Archers thread #171: Harvest's nearly over – but will George ever reap what he has sown? 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, and of course we are always delighted to welcome back former or occasional listeners/posters. We don't all agree on all points, although we do mostly try to be civil about it. Most of us are posting tongue in cheek a lot of the time, so don't worry about revealing that you'd have been delighted with a hand-painted squirrel tray for your 40th, as shown below, 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 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/radio_addicts/4636789-the-archers-spoilers-thread-7-cant-wait-for-702pm-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.)

All I have to say about current storylines for now is that I want the George Alice crash stuff to come to a resolution, sooner rather than later, and I also want to hear very little indeed of Alistair, Denise and Paul maundering on. More of Jakob would be very welcome. His brother can come back any time too.

I now declare this thread open for business!

Clive is giving me very strong Jeffrey Marsh grooming vibes

How did George even get Clive’s phone number? Are we expected to believe that a) Emma has it written in a little book and b) George knows where the book is kept?

I agree that it is ludicrous to believe that Will is paying for a B&B for him. This story has now jumped the shark I fear, and they were doing surprisingly well with it 😏.

Very good point about the phone number. When was Clive last in Ambridge (and on speaking terms with his family)? Would he have had a mobile phone at that stage?

I suppose there might be some family way of getting urgent (parental death) news to him, but I could imagine that either not being on the agenda or something they'd do via the probation system, not directly.

Yep. Becoming a nonsense. They’ve had this habit over the last few years of introducing a good SL and the killing it with excess

They're definitely playing the primary school story game with storylines. It's frustrating because they become so unrealistic and unrelatable. Then you get bored and switch off.

😂

George was the one who enabled Henry to contact Rob. Even if Clive isn't hanging around on SM with his full name, I imagine he wouldn't have been too difficult to find. Emma was posting on local message boards with a very poor attempt at concealing her identity, she's probably a chip off the old block and Clive was on Facebook as Clive C or something.

Finding someone on Facebook, LinkedIn etc isn’t hard. Finding a telephone number is much more difficult. (Even more difficult than finding the telephone number for customer services for a large company)

If George found Clive on Facebook he could have just sent him a message asking for his phone number. I'm trying to imagine what kind of professional profile someone like Clive could possibly have on LinkedIn😅

It's dififcult to work out what he is trying to gain by coming back. His dad doesn't have any money and lives in a council house so there isn't a property to inherit or even a tenancy as local authorities no longer pass council tenancies onto a deceased tenant's family (or is Tracey on the tenancy?).

I wonder if we are going to hear more from Laura and her truculent daughter. Perhaps a Alistair/Denise/Laura love triangle is in the works. That really would be unbearable.

I think Tracy is on the tenancy, but it's possible that not all the brothers are aware, even those living there. Clive might be hopeful about something to do with right to buy and inheritance. It's not like hegot anything to lose.

Re the tenancy, I'm assuming No 6 is a council house and Clive is perhaps eying up the potential to inherit the tenancy after Bert has shuffled off his mortal coil? Presumably Tracy being a tenant means Clive wouldn't be able to move in? Or would he be able to move in with her? 😬

Clive was last in Ambridge in 2013 when the police removed him for breaching his exclusion order or whatever it is, after Tracy rang them and asked them to take him away when he started threatening her and Keith's wife Donna. (This was in Ambridge Extra so it never really happened, though. I think his "near death experience" might have been someone hitting him with her car in a car-park; I think it was Amy, whom he was trying to threaten at the time.)

He was in the village with special leave for Ivy's funeral in November 2011, when George was (counts on fingers) six years, seven months old. I think Emma was forced on that occasion to allow Clive to see George once, with adult supervision the entire time; not what I would call a very close relationship.

I suspect that if they wanted him for (for instance) Bert's funeral, the family might indeed ask the police to let him know, since the police are the people most likely to know where he is.

But the answer the editorial team would give about George having Clive's phone number would of course be that George got it off the internet. I leave it to other people to decide how likely it is that Clive would have his phone number on the internet in the first place: I would suppose he might prefer people not to be able to get hold of him easily, being a small-time thug as he is. And I don't think George sent him a message asking for it, because George's phone call to Clive smacked very much of a first contact, to me.

I think a tenancy is automatically transferred to a joint tenant. Other than that it can be passed to an adult who has a legal right to take it over under one of the Housing Acts passed in the 1980s. I don't think Clive would be able to make a claim to the tenancy or move in with Tracy against her wishes.

Tracy wouldn't move in with her dad until she was on the tenancy agreement; getting rid of her was driving Neil crazy. None of Tracy's brothers lives there since Gary went away to be a docker in Harwich, so there is no particular reason for them to know this really.

I should think that having met Clive and been told about his intention to go to the village, Susan would have been round there like a shot to warn Tracy, and that she'd then go on to warn her daughter, that Wicked Uncle Clive is in the area.

Could Clive buy a house in a village where he is subject to an exclusion order? Or would he just hope that Tracy wouldn't think of that and might pay him to go away? He doesn't know his sister if that is what he thinks; if she can't do it herself, she will get Jazzer to see him off, and I bet Jazzer is fitter and can be nastier than Clive, as well as being ten years younger.

Number 6 The Green belongs to a housing association, not the council.

Does an exclusion order last forever, or has it expired after 10 years or something?

I think they last for two years at a time but can be re-issued indefinitely if there is need. Certainly if there was one in place in November 2011 and still in place in 2013 that suggests it might have been renewed, since it started when Clive left prison in 2010. (He was sentenced to twelve years in 2004 for fire-bombing the Barfords' house, though, so maybe his not visiting Ambridge at all was a condition of his probation or whatever it's called and would have lasted until 2016, rather than being an actual exclusion order.)

I think Clive is exactly the sort of person who would have his phone number pretty readily available for anyone looking for a criminal associate in exchange for cash. IMO, people like that share their number far and wide (well, within certain circles), but then are very careful about not saying anything incriminating until they're sure you're not an uncover police officer/journalist.

He's also of an age where he might be quite tech savvy, but it's just about believable that he could be an absolute dunce (especially given his long spells inside, probably coinciding with the explosion in popularity of some SM sites). I know people around his age who still have their Facebook profile set to public, with their email address, phone number, and date of birth (not to mention photos of children with identifying information, looking at you, 'I'm just a proud auntie' SIL).

"sassy Cassie"👀

I haven’t had time to read the recent posts. This latest twist is so frustrating. I want to bash Will and Emma’s heads together. Such weak parenting, not just about this but over many many years with George, especially Emma, but even though they seem to have the instincts to do the right thing on this occasion, they just don’t seem to be able to follow through with the actions needed, like making it impossible for Clive to stay instead of facilitating it.

Clive could well be running some dodgy business for which he would have phone contact details on a website or list somewhere.

I assume the problem with doing something that makes it impossible for Clive to stay is that Emma and Will are worried he will immediately shop George to the cops. It would look much worse for him if he is shopped than if he turns up voluntarily and confesses.

So, in short, it’s all a load of bollocks

Why hasn’t Emma told George that Clive is blackmailing them? Threatening to tell on George?

I think the only possible reason for this reticence is that the storyline has to run for another two weeks, or something of that sort. Because it does seem really, really obvious as a course of action.

Probably because she knows his only reaction to that will be to go into panic mode and insist they have to meet all Uncle Clive's demands, no matter how outrageous.