a dilemma.

Of course I’m delighted to see our new batch of Housing Association homes completed and ready for occupation.  It’s been several years since we found the land for them. A village trust administered by the Parish Council owned a field that had been let out for grazing.  In an ideal world it would have remained for agriculture, but affordable housing is urgently needed and we felt the proposal for three homes and a couple of flats was a reasonable one.  Not all the nearby residents agreed and there was a stormy public meeting at which several vented their spleen.

Anyway, here we are with the houses built and just some landscaping to do before the grand opening ceremony.  I’m not quite sure why there needs to be a grand opening ceremony but the Housing Association wants one, and so sent out invitations to village worthies and to me as a parish councillor.  As a local politician – albeit on the very bottom rung of the administrative ladder – I feel it’s good to attend these sort of gatherings whenever possible, so I was about accept when I noticed who was to be the guest of honour. It was the Housing Association’s patron, the Princess Royal, or as I remember her, Princess Anne.

A quick check shows that the first Princess Royal in Britain was Maria, daughter of Charles I and his French wife Henrietta Maria, who wanted to import the Gallic custom of calling their eldest daughter ‘Madame Royale’.  Though perhaps they felt that title suffered in translation and sounded, to English ears, a tad too close to the keeper of a bawdy house. Though I suppose the monarchical title might have provided some fig-leaf of respectability.

Anyway, I fear we are diverting down dangerous by-ways here.  The point is, or was, whether I should attend a function at which a member of the royal family was to be present.

Let me make it clear, I have nothing against any of them personally. It’s the institution I have a problem with.  Put me on the rack (and expressing such views in times gone by might well have resulted in me being put on a rack) I would probably admit pretty quickly that I was, at heart, a republican. Actually, coming to think about it, I’d admit to almost anything in the face of even the most gentle torture.  Personally I just can’t see the point of submitting to the pain.  So beware, any friends or relatives, if I’m carted off to the torture chamber, head for the hills because I am most unlikely to keep your secrets.

But back to the question of whether, in the 21^st century, it’s in any way acceptable for a head of state to hold the post solely because they happen to have been born into the aristocracy?  We in Britain pride ourselves on being a bastion of democracy. We characterise the Westminster model as the “mother of parliaments”. We look round the world and lecture others on the need for free elections and decry one-party states or dictatorships. And yet … our upper chamber in parliament is wholly UN-elected, likewise our constitutional head of state. 

Now, if we ignore a few peccadillos of her children or grandchildren, I’ll own that the current Queen has done a pretty decent job.  And it’s not a job I’d take on for all her money.  But on one level it’s her wealth that is part of the problem.  How can you persuade Google or Starbucks, or even the bloke next door, to pay their taxes if your head of state only does so on a voluntary basis, and sometimes not at all when it comes to inheritance tax? Ok, I know all the arguments about the value of the Monarchy to our tourist income but surely there’s a principle at stake here isn’t there?

So by now you should be asking: ‘is he going to put his principles before the chance of hobnobbing with the Princess?’  Well as I said it’s a dilemma. I’ve met Princess Anne before, when I was a junior reporter in local radio in the North East at a Riding for the Disabled charity event.  I’ve even met the Queen.  Well, when I say met, she passed by me in a reception line at a gala theatrical first night to which, as a teenager, I’d gone with my father.  I had no idea she’d be there and recall being embarrassed I’d failed to polish my shoes.  I doubt she noticed.

Eventually I decided to accept the invite on your behalf.  I’ll be your eyes and ears and tell you all about it in a future column. You may call it a cop-out. I justify it as journalism! 

ends

Pettifogging Restrictions

TofTW Feb 2016

Pettifogging Restrictions open Museum of Medicine

By Kent Barker

I stumbled across a most extraordinary collection the other day.

