- Bunny Huggers
- Gary turns out useless again
- Brookfield is “satisfactory”
- Bloomin’ badgers might lose Brookfield their dairy herd
Bunny Huggers
Shula bumps into Brian skulking around Felpersham.
[Brian] “I am a bit wary of showing my head round the village at the moment”
[Shula] “Afraid you might get lynched?”
[Brian] “We wanted to handle the announcement in ourselves in our own time, present out facts and have a calm and measured public consultation”
But, the Echo didn’t get the story straight. Brian thinks it was gossip and half-truths:
[Brian] "Along with a wildly over the top rant for a bunch of bunny huggers!”
But while Brian thinks the Super Dairy is actually a good news story, Shula doesn’t sound convinced. She sounds sceptical about the benefits Brian was describing, but was saying she (and Alistair) are keeping an open mind.
When Shula is later talking to David and Ruth, she reckons the Echo was wrong to run that story.
[Shula] “I don’t think it helps, you know, portraying him as some sort of grasping money bags riding rough shod over animals right and the will of the people …”
[Ruth, laughing gleefully] “Sounds pretty much spot on to me!”
Shula also reports that Chris is in favour of the Super Dairy. He reckons it’ll be “interesting”.
So the battle lines are being drawn amongst the villagers.
Gary turns out useless again
Tracey has been out trying to find a job, but not joy so far. Though she has only been to Lower Loxley and Grey Gables.
She bumps into Neil. As she’s twiddling her thumbs, and Neil is off to the DIY store, she decides to tag along.
Well, he is choosing things for her new hoose … not that Neil is aware of Tracey’s crafty plan in getting Bert to sign half the house to her.
She winds Neil up in trying to get him to buy flowery and expensive bathroom fittings for Bert’s new en suite.
[Tracey] “Italian marble. Get what you pay for, don’t you?”
But Neil’s not having it. He’s going for simple and cost effective, which he reckons Bert would want (Bert is paying for it, after all).
Then Tracey gets a call from the school. Her kids haven’t been collected.
She calls Gary, who was meant to be picking them up, but he’s in The Bull.
[Neil] “Well I’ve said it before Tracey, he’s got no sense of responsibility!”
And Neil has to drive her there.
Well, Gary’s bout of do-gooding was short lived.
Brookfield is “satisfactory”
The Environment Agency has been back at Brookfield, going through their NVZs line by line (amongst other things).
It’s slightly good news. After all David’s work, their NVZs have been deemed:
[David] “Satisfactory”
[Ruth] “Excellent!”
[David] “No. Just satisfactory”
[Ruth] “Well that will do”
They’ve also had a letter from the Environmental chaps to say stuff like they need to fix the slurry lagoon (really!) and that they “Reserve the right to prosecute if contamination”
Nasty.
Bloomin’ badgers might lose Brookfield their dairy herd
Shula had been to Brookfield as she’d heard they might have to sell their dairy herd.
[Shula] “I just wanted to say … dads trusted your judgment and would have understood”
David explains the problem to Shula. That though the damage to the slurry lagoon is the badgers’ fault, he and Ruth “have to be nice” to them.
To fix the lagoon, they’d need a licence to disturb the badgers. And once it’s fixed, they’d also need to put in a one way gate to the badger set. But they can’t do any work that’ll disturb them until July (to avoid upsetting them during breeding). And, they’d also have to put chain link to protect other vulnerable bits of the lagoon just in caser they badgers decide to widen their sphere of destruction. David’s rightly fuming:
[David] “Vast amount of work, costing a lot of money that we don’t have for absolutely no return!”
Later on, David gets a price for the alternative to fixing the slurry lagoon – a new tank. It’s coming in at £22,000 which is just £2000 more than fixing the old problem.
It’s still a blow, though. It’s again money they don’t have, and won’t help make any additional profit.
[David] “Now’s the time to take step back and admit that we can’t make dairying pay”
[Ruth] “And I don’t see fit to give up on my milk. I’m just not prepared to let the cows go. Not yet”
Note the ‘not yet’.
I like badgers. But this particular set really should start a whip round.
No comments:
Post a Comment