Thread 98 - Discuss The Archers here! If you don’t give a ha’porthfor Pip come and add your two penn’orth - we do enjoy a bit of change counting (especially if it’s in old money)

[Bittermints]

Many thanks to @LilianGish for the title (again - she has real gift for this!). Further thanks due to @PseudoBadger for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads and to @DadDadDad for being our resident statistician and keeping the ball rolling when Pseudo stepped back a bit.

All views on The Archers welcome here! New blood welcomed. We don't all agree on all points and most of us are posting tongue in cheek a lot of the time, so don't worry about revealing that you'd like to be Susan's best friend or other odd unusual views.

Spoilers: not on this thread, please. We don't wait for the omnibus to discuss the weeknight episodes, but we do try our best to avoid cross-contamination from www.mumsnet.com/Talk/radio_addicts/3439443-keep-it-to-yourself-the-archers-spoilers-thread-4, where spoilers are positively welcomed!

(Change counting references arose specifically out of a nostalgic discussion on the previous thread, if anyone is intrigued.)

He could call her bluff. There isn't much money left for a divorce settlement and she probably would have to live off a state pension. If

Wealthy man stitching up wife of 30/40 yrs in divorce could make a good storyline.

I've seen it happen enough times where a woman has spent a lifetime thinking they are a partnership. They support a husbands career, putting their own career second, running the home and family and often contributing to his business directly (as Jenny has). Then in late middle age or early retirement he pisses off with the younger woman or to find himself.

Adam was scoffing at the old dinosaur and his 40+ years' of Farm Diaries.

Yes it would be good if they came back to haunt him. Brian's casual assumption that he can just lie and get away with a significant crime and expect Ruth and the family to commit perjury on his behalf was quite telling. The sense of entitlement that he should be able to get away with it is quite staggering.

Sometimes when his public school veneer slips we see the real Brian.

I really should stop over-thinking this!

From Brian's POV, he confided in JD and she has used this confidence against him. She has moaned non-stop about Willow Farm. What if he takes the hump and, now she has sown the seed, he instigates the divorce (as per caffeine's SL) and it's Team Brian&Ruairi who rebuild finances, leaving JD behind (though she will be OK: either as Peggy's companion or as Honeysuckle Cottage's live-in nanny)

Ruairi might take Jenny's side ...

I liked Daddy's-girl Alice being brought up short at the prospect of a perjury conviction. (Though of course the offspring can't speak to the truth of the original situation. I'm surprised Brian hadn't thought of how bad things would look for him if it were revealed in court that he'd bullied his kids into lying for him.) I hope they don't go down the protracted court battle route. It's not one of the editorial team's strengths ...

I really should stop over-thinking this!

R4 - these threads are 95,000 posts of overthinking. We can’t stop now!

Ruairi might take Jenny's side ...
Ruairi wants to be a big shot. He'll go with money so, unless JD suddenly gets Peggy's inheritance, he'll side with Brian's business drive and acumen.

It's not one of the editorial team's strengths ...
too true

If Brian has previously told his solicitor the same as he told his children (and I presume he has because he has been advised to plead guilty) then the solicitor will have to decline to act for him should he want to positively argue a case that he is not guilty. The most the solicitor can do is advance no positive evidence (because s/he would know it to be false) and stand back and tell the prosecution to prove it. A jury might well smell a rat about that.

Alice was pathetic in that meeting. She needs such a kick up the arse.

I really should stop over-thinking this!

b-but then we would have to go and get a life!

Brian admitted what he had done at one of the partners meetings so potentially the whole family plus Ruth would have to commit perjury for him. He has also admitted it to the solicitor.

More than one local person remembered the dodgy dump brothers and rejected their money for illegal dumping. I'm pretty sure David or Bert related Phil Archer refusing to take the money because it was known they were dumping illegal/toxic stuff. Anyone locally who remembered that time would need to lie for Brian as well.

Frankly I hope they throw the book at him, bleating about his "good name". Good name for what exactly? Breaking the law and getting away with it? Being a serial philanderer? Laying off staff at the speed of lightning as soon as labour protections were removed in the 80s?

Alice was pathetic in that meeting. She needs such a kick up the arse.

The TASWAMAing of Alice is one of the storylines I hate above most others.

I also thought the mention of the Farm diaries was deliberate at the time.

Didn’t the police/EA/whoever search the office and take evidence away? I don’t know what a farm diary is but I’m thinking of some sort of log book, so surely something the investigators would take away?