It started while rifling through some folders of old press cuttings about my village.  I have sort of volunteered to produce a monthly page from these archives for our Benenden Magazine.  What, I wondered, was going on a hundred years ago?  For one thing they were in the middle of the “Great War”.  Well, that’s how it was known at the time and, indeed, up until the late 1930s when the prospect of another ‘great’ war was looming.  But the use of the adjective is instructive because it seems it didn’t just refer to the scale of the conflict, but also to its moral righteousness.  To quote historian Seán Lang: “The Allies believed they were fighting against an evil militarism that had taken hold in Germany. 'Great War' carried echoes of Armageddon, the biblical Great Battle of Good and Evil to be fought at the end of Time.” Well, whatever.  But there’s little doubt that it had a massive effect on the lives of the people round here. Quite apart from those who were killed or wounded, many locals, usually women, were volunteering for the VAD - Voluntary Aid Detachment - a branch of the Red Cross providing nursing services at field hospitals here and abroad.

Anyway,  the press cutting was a letter to the editor of the local paper.  Well, when I say letter, it was really more of a rant about another letter writer: “His remarks … savour of a mean pettifogging and dog-in-the-manger spirit … simply exposing deplorable ignorance … must have forgotten and forsaken his patriotism.” 

And what were the two correspondents so exercised about – it was DORA. No, not some local lass they were competing over, but the Defence of the Realm Act, passed in 1914, shortly after the outbreak of war, containing some extraordinary provisions. These included cutting pub-opening hours, watering down beer and prohibiting the buying of rounds. Other precautions might seem more prudent, such as outlawing talk of naval or military matters in public places, the use of invisible ink when writing abroad, or buying binoculars. But by far the most contentious, it seems, was the restriction preventing any bright light from being seen outside. This was clearly the forerunner of the blackout in WW2.

It would appear that the first letter writer was complaining about light being emitted from the Benenden Sanatorium – a TB hospital to the north of our village which had been commandeered for troops returning from the front with consumption.  Sadly we don’t know exactly what he said, but ‘A Patient’ at the hospital was severely unimpressed: “Anyone who may visit the sanatorium after dark will only see the place plunged in perennial darkness but for a glimmer of light here and there in the cubicles of bed-ridden patients…” he responds. “If even the modicum of light which the Defence of the Real Act permits be denied to the institution, a patient having a sudden hemorrhage will be unattended with perhaps fatal result … to attempt to deny those who have gone out, and fought, and contracted a serious disease, the little privilege the lighting regulations permit, he must have forsaken his patriotism.”

            So I called the Sanatorium, now known as The Benenden Hospital, and asked if they had any photographs from a hundred years ago.  Yes, came the reply, albums full of them.  Come along to the museum and have a look.  A Museum? Here in our midst? How exciting.  Actually I anticipated just a few dog-eared pictures and a couple of bits of redundant equipment - so what a delight when the door was unlocked and I was ushered in.  Three large rooms were filled with imaginatively mounted displays charting the progress of not just the Sanatorium itself, but the history of medicine throughout the past century.  It really was a little gem.  Sadly the curator behind the project had retired and moved away so they are now looking for a new archivist.  In the meantime no one quite knows what anything is or where it’s kept. I did manage to find a photograph of the staff at the Sanatorium during WW1 - Matrons with starched white uniforms and medical staff in dark suits and Eaton collars.  But behind them stood three rows of young men more informally attired.  Could these have been ambulant soldier-patients in civvies? Could one even have been our epistolarian?

            I imagined him fulminating at the other privations caused by DORA.  What!!! Beer watered down? Pubs closing early, and the good people of Benenden prohibited from buying a round? Even for returning servicemen.  And it’s for this we’ve served King and Country and survived Armageddon. It’s those politico chappies up in London who display the real mean, pettifogging and dog-in-the-manger spirit!

ends

A singularly Cerebral Man

 T of TW Feb 2016

Passing of a Singularly Cerebral Architect     

By Kent Barker

Whenever he came back to England, Geoff would always be sure to visit our house, driven down to the country by his long-suffering wife June.  Actually I don’t think she was that long-suffering, it’s just that she often complained he’d never learned to drive and so, throughout their 65 years marriage, and the raising of four children, she’d been the family chauffeur. Mind you I very much doubt if she would ever have dared get into a car with Geoff at the wheel.  His cerebral mind would never have stooped to such mundane things as gear changes or traffic lights or, indeed, other road users.

