LEAVE the Conservative Party and save your country!

rick_chasey

Jezyboy said:

rick_chasey said:

Farming and farmers certainly need some better PR because they don’t do themselves many favours to elicit much sympathy

Or people need to learn to separate style and substance a bit more.

The ones I come across on my bike and in the village I grew up in were universal pricks and when they started renting out their land to ukip and other hard brexit posters on the motorway and I think collectively voted to leave the EU, they haven’t really endeared themselves to me.

So forgive me if I don’t cry a river that their costs have gone up as a result of Brexit and that the supermarkets know how to drive a hard bargain.

Bunch of pricks.

Even on Saturday I was minding my own business on a country road, a rare hill infact, only for him to get all aggressive behind me on the horn and road raging
till I let him past / avoided being knocked off by him, only for him to then block the whole road while he played chicken with an oncoming car, despite the tractor being much nearer to the passing point.

Like I said, they could do with some better PR.

rick_chasey

You’d think in a job so reliant on the gods they’d pay it forward a bit more.

pblakeney

rick_chasey said:

...
So forgive me if I don’t cry a river that their costs have gone up as a result of Brexit and that the supermarkets know how to drive a hard bargain.

Bunch of pricks.

...

You do realise that your costs will go up if UK farmers decide they've been screwed enough and shut up shop. Might get more houses though, but how to feed them, hmmm.

rick_chasey

pblakeney said:

rick_chasey said:

...
So forgive me if I don’t cry a river that their costs have gone up as a result of Brexit and that the supermarkets know how to drive a hard bargain.

Bunch of pricks.

...

You do realise that your costs will go up if UK farmers decide they've been screwed enough and shut up shop. Might get more houses though, but how to feed them, hmmm.

Their own fault. Here’s a country that’s imported more than it’s grown for over 150 years. The threat isn’t what they think it is.

First.Aspect

rick_chasey said:

You’d think in a job so reliant on the gods they’d pay it forward a bit more.

I reckon our local farm generates about £30k revenue and gets about £90k subsidies.

You'd think they'd be a bit nicer to people who pay the taxes that pay for those subsidies don't you.

briantrumpet

rick_chasey said:

Jezyboy said:

rick_chasey said:

Farming and farmers certainly need some better PR because they don’t do themselves many favours to elicit much sympathy

Or people need to learn to separate style and substance a bit more.

The ones I come across on my bike and in the village I grew up in were universal pricks and when they started renting out their land to ukip and other hard brexit posters on the motorway and I think collectively voted to leave the EU, they haven’t really endeared themselves to me.

So forgive me if I don’t cry a river that their costs have gone up as a result of Brexit and that the supermarkets know how to drive a hard bargain.

Bunch of pricks.

Even on Saturday I was minding my own business on a country road, a rare hill infact, only for him to get all aggressive behind me on the horn and road raging
till I let him past / avoided being knocked off by him, only for him to then block the whole road while he played chicken with an oncoming car, despite the tractor being much nearer to the passing point.

Like I said, they could do with some better PR.

I'm sure they have an equally high opinion of recruitment agents.

First.Aspect

In fairness Brian I don't know too many recruitment agents who block roads for half an hour because its heasy that moving livestock across a field, routinely slaughter wildlife, herd animals with help from a 3 iron or verbally abuse people who happen to be there for no good reason.

That's just my personal experience of recruitment agents, admittedly.

briantrumpet

First.Aspect said:

In fairness Brian I don't know too many recruitment agents who block roads for half an hour because its heasy that moving livestock across a field, routinely slaughter wildlife, herd animals with help from a 3 iron or verbally abuse people who happen to be there for no good reason.

That's just my personal experience of recruitment agents, admittedly.

How many professions are so public?

Well, a few, I suppose, and they get vilified too. I know a director of a housebuilding company, and he's learnt to grow a thick skin: he shuts roads for weeks for drainage works, builds in fields behind other people's houses, etc. Even when he's wanted to clean up contaminated ground (obviously, to build on), he's been the subject of protests. Everyone wants a house, but doesn't want new ones built near theirs. Farming's much the same: everyone wants food, but doesn't like actual farming happening where they are.

rick_chasey

Houses are inanimate tbf.

And I can tell you with some confidence when the farm behind the house I grew up in became a housing estate it was win win all round.

Apart from all the field mice who ran into the houses of course, but Rentokil has to earn a living too, right?

pinno

rick_chasey said:

Jezyboy said:

rick_chasey said:

Farming and farmers certainly need some better PR because they don’t do themselves many favours to elicit much sympathy

Or people need to learn to separate style and substance a bit more.