And I can’t imagine an Aldridge divorce storyline now...

Sorry but I'm relatively new to these threads (been following for a year) - but what is TASWAMA?

To get back to beef...

Isn’t the Bridge Farm Shop totally organic? In which case why are they selling Brookfield Hereford beef? I know it’s a local product, extensively reared etc, but deffo not organic.

Tom’s ridiculous jumping from one thing to another irritates me greatly, as does his infatuation with Natasha; he appears to be in his early twenties, not nearly 40.

Whilst I’m on the subject of irritants, I can’t stand the way Alice is written. She’s an engineer, and whilst I can understand her drinking to ease the stress of a demanding job, she can’t be stupid, yet most of the time she appears utterly daft with a very shaky idea of product development or anything else.

I shall now retreat to my usual lurking mode.

TASWAMA = The Archers script-writers a misogynistic arseholes.

Welcome, @PasteSandwiches and @Molecule! I hope you won't lurk too much: the more questions, views and comments the better.

The only "secret" on this thread is that we have a MN-authorised smiley:

[ archers ]

produces (if you do it without spaces)

*are misogynistic not a misogynistic

I should know this, but what exactly is Brian being prosecuted for? I know it is to do with the disposal of toxic waste on his land, but what exact criminal charge is it? Which law is being applied?

It seems to me that there is every chance that he could be aquitted on the charge that he knowingly disposed of toxic waste. The events occured many years ago, preumably pre email and I doubt whether any paperwork relating to the transaction (even if it existed) would have spelled out what he was doing. People’s memories of a couple of dodgy guys trying to dump stuff would be easily discredited.
Brian has already paid for the clean up, lost his home etc. Is it really realistic that there would be a criminal prosecution as well?

He presumably admitted he had done it to his solicitor as well as to his family - but that is surely the only evidence aainst him.

Thanks Dad x 3 (or dad cubed as I think of you). Makes total sense and is actually true of a lot of archers females. I also agree that I didn't think Brookfields meat met the Bridge farm organic standard - that scene in the pub felt shoehorned.

Also guidance on producing the official symbol would be welcome. Apologies to a pp but you're so good you did it twice.

I can’t remember verbatim but Jenny recited the charge wording at the start of the family meeting in the last episode.

Golly it was the same poster. I shall hide back under my blanket.

No, Paste, don't hide! This isn't like AIBU where posters find the slightest discrepancy and use it to rip you to shreds.

I feel like it's time to do a bit of transcribing to capture exactly what Brian is being charged with.

Hear hear, Triple D. I love that this thread is so welcoming and good-humoured. Paste - you are totally welcome. Remember, we all love droning on about TA, otherwise wouldn't be here.

Keep imagining scabby tat scabs Tom n' Tash must be sporting by now. Wonder when the great reveal will be.......

In reality, isn't it unlikely that the prosecution would put Brian's family on the witness stand? They would hardly expect them to incriminate him (and it would amount to hearsay anyway

They probably wouldn't, although there's a scenario where, once they learn Brian is going to plead Not Guilty, the lawyers recommend further interviews of the entire family on the footing that it's possible one of them will say something incriminating. The difficulty however is that Brian won't be able to call them as witnesses on his side; you might expect, say that JD would be able to say something about the lovely men who wanted to dump completely harmless goods, or indeed to say what a wonderful, honourable, upstanding member of the community Brian is and look how much he's lost already. If none of his family are prepared to support him, it's highly likely that the prosecutor will invite the jury to draw adverse inferences from that. Plus, of course, it's pretty clear that in practice JD may well phone the prosecutor and practically demand to be called to give evidence.

As I understand it, it isn't hearsay if they give evidence that Brian told them he was guilty, because it's evidence of the fact that he said it, albeit that it isn't evidence of the truth of what he said. You do get cases, for instance, of prisoners on remand giving evidence that their cell mate told them that they were guilty and telling them exactly how they did the crime, and it's perfectly admissible. If JD, Adam, Debbie, Ruth and Katie all troop into the witness box to say he told them he was guilty, he's either got to say that they're all lying or come up with some explanation for why he said he was guilty when he's now claiming the reverse.

Thank you! I don't dislike Natasha but I hate Tom's sudden deference to her and how he's making huge farming decisions based on her views rather than his own. He went to call her and ask her opinion about the cows rather than talk properly with his experienced parents, sister and nephew.