Geoff’s association with the place I now live began immediately after the war when my father invited him home to meet his parents.  The two had been war buddies in a decidedly eccentric theatrical troupe known as the ‘’Balmorals’.  This was the army’s answer to ENSA which, after D-Day, toured newly liberated France, Belgium and finally Germany with shows for the front-line soldiers mounted in barns and derelict theaters.

Geoff had been recruited rather late into this band of brothers as a scenery painter – somewhat less glamorous, if decidedly safer, than his role as a war artist during the Normandy beach landings.  Anyway he and my father began a friendship which lasted half a century and brought our two families into close, if irregular proximity.

After the war Geoff qualified as an architect, married June, and went off to to America, first to Harvard and then to Chicago where he was employed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, pioneers of the modern "glass box" skyscraper. Returning to England in 1954 this experience proved bankable and he was commissioned to design a modernistic headquarters for the fabric firm Sanderson. 

On one of his last visits to London Geoff could be found in the courtyard garden of this Berners Street listed building, recently remodeled as a swanky boutique hotel.  With flowing silver locks and full beard he held court reminiscing about the emerging pop-art movement in post-war Britain. He’d been part of the Independent Group of artists and designers who had staged a seminal exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1956, questioning the tenets of traditional and modern art.

Before long he and June and the four children departed for the States again.  Geoff had a job teaching architecture at the University of New Mexico, but it was really just a cover for the major project he’d embarked on. He’d already met Charles and Ray Eames in London, and been transfixed by their iconoclastic approach to modern architecture.  Geoff had written about them and their extraordinary Santa Monica house in the Architectural Review.  Now he decided nothing less than a full book about their designs and philosophy would do.  And thus began perhaps the longest gestation of any work of non-fiction known to mankind.

Part of the problem was that New Mexico was rather too far from Southern California for the non-driving Geoff to visit and interview his subjects.  Even moving the family to San Louis Obispo on the Pacific Coast didn’t help much. As professor of Architecture at Cal Poly there were lectures to prepare and faculty parties to attend, and local wine to be drunk. And the deeper Geoff got into his research the more difficulty he seemed to have explaining it.  Certainly on my visits to him in California, or his to me in Kent, I found myself struggling to grapple with his concept of the Eames’ “duelist strategy of treating structure and decoration … as two ideas in disagreement with each other… becoming a paradigm for a controlled dichotomy”.

But Geoffery was clearly lapping it up and soon gave up teaching to devote himself full time to his magnus opus.  June later complained that he never worked again nor contributed any income to the family funds.  This was not entirely true because, along with her and their two sons, Geoff started designing a series of upmarket houses in the Santa Barbra area that became known as the Holroyd Houses.  Well, it is possible that June did the bulk of the draftsmanship while Geoff theoreticized or conceptualized on Hispanic/Mediterranean  architectural style, but at least he still contributed something.

Recently the local Santa Barbra museum honored him with an exhibition recreating his 1956 ‘This Was Tomorrow’ exhibit known as ‘Group 12’ and then, last year, he suddenly announced that after almost exactly fifty years his book on the Eameses was finished.  It was not a good career move. He died at the end of last month aged 92.

Geoff had a singular physical characteristic.  Cut onions never made him cry.  I’ll always remember him madly chopping away in my kitchen whenever he visited.  It’s a very great sadness he won’t do so again.

ends

Verging on the Hazardous

 T of TW Feb 2016

Row over Responsibility for Rutted Lanes

By Kent Barker

I got my ear bent by a local farmer the other day.  “That letter you published in the village magazine – bit unfair.  It’s not our fault.  Anyway we were here first.”

