The Sunday Times came up with another patronising, Notting Hill-on-Sea, the peasants are revolting, piece of claptrap journalism by taking excerpts from this website and taking them out of the cheek they were firmly planted in. So I (Ed) would like to take this opportunity to invite Journo Simon Mills to come and meet me and some of the other locals to find out for himself if we really are that "Militant".
Read the article here: Townies in the Country – Times online
Some of you will remember we have been here before, other national rags have tried to compliment this area and ended up alienating themselves. We do not like the moniker "Notting-Hill-On-Sea" so are represented as a bunch of pitchfork-weilding angry villagers. (Anyone remember that rude idiot "Real World" who was banned from this site for his offensive remarks? It seems his ilk are back).
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Arlo Flinn, Writer of Wrongs has this to say
I hear you gasp in disbelief: surely they're an invading horde of witless idiots? Surely they should be rounded up immediately and deported to Hampshire in stinking cattle trucks? And then we can torch their ridiculous shiny 4x4s and squat their ludicrous houses and rob their cellars and draw silly moustaches on their smug family portraits …
Let me reassure you: this is my view too, and it sounds very much like my kind of weekend … but I maintain that natural selection will sort this one out for us. No-one needs to risk a jail sentence here. How so? Bear with me while I try to explain …
Like all herd animals, the townie only feels safe in a large group of its own kind. They may sometimes graze where they're not wanted but the damage is minimal: they always revert to their home pastures in the end eg The Bull, the Cattistock hunt, The Hive (which could be renamed The Stock Yard). This makes them easier to avoid than their numbers might suggest.
Like all herd animals, the townie is not capable of independent thought. They are quickly bored and need constant stimulation from expensive sources to keep them entertained … so we're back to The Bull, the Cattistock etc. They can visit each other. They can invite potential herd members down from London for the weekend but really, is any of it that diverting?
And this was always the most perplexing thing for me: if you don't get Bridport, what is there to do? Pop out to Bridget's for a pound of spinach? Avail yourself of the buy one get one free offers in Superdrug? I think not. And there aren't enough of them or us to keep too many more of the townie-type places going. I know I can't afford to pay £4:95 for a small glass of wine more than once a quarter.
So … this is why I maintain that natural selection will sort it out for us. Put your rifles down, lads. Sooner or later, thrown together so acutely as they are, they'll start to bicker and fight amongst themselves. They'll run out of grazing and the more intelligent of the herd will leave in search of richer pastures elsewhere. Those that fail to follow their leaders will start to tire of each other, of the same venues over and over, of the three hour plus drive from London, of the murderous look in the locals eyes when they run over them … sorry, I meant into them … and they'll realise that they need new blood to stay healthy … but the new blood has missed out Bridport and followed the leaders direct to … wherever.
Ignore them. They'll die back without any intervention or they'll move on. They will.
Seems like a reasonably good assessment to me and I’m pleased someone else thinks Bridport is a “”handsome but modest town”” Not too bad after all. There’s some junk of course and the Sunday Times certainly haven’t caught on to our wonderfully ironic, tongue in cheek, we didn’t really mean it about shooting people sense of humour did they? Some people may have got a charge if the ST said the Town was a crap place so don’t go there but reasonable people will be happy. By the way, Richard Caring was Mark Hix’s boss at the Ivy and you thought the connection between Bridport and Exmoor happened by accident didn’t you. as they say, there’s no such thing as bad publicity despite what the “”Country folk”” say.