I totally agree with the OP, i live in a town, not in the middle of the sticks though. My home town is basically being overtaken by "invaders" from the big smoke, with rather high opinions of themselves as they have cashed in on the high property prices to boy themselves a home in a "better place to bring up their children". Yeah well, great, thats fine, at first i was rather flattered that everyone (the world and his wife) thinks that my "quaint" little fishing town (im giving this away arent i) is a good place to bring up children, it is!! So they want to bring their money with them, fantastic, great. No really, most of us "locals" welcome that, the town is prospering. Thats all good. My DP has had much work from the invaders (meant in good humour)as he is a carpenter. So, no complaints from me.
What is not good is this: generally, local people with local jobs are priced out of the housing market, prices equivalent to London almost. Well i suppose that is bound to happen, not entirely thier faults.
What i seriously object to is this: The condescending and patronising attituedes of some ofthese people. OK so mostly these "invaders" are middle class and affluent. So more likely to attend M&T sessions? maybe, because i go to several and i feel like an outsider. These people do not want to integrate into our community, they sit in their own little cliques, berating the bloody town they have chosen to descend upon in their droves. I mean, i have even seen an advert in a local shop for "get togethers of like minded people who have moved down here". One of my partners clients actually said to him, of an extremely popular school, with very high standards "Oh, these schools around here, all the PTA wanted to do was sit around having coffee mornings, now we have arrived we certainly intend to shake things up a bit" .
Now we have threats of development of our harbour (totally giving the game away now!) at the cost of many LOCAL jobs. To be fair i dont even think these plans were popular with our visitors.
I remember one evening last week taking my DD for a walk along the beach where a group of people in a rented holiday home were having a party. Great fun it looked too. My DD (aged 2) has rythm in her soul it seems and cannot help but dance if she hears music. So, she hears the music and stands outside their gate boogying away. Very cute indeed, so i stands and watches, big grin on my face, DP who is half way down the beach with our little dog grinning too. What do we get, two idiots standing there staring at me as if to say, this is a private party piss off - and then actually one of them, hiding behind a tree has the audacity to shout out "step away from the car" Yes, their oldish indiscriminate sports car was parked outside the garden (not somewhere i would have chosen to park it if i were nervous about the thing - lots of children riding by on bikes, scooters etc, and lets face it they cant exactly steer). So basically these people found my two year old a threat? I just carried on letting her dance - So do you know what they did, they turned the music off!!!! OMG!!! bloody idiots.
So it is rather the attitudes of the non-locals that annoy people rather than their presence. It is important, i feel to try and integrate into existing communities rather than try and make them your own. That way, i think people would find us yokels a lot more welcoming.