After pointing out that I’m not responsible for what the magazine publishes, I tried to disentangle what had so irked him.  The letter was, I thought, relatively mild and quite well argued.  It expressed concern about farm vehicles damaging verges and drains along the narrow lanes that proliferate round here. “These vehicles are getting larger in some cases they are as wide as the whole lane making passing virtually impossible.  This is having a detrimental effect on the sides of the lanes … causing deep trenches.”

It’s certainly true that, in the extraordinarily wet weather we’ve had this winter, verges have been badly chewed up.  Part of the problem is that there are no official lay-bys or passing places, so if you meet another vehicle you have little option but to pull over onto the side and pray that you won’t get get stuck in the mud.  Otherwise it’s a long reverse, possibly up hill and round a bend or two.

So you can see the point. Harassed home owners, trying to make the station on time for their daily commute, or scurrying late for the school run, do perhaps have a legitimate gripe about large slow-moving tractors and trailers clogging up ‘their’ lanes.

But, as the farmer pointed out, there is another perspective. How did the lanes come to exist in the first place?  Round here in the Weald they generally started as drovers’ routes. Anglo-Saxon settlers imported ‘transhumance’ - the seasonal herding of stock from one area to another. As their stock was mainly pigs, they created swine pastures in woodland clearings – known as ‘dens’ - hence Benenden and Rolvenden etc.  By Norman times surrounding woods had been enclosed by manorial lords or ‘assarted’ – cleared, and the countryside we’d recognise today began to be created. But the tracks remained, linking the dens, some of which turned into settlements while others became outlying farms. And it remained thus for a thousand years.  But then, less than a century ago, the internal combustion engine changed it all.  Suddenly it was practical for people with no links to faming to live in isolated rural homes.  And along with their cars came macadamized road surfaces.

So perhaps our letter writer should accept that the lanes she is so concerned about are only there because of farming. As, in all likelihood, is her house.  And the only reason the rural countryside, which presumably drew her there in the first place, remains as it does is because of farming.  And farming is a business.  Which has always needed to transport goods.  Other business may be able to re-locate to specially designed industrial parks near main roads.  Farmers can’t.  If you have a dairy farm down a narrow lane, you have – at the very minimum - to get cattle feed in and milk out, along that lane.

But surely our correspondent has a point about the size of modern farm vehicles?  Well yes and no.  A modern tractor trailer can be up to almost 25 tonnes.  A trailer behind an old fashioned grey Fergie or Fordson Major was likely to be about 3.5 tonnes.  So to transport 24 tonnes of silage you could have one trip by the modern rig, or seven by the old one.  That’s seven extra journeys, probably at considerably lower speeds, clogging up your lanes. 

Even seven journeys by a lighter vehicle would cause less damage to the road than one much heavier one, wouldn’t they?   Not necessarily.  Modern agricultural vehicles are fitted with those huge balloon tyres which spread the weight over a greater surface.  Farmers use them because they don’t crush or compact the soil in their fields as much as standard tyres.  So it’s possible that they cause less damage to verges than earlier tractors and that the ‘deep trenches’ are not from farm vehicles, but cars - or delivery vans which have dramatically increased in the Amazon/eBay/Ocardo era of home shopping.

Farmers themselves complain of the domestication of the lanes.  One homeowner has a wide verge between his boundary hedge and the road which he kindly mows, even though it doesn’t belong to him.  However, to prevent incursion from vehicles, he’s put in a line of posts along the kerb.  It means it can’t be used as a passing place and even makes it difficult for tractors to turn at the junction there. 

Perhaps the lesson is that all should recognise the lanes have to be shared by residents, and farmers and businesses alike.  And that depredations need to be reported to, and repaired by, the county council.  But getting any action from them is another story!

ends.