Archers thread #112: Quelle beau de lollox! And yet we stick with it. Discuss The Archers here.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Thank you, @PseudoBadger, for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads.

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 Alf to stay around, or other 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!

For newer listeners, lurkers or those who just have no idea what we're talking about, @DadDadDad has created this useful thread: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/radio_addicts/3557323-For-Archers-fans-a-guide-to-acronyms-on-the-long-running-discussion-threads-and-any-other-meta-thread-questions-you-may-have - BOOP point for him! (See thread for explanation.)

Thanks to @DoctorTwo for the thread title! I was strongly tempted by R4's suggestion of Wildlife on Four: Jonneh is wild at Lily, Phoebe rewilds by Occam, Joy is in the wilderness and David is bewildered by a marriage proposal.

So we did make it past Joe's funeral at last. Are we heading for a Christmas octogenarian wedding now?

The cage nature did make me laugh - hamsters & gerbils? Maybe guinea pigs like in Peru? I don’t think they’d thought about how they’d generate any profit.

I think they thought that Peggy would pay them Phoebe to "manage" someone else's land.
Because with an Oxford degree she can't get a proper job.

The deal proposed by BL neatly avoids the problem that Peggy's £500k really isn't going to go far if the "dull-witted trio" need to rent some land.

Income is likely to be derived from

• whatever set-aside grants are available pre/post Brexit
• slow maturing pigs and cows they will eventually slaughter for premium prices (but not yet organic)
• eco tourism

I still can't see £500k going very far if they have to fence the BL land, buy a bit of kit and livestock and pay somebody (like Will or Ed?) to help set things up on top of a minimal salary for each of them.

Stupid storyline.

If it is successful how long before BL take the land back and run it themselves, having had the benefit of Peggy’s money to set everything up?

I have absolutely no idea how anyone is expecting to make any money at all out of the rewilding at all. It’s very strange.

Is there some planning scan that BL can cash in on when they take the land back? Or use the rewilding as a quid pro quo for building on some other land?

They can probably use it to offset some sort of planning rule.

See?! Justin is after Peggy's money - albeit in a very roundabout way.

I was right!

< smug >

This is why they were banging on about Julian's problems with the North Borsetshire planning department last week. And als, Lilian will probably be initially pleased when she first finds out and then pissed off when she hears the details.

Although it's all happening at an unfeasibly fast pace, I am glad we're not going to have this part of the storyline hanging around for a zillion weeks.

how long before BL take the land back and run it themselves, having had the benefit of Peggy’s money to set everything up?

Not unless there was a breach of the agreement by the witless trio which entitled BL to terminate it, but eventually, yes.

I assume they will set up an SPV (single purpose vehicle) like a limited liability partnership with the witless trio and BL as partners. On the balance sheet of the partnership the land is an asset of the BL which BL will make available at no cost for the partnership to use. The partnership agreement will deal with allocation of profit and loss. On termination of the partnership the partnership assets are distributed per the capital accounts so BL simply continues to own its land. The partnership agreement needs to be of lengthy duration and permit the non corporate partners to assign their interests and assume new partners.

Alternatively BL could lease the land to the limited liability partnership for a peppercorn rent. At the end of the lease BL gets vacant possession of its land.

The latter scenario is less likely as it would create an agricultural tenancy. Agricultural tenants are entitled to certain compensation payments at the end of their tenancy so any improvements (fencing, drainage systems, buildings) which the witless trio paid for would need to be compensated.

In either case the SPV arrangements will come to an end.

I love the fact that Mumsnetters like MissBarbary have the necessary expertise to fill the gaping voids in the agricultural story-lines.

Let's hope that someone at the trust has the wit to get any agreement vetted by lawyers before handing over any money.

I thought the plate smashing stuff in Friday's episode was nonsense, but quite liked the business with the land - it seemed true to form that Phoebe, Rex and Pip would be naive whilst Justin would ruthlessly exploit the advantage available to him by virtue of the fact that realistically they have no other options.

In the real world BL and the witless trio would each have their own solicitors as would the "trust" to ensure what is being proposed complies with the purposes of "the trust" and is a proper use of "trust" money.

I'm putting "trust" in inverted commas as it was never obvious that a trust was correctly set up in the first place.

In Ambridge, Justin's nameless lawyers, (who from what we hear about them manage to combine being staggeringly incompetent and getting deals completed in break-neck speed) will draw something up which no- one else will review (unless Usha- the only other solicitor in Borsetshire has a spare 5 minutes)

Is anyone else thinking that Tracy disappearing off with dodgy actor bloke, and Oliver being worried and Freddie saying "Tracy can look after herself" forbodes some nasty incident with dodgy actor bloke which shocks Tracy and sends her running to Oliver for help?

Gosh, I hope not!

Is anyone else thinking that Tracy disappearing off with dodgy actor bloke, and Oliver being worried and Freddie saying "Tracy can look after herself" forbodes some nasty incident with dodgy actor bloke which shocks Tracy and sends her running to Oliver for help?

No. Not at all. I think it was intended to make Oliver jealous/ think about what he thinks of Tracey.

I am now wondering what possible business of Ruth's it is if her twenty-two-year-old son kissed someone? Or does she think Bella was being raped in the crowded bar, not actually cooperating with the kiss?

Prurient woman, she is. Always keen to butt in if anything to do with sex happens and she hears about it.

I do wish Ruth wouldn't speak to Pip ever again in that nauseatingly syrupy voice.

It sounds like the babyish, indulgent way an adoring parent would address a two year old child.

Makes me cringe 😝 🤮

That's really unfair. That isn't why Ruth was cross with Josh.

I would be furious with my son if he kissed a friend’s girlfriend- saying she’s is prurient is ridiculous.

It's Ruth's habit to nosy in about other people's sex-lives. That is what I was defining as prurient: "Characterized by an inordinate interest in sex" says the dictionary. Her questioning of Pip about her boyfriends over the years has been cringeworthy, not to mention her giggling fascination with Josh being seen on the sofa with a girl at his sixteenth birthday party in Rickyard, and many other occasions of a similar nature regarding giggling comments about who is having it off with whom -- though always phrased in a mealy-mouthed way, which to me makes it worse not better.

It is none of Ruth's business who her son is kissed by -- or are people suggesting, as she appeared to be, that poor ickle Bella is not capable of making any decisions of her own about who she does or does not want to kiss, but is the property of some man or other? And presumably that Josh somehow forced her to chuck Johnny by kissing her? Bella sounded pretty convinced that she wanted to do that chucking, to me, and Josh was not there when she did it. (Johnny rode roughshod over her and insisted that she was to go and have lunch with him when she didn't want to, on that occasion, and that may have been the last straw for her.)

I would mind my own business if my son kissed a girl who had been going out with one of his friends. But then, I am still on speaking terms with my (thirty-eight-year-old) son, quite possibly because I was not under the impression that I owned him or had the right to sit in moral judgement over him. And given Ruth's affair with Sam, is it not just a tiny bit hypocritical of her to sit in moral judgement over anyone, really?

On the whole, as Josh pointed out, the person who might have been at fault was Bella, who was cheating on the man she intended to chuck; but I think she has every right to kiss whoever she chooses, having been stood up.

I don't recall Ruth being in the least bit prurient when one of the boys had a girlfriend staying over.

Blimey.

I assume the blimey was to AskingQuestionsAllTheTime's post and not my perfectly reasonable one !

I would have hoped that my son had better morals than to kiss his friend's girlfriend.