Phrases/words that set your teeth on edge.

[teamsaint]

Duty.

in certain contexts.....

[vinteuil]

Duty.

in certain contexts.....

... it is true that certain other taxes are more progressive.

[teamsaint]

... it is true that certain other taxes are more progressive.

OK, I'll make an allowance for that......

[teamsaint]

" We will be arranging to clean up the village in honour of the Queens Birthday."

[ahinton]

" We will be arranging to clean up the village in honour of the Queens Birthday."

What's so teeth-setting-on-edge about that? Insofar as cleaning up the village might entail banning money laundering, tax evasion, other forms of corruption and the like on the villagers' part, it might be a constructive way to honour the Queen's 90th birthday.

[ahinton]

.................................................

I didn't understand it, any more than it seems fhg did; that's all!

[vinteuil]

" We will be arranging to clean up the village in honour of the Queens Birthday."

'village'.

Hazlitt put it better than I can -

"All country people hate each other. They have so little comfort, that they envy their neighbours the smallest pleasure or advantage, and nearly grudge themselves the necessaries of life. From not being accustomed to enjoyment, they become hardened and averse to it -- stupid, for want of thought -- selfish, for want of society. There is nothing good to be had in the country, or, if there is, they will not let you have it. They had rather injure themselves than oblige any one else. Their common mode of life is a system of wretchedness and self-denial, like what we read of among barbarous tribes. You live out of the world. You cannot get your tea and sugar without sending to the next town for it; you pay double, and have it of the worst quality. The small-beer is sure to be sour -- the milk skimmed -- the meat bad, or spoiled in the cooking. You cannot do a single thing you like; you cannot walk out or sit at home, or write or read, or think or look as if you did, without being subject to impertinent curiosity. The apothecary annoys you with his complaisance; the parson with his superciliousness. If you are Poor, you are despised; if you are rich, you are feared and hated. If you do any one a favour, the whole neighbourhood is up in arms; the clamour is like that of a rookery; and the person himself, it is ten to one, laughs at you for your pains, and takes the first opportunity of showing you that he labours under no uneasy sense of obligation. There is a perpetual round of mischief-making and backbiting for want of any better amusement. There are no shops, no taverns, no theatres, no opera, no concerts, no pictures, no public buildings, no crowded streets, no noise of coaches, or of courts of law, -- neither courtiers nor courtesans, no literary parties, no fashionable routs, no society, no books, or knowledge of books. Vanity and luxury are the civilizers of the world, and sweeteners of human life. Without objects either of pleasure or action, it grows harsh and crabbed: the mind becomes stagnant, the affections callous, and the eye dull. Man left to himself soon degenerates into a very disagreeable person. Ignorance is always bad enough; but rustic ignorance is intolerable... "

[teamsaint]

...no Proms queues....

As it goes Hazlitt in fact lived in the same " village" as I do.
His house has been turned into a group of attached houses for London downsizers.....

[Serial_Apologist]

'village'.

Hazlitt put it better than I can -

"All country people hate each other. They have so little comfort, that they envy their neighbours the smallest pleasure or advantage, and nearly grudge themselves the necessaries of life. From not being accustomed to enjoyment, they become hardened and averse to it -- stupid, for want of thought -- selfish, for want of society. There is nothing good to be had in the country, or, if there is, they will not let you have it. They had rather injure themselves than oblige any one else. Their common mode of life is a system of wretchedness and self-denial, like what we read of among barbarous tribes. You live out of the world. You cannot get your tea and sugar without sending to the next town for it; you pay double, and have it of the worst quality. The small-beer is sure to be sour -- the milk skimmed -- the meat bad, or spoiled in the cooking. You cannot do a single thing you like; you cannot walk out or sit at home, or write or read, or think or look as if you did, without being subject to impertinent curiosity. The apothecary annoys you with his complaisance; the parson with his superciliousness. If you are Poor, you are despised; if you are rich, you are feared and hated. If you do any one a favour, the whole neighbourhood is up in arms; the clamour is like that of a rookery; and the person himself, it is ten to one, laughs at you for your pains, and takes the first opportunity of showing you that he labours under no uneasy sense of obligation. There is a perpetual round of mischief-making and backbiting for want of any better amusement. There are no shops, no taverns, no theatres, no opera, no concerts, no pictures, no public buildings, no crowded streets, no noise of coaches, or of courts of law, -- neither courtiers nor courtesans, no literary parties, no fashionable routs, no society, no books, or knowledge of books. Vanity and luxury are the civilizers of the world, and sweeteners of human life. Without objects either of pleasure or action, it grows harsh and crabbed: the mind becomes stagnant, the affections callous, and the eye dull. Man left to himself soon degenerates into a very disagreeable person. Ignorance is always bad enough; but rustic ignorance is intolerable... "

