Reflections from a retired rural vicar

Any mention of Brexit raises strong feelings.  Passions run deeply on both sides.  There are feelings of anger, frustration and impotence - again on both sides of the argument.  Some people respond by shouting louder. Others switch off all together. I've met people who simply switch off the news whenever Brexit is mentioned.  Friends and families are hesitant to talk about it for fear of damaging relationships.  So it is with considerable hesitation that I write about it. It is, of course,  a fallacy that anyone can be an objective neutral on this (or any) subject.  We all come with our own insights- or prejudices. So, in order that you know my insights/prejudices,  I voted remain, took part in the march for a second referendum and voted for a remain party in the recent European elections.  I suspect that some of you will have already switched off mentally if not actually closed this page!  For those still here, some though...

Click the picture to listen to the blog   Or perhaps more accurately some thoughts on crime affecting farmers.  There have been a number of things recently that has brought rural crime to my mind:- Recent publicity over livestock thefts particularly in Northamptonshire/Warwickshire - Richard Coles (ex Communards, BBC presenter) tweeted about it. NFU Mutual have just published a report, Harper Adams University has been carrying out research, a local farmer has suffered loss, and a conversation in a pub So what's happening with crime against farmers. The NFU Mutual report shows that last year, 2018, theft of agricultural vehicles (tractors and such like) was up 26% to £7.4m. Theft of Quad bikes was up 10% at £2.6m. Theft of livestock was up 4% at £2.5m.  Behind those headline figures there are stories of real people suffering financial and emotional loss.   One local farmer, a delightful hardworking family with bits and pieces of parcels of land that h...

I want to offer a few thoughts about a report out recently from the National Rural Crime Network , “ Captive & Controlled ”  about domestic abuse in rural areas. You might not imagine that domestic abuse is an issue in rural areas, but the report shows that it is. Rural victims of domestic abuse are only half as likely as urban/suburban victims to report it. They spend an average of 25% longer in an abusive relationship before being able to get out of it. For victims in rural areas getting help can be more difficult as support services are in the towns, public transport is scarce and communications – mobile signals and internet- are poor compared to urban. Close knit rural communities can be wonderful places to live, but can be manipulated by abusers. It can be difficult to the point of being impossible for a victim to be taken seriously when the abuser is seen by people outside the home as a fine upstanding pillar of the local community. The report says that that ...

Just click the photo above to listen.   Since posting the last two blogs, " That run in.... "  and " Is that where the future.. ."  I’ve been involved in a twitter discussion with people insisting that a vegan diet is the only legitimate moral choice. Perhaps it’s the format of twitter that limits comments to 280 characters that has made nuanced debate difficult. Or perhaps it isn’t. In among all the posts was one saying “How is ... animal killing justifiable?” My response was “That's the key question and not one I can answer in 280 characters! I'll put a piece on my blog in a few days time. Will you read it?” I’ve had no promise from Extremely_Vegan that he/she will read it but never the less here goes.  1. All food production involves taking animal life. Of course there are questions of degree and high intensity feed-lot livestock will involve more life taking than extensive grass fed livestock or (much) vegetable production. But a beli...

I started this blog less than a month ago and if anyone had said that there would have been hundreds of people looking it, I would have told them to "get real". As I write this over seven hundred people have looked at the piece about Evan Davis and Minette Batters. I've had a number of interesting Twitter conversations. Twitter isn't the discussion medium I'm most comfortable with and being limited to 280 characters, I find it is impossible not to deal superficially with complex matters.  So, to avoid what Evan Davis tweeted me about saying , " you are in danger of ...making this a falsely binary issue" , another blog post. Evan raised the question of animal welfare and that was taken up by someone else saying, "I walk regularly in the countryside. It shocks me to see the state of some cattle kept in stinking sheds, shit everywhere, over distended udders and covered in flies....." I replied, " Most farmers practise high welfare...