The ones I come across on my bike and in the village I grew up in were universal pricks and when they started renting out their land to ukip and other hard brexit posters on the motorway and I think collectively voted to leave the EU, they haven’t really endeared themselves to me.

So forgive me if I don’t cry a river that their costs have gone up as a result of Brexit and that the supermarkets know how to drive a hard bargain.

Bunch of pricks.

Even on Saturday I was minding my own business on a country road, a rare hill infact, only for him to get all aggressive behind me on the horn and road raging
till I let him past / avoided being knocked off by him, only for him to then block the whole road while he played chicken with an oncoming car, despite the tractor being much nearer to the passing point.

Like I said, they could do with some better PR.

I'm glad I don't live in parts of England.
I know many local farmers. My house sits in the corner of a field of a huge dairy farm.
I rarely get road rage from them - the worst drivers tend to be self entitled wange wover driving tourists who can afford the £800 to £1700 a week self catering cottages.

Local farmers were very against Brexit. Different views in different parts of the UK.
But then 62% of this population voted not to leave.
Perhaps if you had met famers who didn't vote Brexit, you would have a different opinion of them?
Or you just hate the countryside so much, you're going to hate the people who live in it?

Ricktopia:

rick_chasey

I don’t hate the countryside, hell I love riding my bike through it

I’d visit it for a day trip etc.

I just wouldn’t want to live there. That’s all.

Like I said, farmers need better PR

shirley_basso

Rick's stories of road rage are farcical. I've ridden just as many of not more miles over exactly the same roads and have never (in my life, including doing the same commute as him for 10y) had a road rage incident.

rick_chasey

You don’t think that happened on Howe Wood climb out of Ickleton on Saturday?

🤷🏻‍♂️

Here’s where I had to dive into the bush:


And here’s where he held everyone up playing chicken:



Here’s said narrow road (see the pass point on the left)

shirley_basso

I think your personality type both processes "minor event barely worth mentioning" as a full scale road rage incident and also actually escalates minor events into road rage.

So what most people would brush off is either captured in your mind as a severe trauma or turned into one.

rick_chasey

It’s not that, but he should have waited as getting all antsy, honking the horn, making me pull over only to predictably encounter an on coming car to hold everyone up is classic d!ck behaviour in a tractor, right?

That’s the sort of low level dickery they often do.

Or they’re driving their tractor down the A1 on Friday rush-hour so you get a nice bit snarl up for 10 minutes on the dual carriageway. Again, that’s predictably annoying and is not gonna endear yourself to anyone. (Just beyond Newark fwiw)

shirley_basso

Angry cyclist in tirade about tractor driver complains about angry tractor driver having tirade about cyclist.

None of the behaviour you're reporting has ever happened to me by any type of vehicle ever, and you and I have spent the last 10 years living 3 miles apart riding the same roads.

rick_chasey

With all due respect, loose half a foot and 15-20 kilos and then give it a go.

When I go riding with bigger riders or I’m out with my taller mates, funnily enough I don’t get any grief.

shirley_basso

I don't think a car driver is making any discernable judgement of a person's size when they spot a cyclist. How can you even tell when they are hunched over, anyway?

Pross

Edited due to misread

verylonglegs

shirley_basso said:

Angry cyclist in tirade about tractor driver complains about angry tractor driver having tirade about cyclist.

None of the behaviour you're reporting has ever happened to me by any type of vehicle ever, and you and I have spent the last 10 years living 3 miles apart riding the same roads.

I've lived in Norfolk all my life and believe me farmers do stuff like Rick says all the time. Not only have I seen it but I used to play football with a couple of lads who worked on a farm and would happily tell tales of such fun and games in the dressing room.

pinno

Yay! Proper cyclists grumble in the middle of a political thread.
[rubs hands with glee]

My attitude on the road whilst cycling has changed fundamentally over the years and simultaneously, car drivers attitudes towards me has changed. I had physical fights with drivers but even now, I don't think I could be as calm if I was commuting.
If Rick has over reacted to an incident/incidents with a tractor and word got round the tractor boys... I just wonder. This is why I always make a point of saying thank you to anyone who pulls over on narrow lanes or gives me room out in the sticks and I am sure goodwill spreads goodwill. It's a rural area with a small populace and over time, they have got to know me. How I react to an incident (if there is one) is fundamental to it's outcome. If a driver approaches me verbally, I just ask politely them to be reasonable. No pointing, no aggressive or threatening behaviour.
If I am in the slightest bit concerned about the attitude of a vehicle - speed, noise, road position, I simply get off the road. It's not worth having a fight with a d!ckhead. He may decide in the future to give you a little nudge in the middle of no where and you might not be seen for hours.