And that, these days, is even before you get to the empty weekday properties, the closed local pub, post office and distance needed to travel to find any retailer, the herds of sheep and/or cattle blocking the country lanes, the idiots who drive at 70 mph down said lanes to render pleasurable rural cycle riding lethal, the horseyculture folk who think they own them, the rottweiler that greets you for peeering over the gate at that pretty cottage, the farmyard smells including the non-organic herbicides and pesticides, the low-flying aircraft...

[ahinton]

And that, these days, is even before you get to the empty weekday properties, the closed local pub, post office and distance needed to travel to find any retailer, the herds of sheep and/or cattle blocking the country lanes, the idiots who drive at 70 mph down said lanes to render pleasurable rural cycle riding lethal, the horseyculture folk who think they own them, the rottweiler that greets you for peeering over the gate at that pretty cottage, the farmyard smells including the non-organic herbicides and pesticides, the low-flying aircraft...

Indeed - albeit with a handful of caveats and other observations, since it would be hard to imagine how at least some of those could have avoided coming about.

There's precious little work to keep people in small rural villages these days, so if outsiders didn't buy village properties for weekend leisure use, many of them would probably deteriorate to the point of collapse (the properties, that is - not the outsiders!). The sheep and cattle are no less likely to block country lanes now than previously. The pub and post office would have closed because they'd have insufficient customers to keep them afloat because enough of the villagers would have left who might otherwise have saved them from closure; the local shop would have closed not only for the same reason but also because its prices would be uncompetitive with those of the out of town supermarkets.

There's no excuse for people driving at the legal speed limit on unclassified roads, although I imagine that, whilst "pleasurable rural cycling" would no longer risk being lethal were that to cease, the sheep and cattle blocking those lanes would take any possible "pleasure" out of such cycling.

Not all rural weekenders own rottweilers! The horsey folk would likely have been in or near the village in generations gone by, so neither they nor their often arrogant patronising superiority are of recent origin; much the same goes for the farmyard pongs (which are almost as bad from organic farms), at least to the extent of "'twas ever thus".

Low flying aircraft are probably a greater nuisance near cities than in villages because of the greater proximity of the latter to airports - apart, I suppose, from the possible hazards associated with the local flying club where there is one.

As for rural bus "services" (which you did not mention), whilst many villages have had none for years, there's still one around here (albeit some two miles away) that interests me because, although its distance from me renders it of no personal use, I'd dearly love to know how it manages to run daily minibuses from early morning until quite late in the evening without going bust, since I don't ever remember seeing more than two people (besides the driver) on any of them (and even they probably had free bus passes), so whichever business runs the bus company must be party to a secret on which it would be useful for me to be let in!

All that said, I suspect that, around these parts (and no douobt in other rural locations), at least some of the farmyard pongs might soon becoe a thing of the past, since dairy farms are going down like ninepins (or village pubs, post offices, schools or churches) and I expect that only a small amount of the land previously used by them will be turned over to more sheep, beef cattle or arable operations, the remainder being sold off to developers for housing, the price of much of which will be pushed skyward by all those weekenders in the villages; even the "low cost housing" requirement that applies to most such developments is regarded by some developers as a joke on the grounds that by the time they've built the "cheapest" properties on the new housing estates their prices will already have risen beyond the reach of those who need them.

