🧦 Archers thread #133: Woolley socks it to them! Discuss The Archers and its Woolley thinking and plotting 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 would love to take part in the Mysteries, 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/4197199--The-Archers-spoilers-thread-6-Cant-wait-for-7-02pm-Join-us-here, 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 @ButtonSister and @BorsetshireBanality for title suggestions. I went with their idea in the interests of keeping the title fairly short.

@LillianGish and @FoxgloveSummers made cracking but longer suggestions, which (mashed up) will do a great job of kicking off our new thread.

Evictions (Tom and Tash), depictions (Bridge Farm Christmas card), conniptions (entire cast and crew of the Mysteries), convictions (Philip) and addictions (Alice) - what are our predictions for 2022 in Ambridge? All sure to make this the Best Ambridge Christmas Evah!

This thread should take us through to early January unless something very exciting happens (ha ha, fat chance). My predictions: this is a bit left field, but I wonder if Peggy will offer to buy the shop and flat so Tom and Gnasher (great coinage, whose was it?) can stay put. I don't believe Hazel is sincere about wanting to live in/regularly visit Ambridge. She's always been utterly two-faced and rotten to the core, why would she change now?

The Mysteries will, of course be a triumph and briefly borrowing the🔮 (sorry, Bore!) I expect we are going to hear them at some point over the New Year period.

Over to you!

Would it be hilarious if young Cuckoo In The Nest bankrupts the House of Aldridge? Or not?

Jenny wouldn’t deserve it.

But I wouldn’t mind seeing Kate stumbling round the village with a begging bowl. Weeping and hysterical. Totally here for that. (Still.)

I wish the scriptwriters had had Harrison's scruples last time, when Chris was Christ on the cross and we had to hear lots of lechereous comments from women in the audience about his six pack, loin cloth etc. It felt really inappropriate!

Well, that will send her straight back to the bottle.

Oh well done Ruariiiiiii!!!!!

Oh dear.

The end of the Aldridge Christmas 2.0 sounded horribly real.

Well I wasn't expecting that !

Well Alan needs to have a little chat with Ruari about forgiving your brother (well, sister) 70x7

Have to admit I enjoyed that scene with Alice though. I think it’s completely realistic that he hasn’t forgiven her and he shouldn’t be expected to.

I’ve never believed in “it was the drink talking” when drunk people are vile. Nasty drunks tend to just be nasty people who use alcohol misuse as a cover for their deeply unpleasant personalities.

I think it is less clear-cut than that, because I think what alcohol does is get rid of inhibitions, so that when drunk people say the things they do feel but have been socialised into knowing one just doesn't say.

Like, when drunk someone I knew whom I would have thought hadn't a nasty bone in her body said some truly horrible things about India and the people who lived there when she was there for a few years, and extrapolated from that to "all Indians" do this or that. It was shocking. She didn't drink in company as a rule, and maybe that was why...

@NynaeveSedai

Oh ruari - you'll come a cropper with crypto!! It's probably a ponzi

If the 'crypto' Ruauri has referred to is bitcoin it can't be aa Ponzi as that requires stuff to be rehypothecated ad infinitum, a bit like our current economic system. As bitcoin is limited by Satoshi's algorithm to 21Mn coins it is the opposite of a Ponzi. Its scarcity means its value against a fiat currency will almost always increase. Currently only one country is allowing their currency to be replaced by bitcoin, El Salvador. They also gave every citizen a digital wallet with $30 worth of bitcoin included.

bitcoin cannot be rehypothecated and you can only spend what you have once, your ownership transfers to whoever you spend it with, therefore doing away with the need for a bank, as you become the bank. Ruauri can only lose what he's put in, unless he's been sold a pup.

Well, that was unexpected, not least because in most dramas people are far too open in expressing their feelings, i.e. not as RL, but to have some someone putting on an act in such a sustained manner is a new twist. It's deception of a different kind.

And El Salvador has an economy all the world must envy and stand in awe of.... (Actually, it's probably seen as a good idea there because the country relies heavily on people sending money in from abroad to feed their families, and bitcoin transfer cuts out actual banks' percentage demands. But it is still only worth what people decide it is worth; it has no actual value.)

Ruauri can only lose what he's put in, unless he's been sold a pup.

Yes, that's how most good scams operate. Someone convinces you that you can't lose. Not like those nasty old shares that can lose value as well as gaining it, and have to tell you so all the time.