3 types of people get into a car.
Stress causes the heart rate and blood pressure of the majority of car drivers to go up. Some in between can go either way and a smaller percentage, goes down. (That majority should actually not get into a car in the first place).
I'm sure that us cyclists are no different. I wonder if those whose blood pressure and heart rate that goes up in the anticipation of what they are about to do (i'e go for a pedal) is directly linked to road incidents.

My attitude on the road 30 years ago on reflection was highly antagonistic and by the grace of god whoever go I.

rick_chasey

shirley_basso said:

I don't think a car driver is making any discernable judgement of a person's size when they spot a cyclist. How can you even tell when they are hunched over, anyway?

I'd be more inclined to agree if people still didn't call me a "f*cking student" aged 35 when i'm cycling.

Dorset_Boy

None of these guys roaring around the country lanes in their ginormous tractors are actual farmers. They are either farm labourers, or the ones in a particular rush are usually farm contractors, who are paid by the load.

Down here, as with the vast, vast majority of other drivers, they are polite enough and won't do anything stupid, but as always there can be odd exceptions.

First.Aspect

Dorset_Boy said:

None of these guys roaring around the country lanes in their ginormous tractors are actual farmers. They are either farm labourers, or the ones in a particular rush are usually farm contractors, who are paid by the load.

Down here, as with the vast, vast majority of other drivers, they are polite enough and won't do anything stupid, but as always there can be odd exceptions.

Not the case in my experience. If anything its the opposite way around.

Anecdote isn't data though, I'll admit. And when I've had to get out of the way of a fast moving tractor towing a combine without an escort on a lane about the same width as the combine, I've not really considered who the driver is.

We have livestock around us, and our biggest gripe, aside from the speeding, driving without lights and hitting animals with golf clubs as a form of enouragement, is that rather than herd across vast open fields, the local farmer uses the roads because this makes it possible for him to get away with doing it himself and saves money. To achieve this he blocks the roads with hay bales and metal gates and the world can bloody well wait for him.

I help pay for those roads. And for his farm, so I find him self entitled and objectionable.

I think it is stretching credibility to argue that there aren't quite a lot of farmers like this. Stereotypes emerge for a reason sometimes.

Stevo_666

rick_chasey said:

shirley_basso said:

I don't think a car driver is making any discernable judgement of a person's size when they spot a cyclist. How can you even tell when they are hunched over, anyway?

I'd be more inclined to agree if people still didn't call me a "f*cking student" aged 35 when i'm cycling.

TBF, you're in Cambridge on a bike so people will be right most of the time if they do that.

rick_chasey

Stevo_666 said:

rick_chasey said:

shirley_basso said:

I don't think a car driver is making any discernable judgement of a person's size when they spot a cyclist. How can you even tell when they are hunched over, anyway?

I'd be more inclined to agree if people still didn't call me a "f*cking student" aged 35 when i'm cycling.

TBF, you're in Cambridge on a bike so people will be right most of the time if they do that.

Sure, but I'm clearly not giving off MAMIL vibes, or indeed vibes that if I kicked off they'd be in trouble.

Anyway, the rule that jobs that are in children's books always get given the benefit of the doubt applies here. People hate the supermarkets but love the farmers; I suspect the reality is they're as bad as each other.

TheBigBean

I've never had a problem with farmers, but then I understand the hassles they face, and I'm sympathetic to the point of view that someone who chooses to live in farming country because it's pretty should probably accept that will result in inconveniences due to farming.

First.Aspect

TheBigBean said:

I've never had a problem with farmers, but then I understand the hassles they face, and I'm sympathetic to the point of view that someone who chooses to live in farming country because it's pretty should probably accept that will result in inconveniences due to farming.

It's easier to be patient when the person expecting it of you isn't acting like a total cnut.

They aren't all violent lawless self entitled cutns by any means, I just think we are unlucky where we live. In fact all of the surrounding farmers are fairly personable and also think ours is a cnut.

briantrumpet

I suspect it's a bit like weather forecasts: you overlook all the boring ones that actually get boring weather spot on, and so decide that the Met Office is institutionally incompetent because of Michael Fish's mistake or the forecast that said the village fete would have glorious weather but instead the village flooded in two hours.

You tend to notice the odd arrishole farmers, not the ones who don't get shït all over the road, don't let their cows graze the verges of the A1 or flatten grannies with their John Deeres. Pretty much every inch of countryside is managed, one way or another, by farmers.

First.Aspect

Or mismanaged. But yes. And no, depending on whether you see the job being a personality filter.

I think most jobs are a bit of a personality filter.