[aeolium]

What terrible codswallop Hazlitt did come out with at times. All that foul London air must have rotted his mind. He seems to have been totally ignorant of the many and varied writers and inventors who had flourished away from city life. Anyway, I'm happy to leave London to the Saudi oil sheiks, Russian oligarchs and celebrity plutocrats who are the only people now able to afford to live there, particularly since it is enveloped in a miasma of diesel pollution, especially in the centre.

[vinteuil]

What terrible codswallop Hazlitt did come out with at times. All that foul London air must have rotted his mind. He seems to have been totally ignorant of the many and varied writers and inventors who had flourished away from city life.

... o he knew, he knew. His view on life in the country was largely the result of getting to know his hero Wordsworth and the rest of them in the Lakes - and a reaction against the setting-up of rural life as an idyll in all the Wordsworthian nature-worship.



If I share his views it's the result of a rural childhood. I couldn't escape village life fast enough.

[teamsaint]

... o he knew, he knew. His view on life in the country was largely the result of getting to know his hero Wordsworth and the rest of them in the Lakes...



If I share his views it's the result of a rural childhood. I couldn't escape village life fast enough.

its all changed nowadays Vinny......

[Serial_Apologist]

Indeed - albeit with a handful of caveats and other observations, since it would be hard to imagine how at least some of those could have avoided coming about.

There's precious little work to keep people in small rural villages these days, so if outsiders didn't buy village properties for weekend leisure use, many of them would probably deteriorate to the point of collapse (the properties, that is - not the outsiders!). The sheep and cattle are no less likely to block country lanes now than previously. The pub and post office would have closed because they'd have insufficient customers to keep them afloat because enough of the villagers would have left who might otherwise have saved them from closure; the local shop would have closed not only for the same reason but also because its prices would be uncompetitive with those of the out of town supermarkets.

There's no excuse for people driving at the legal speed limit on unclassified roads, although I imagine that, whilst "pleasurable rural cycling" would no longer risk being lethal were that to cease, the sheep and cattle blocking those lanes would take any possible "pleasure" out of such cycling.

Not all rural weekenders own rottweilers! The horsey folk would likely have been in or near the village in generations gone by, so neither they nor their often arrogant patronising superiority are of recent origin; much the same goes for the farmyard pongs (which are almost as bad from organic farms), at least to the extent of "'twas ever thus".

Low flying aircraft are probably a greater nuisance near cities than in villages because of the greater proximity of the latter to airports - apart, I suppose, from the possible hazards associated with the local flying club where there is one.

As for rural bus "services" (which you did not mention), whilst many villages have had none for years, there's still one around here (albeit some two miles away) that interests me because, although its distance from me renders it of no personal use, I'd dearly love to know how it manages to run daily minibuses from early morning until quite late in the evening without going bust, since I don't ever remember seeing more than two people (besides the driver) on any of them (and even they probably had free bus passes), so whichever business runs the bus company must be party to a secret on which it would be useful for me to be let in!

All that said, I suspect that, around these parts (and no douobt in other rural locations), at least some of the farmyard pongs might soon becoe a thing of the past, since dairy farms are going down like ninepins (or village pubs, post offices, schools or churches) and I expect that only a small amount of the land previously used by them will be turned over to more sheep, beef cattle or arable operations, the remainder being sold off to developers for housing, the price of much of which will be pushed skyward by all those weekenders in the villages; even the "low cost housing" requirement that applies to most such developments is regarded by some developers as a joke on the grounds that by the time they've built the "cheapest" properties on the new housing estates their prices will already have risen beyond the reach of those who need them.

An excellent resume of all the factors at play!

[Serial_Apologist]

its all changed nowadays Vinny......

Terrific stuff teamy - hadn't heard of them before.