Bitcoins don't involve rehypothecation so much as complete unrealism: like tulip bulbs or the South Sea Company, what they are selling you is a dream and not a reality. A speculative bubble. Get out before it bursts is the best advice, really.

I hope Ruari does really well out of legitimate wheeling and dealing and buys back Home Farm farmhouse.

I’ve never believed in “it was the drink talking” when drunk people are vile. Nasty drunks tend to just be nasty people who use alcohol misuse as a cover for their deeply unpleasant personalities.

Very true. My FiL used to be absolutely vicious when drinking, particularly to MiL. Sadly, she viewed it as her role to put up with it.

Ruauri can only lose what he's put in, unless he's been sold a pup

Yes, that's how most good scams operate. Someone convinces you that you can't lose. Not like those nasty old shares that can lose value as well as gaining it, and have to tell you so all the time.

This. They suck people into putting in more money than they can afford. I really hope Ben has the sense not to sink his salary into it, but it would be horribly realistic if he did.

If it does come to a choice between Pip and Josh as to who gets the cottage, I do hope it's Josh. Pip getting it because she's a farming genius and was careless enough to get knocked up would be seriously annoying.

Would Pip get the bungalow on the grounds that she needs three bedrooms - one for Rosie, one for Toby (if he stays around) and one for her? I assume the bungalow has three bedrooms, but of course we all know it will have as many bedrooms and other rooms as the plot requires it to have at the time, regardless of how many it had in the past.

Josh could then have Rickyard Cottage.

I wonder how many Archers listeners are experts on bitcoin. I'm certainly not. I've heard of it and that's that. I hope the SWs have taken expert advice and understood it if they are planning on making this a plot line.

Who else could get it?

Poor Alice. I've always liked her. Ruairi was great though

There was a fascinating MN thread on bitcoin a little while ago, in which it appeared that every single poster’s husband had, quickly and easily, made £40k. Lots of plans for early retirement and what have you.

I had to stop reading …

I could have done without Alan’s Sunday School-style analysis of Christ last night. I want gossip and intrigue from a soap, not clumsy theology.

Having said that, I thought it was an excellent plot device to have a second Christmas given we missed out the first time round due to it falling on a Saturday. I really enjoyed the happy family mirage transforming into an EastEnders-style slanging match. I wonder who Alice will confide in. She won’t tell Jenny but will she tell Chris? She definitely won’t be sober next time we see her…

Popping up to say I really hope she has the inner strength to remain sober!
Alice has shown genuine remorse and completed rehab, she was mentally unwell with alcoholism.
I didn't like Ruairi's verbal attack on her, I was wondering if he was as pleasant as he making out and it appears not. He knows he has Jenny wrapped round his little finger.

Also wondering if Ruairi gets into serious debt will he be able to sell his third of the farm?

@Henrynextdoor

Popping up to say I really hope she has the inner strength to remain sober! Alice has shown genuine remorse and completed rehab, she was mentally unwell with alcoholism. I didn't like Ruairi's verbal attack on her, I was wondering if he was as pleasant as he making out and it appears not. He knows he has Jenny wrapped round his little finger.

Yep, he can do no wrong in JD’s eyes (didn’t she describe him as the best member of the family, whatever that means) so even if Alice confides in her mother I’m sure she’ll brush it all aside.

However I have no sympathy for Alice. I still haven’t forgiven her for her viscous attack on Ed last year re. being poor and living in a mobile home. Awful.

Alice isn't owed forgiveness from anybody.
Some of the things she said to various people while she was drunk were horrific and while it's good to acknowledge that addiction is terrible thing, her now being sober doesn't absolve her of responsibility for her actions.

Quite frankly, she's lucky that so many people have been able to forgive her.

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g
I assume the bungalow has three bedrooms, but of course we all know it will have as many bedrooms and other rooms as the plot requires it to have at the time, regardless of how many it had in the past.

Originally the Bungalow was built for Davis and Ruth and their two children, so three is probable; also, Ruth said she was not having another child because the bungalow wasn't big enough, which makes four unlikely.

But yes, it will now have as many as required.

(Bitcoin) I hope the SWs have taken expert advice and understood it if they are planning on making this a plot line.

If the SWs have asked the actual experts, as opposed to someone selling the things, they will know the scam.

David!