THE DAY THAT THE VILLAGE STARTS TO MAKE ITS RESURGENCE

For a long time now villages across Britain have been shutting down. They've been a forgotten cause, left to their own devices to survive a world in-which the credit crunch has been crushing the very soul out of the village. 

And it appears to most villagers that nobody in the wider Government gives a toss.

DISCUSS.

Well it is not as dark as all that, certainly the larger villages situated just 20 minutes from a Regional town or City with their corresponding transport networks tend to still have the middle class affluence buffering the financial constraints. Doctor Beeching should have been struck off, if only he was a real doctor for he was more a butcher than a skilled surgeon. We needed to make some rationalisations to a clearly over populated and inefficient railway system so who shall we turn to? A Physicist of course.

Oh, Dr. Beeching what have you done?

There once were lots of trains to catch, but soon there will be none,

I'll have to buy a bike, 'cos I can't afford a car,

Oh, Dr. Beeching what a naughty man you are!

Croft & Spendlove

 So the first nail was in the coffin, villages back to horse and carts as cars were still expensive then.

Then the big supermarkets did their thing, then the Post Offices were put into a situation in-which they became uneconomical in a small business set up, starved of all their profitable services. The Post office in our last village moved three times before its final demise and even in this village the same has happened, my house was one of them once! It is easy to argue that thousands of people are running successful Post Offices but if that is the case why were 1,000 P.O.'s closed last year (or trying to be sold).

Without the core Post Office business to support them it was only a short step to the fall of the village shop too.

Again there was a butchers, a village store and a Post Office when we arrived in our last village some 25 years ago but every last one of them has gone.

You can blame market forces, sure, but what a cop out. A Government's job surely is to foster economic prosperity to all of its citizens, but what single sustainable strategy has any government really put in place that has stopped the decline of the British village?  Whatever you come up with is null and void because villages are still declining, ergo Government has failed and that is because no one has ever come up with such a strategy that can last through the terms of different elections. An indifference that has cost the rural areas dearly. Politicians are (and have always been) interested in one thing only, the next election....

 

"So they [the Government] go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent."

Winston Churchill, Hansard, November 12, 1936

In short everyone runs around doing nothing. Another 1,000 Pubs closed? Market forces! what can you do, we're not here to fund failing businesses. No to right, you're there to put the fight back into fiscal growth by imaginative and progressive use of taxes and, dare I say it, creating an environment where people can afford to live in out lying villages because the price of fuel is not prohibitive.

We have two bus routes come to our village, sounds great doesn't it, but they come on two separate days to two different towns and if you miss the return trip that day you will need to find accomodation as it will be another week before it comes back again!   What ever happened to the Integrated National Transport Policy? I reckon Jim Hacker put the curse on that one.

BUT, it is not all gloom and doom. As I have said despite the total apathy with no government showing any resolve to really make a difference the villagers are fighting back

We have a self service shop, which I stroll along the road, past our Garage (where he does an excellent job at very reasonable prices), past the village hall. The village hall only survives because every village needs a building for the Parish Council to hold their meetings otherwise the government would have sold that off too! That said our village hall is really just a closed down school. Did you know a village school was closed one a month from 1997 to 2008 and now guess what's happening, the population is increasing again. So on I stroll past the hall where there are regular events including a monthly film showing and a weekly bar because all three pubs in the village closed down. They reckon 900 pubs a year are closing. On around the corner past the bowls club and past the war memorial. Churchill famously said when his finance minister suggested cutting the arts funds 'Then what are we fighting for?' ", well I guess if you ask those soldiers named on that cross probably they would firstly say our way of life, the small villages that made Britain the unique country that it is, This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England (You know who). Finally I get to our village shop, a 4' x 3' garden shed in front of a farm where I can buy, fresh local eggs, lots of different vegetables, milk, local apple juice, Eggs from specific breeds of hens, Guinea Fowl (oven Prepared), Chickens, the same, fresh or frozen, bacon sausages, joints of Beef or Pork etc, etc..

The point is all this goes on despite the havoc brought on village life by successive attacks on the country way of life. Shakespeare goes on to say of this England,

 

That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,
How happy then were my ensuing death!

 King Richard II  Act II Scene 1

400 years later and the scandal is that we surely have made a shameful conquest of our own countryside, 

of England itself.

923