This is as true of UK as French villages.

[woolybanana]

My experience of French villages is that the locals are idle and hate change and that it is the incomers who initiate. Your thoughts?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/alice_miles/article5982744.ece

[Frenchie]

Absolutely true IMHO !

 

[AnOther]

Having lived for 20 years in a village in UK exactly as outlined in the article I can identify completely with it. Whether the French have the same attitiude I couldn't say having not really been here long enough yet but I very much imagine it is so. And is it really all altogether bad ?

As the height of nimbyism in my old village there was a demand for a mobile phone mast as coverage was next to zero. A suitable site was identified and enthusiastically put forward by the parish council but there there were the inevitable objections and an alternative was suggested. Unfortunately that one was some 500m behind the home of the chair of the council as opposed to the original which had been completely at the other end of the village so guess which way he voted this time !

I actually campaigned and voted for the alternative as revenge for him blatantly lying in a planning metting when I was trying to get permission to build a house on some land I owned (I got it BTW) and oh, the sweet sweet taste of schadenfreuda [:)]

[Catalpa]

Direct experience of village life in the UK: it's the incomers who scream in protest at the thought of bringing in affordable housing - direct quote from one when our Parish Council looked at doing it: "I don't want Tesco checkout people living next door to me..." - next door was actually about 200 metres away and the affordable housing would have been invisible anyway behind a copse of trees. Inhabitants who'd been in the village most or all of their lives... and had brought up kids in the village, all of whom had to move away as there was no affordable housing for miles were generally very pro the idea. Also votes were for mixed affordable housing so that granny could move to the village and be independent but close. The land was being donated so affordable housing (run by an Association to ensure no extension / expansion of properties and priority to people with connections to the village) was genuinely achievable. But incomers said "no".

In rural southern England, the "problem" with small many villages is that, over the years when small cottages have come on the market - usually due to the death of the occupant - someone buys them up and doubles or triples them in size. This places another home outside the reach of anyone on less than £25K per year. Certainly in the village I am from, eventually there was no housing that cost less than £250K. Most of it was around the £400K mark.

The comment in the article: As a rule,

rural people work far less hard than city people and pay less tax... a) is daft because people who live and work in the country are often on substantially lower incomes so they will pay less tax and b) is inaccurate because a lot of villages and small market towns are now inhabited by people who commute to a big town or city and therefore do earn the salaries that allow them their "rural idyll". 

In "my" old village, there is an enormously popular village school but most of the kids are driven in by car from the surrounding villages - there are no longer that many kids in the village itself.

Incomers occasionally took it on themselves to "bring the village activities into the 20th century". Usually they completely bolluxed up what they were trying to change, cause swathes of resentment and toys out of cot by those who'd been doing the work for no money and little thanks for years, simply because they felt they were giving something back to the place they'd always lived... and then after a couple of years they (the incomers) sodded off to another part of the country having permanently damaged the bit of village society they'd decided needed changing.

In France...

Speaking only for our village, it's the long-established residents - who've co-opted one or two new people, both French and British - who do all the work, the setting up of the various soirées, lunches, fêtes, vide-greniers, concours de belote... last year, the annual vide-grenier with restauration sur place served 350 4-course meals at lunchtime and another 75+ in the evening. All assembed (every carrot grated, every beignet made, cooked and filled) cooked and served (and washed up) by the comité des fêtes. Stunning cooperation and work - out of a commune where there are only approx 200 adults.

I know in other villages - even in the area - new arrivals, particularly British - are breathing new life into the community activities so perhaps our village is the exception rather than the rule... I can't accurately judge.

[babcock]

I think it was last year when a search for the 'best' village in England dismissed one village because as well as "the old schoolhouse" etc it had "the old red lion". There was no commerce and no village as such just a collection of fancy houses. I lived in Farningham in Kent when it had a superb bakers, a butcher whose sausages were so good they went to London and Brighton, a chemist, a veg shop etc. Now if it is not a house it is an antique shop.

[Stan Streason]

Mixed feeling on this.

We live in a village (one pub, one ford - no holiday homes).  Plans for an estate of affordable homes have been turned down for 2 overriding objections.  Firstly the design of the homes was totally out of keeping with everything else in the village (they could at least have made an effort) and secondly putting 25 new homes in a village which can only be reached by single width roads (with no gas,  nearest public transport a mile away, nearest primary school 2 miles, poor mobile coverage, broadband at the very furthest reaches from what is possible from the exchange and patchy mains drainage) would be an intolerable burden on resources and would require a lot more infastructure building.  Every resident would have needed a car - whats the point?

So yes I am sure people out there think I am a nimby, but the plans were just so poorly thought out and we felt more to do with someone getting fed up of waiting for full planning permission to put 5 mansions on his land and trying for a quick buck. 

[Frederick]

   Mobile phone masts seem to get some people really concerned .....Next village out from me in the UK had poor reception...it was decided to put a mast on the hill top way outside the village where the footprint would provide everybody with perfect reception ...The land is owned by one well known member of the House of Lords happy to have it ... The adjacent estate was owned by another member of the House of Lords  who would see this mast on the horizon when looking out over the lake from his ancestoral pile ....so he objected to it ......To hell with the people who had no mobile coverage ....Its sorted now but it took more than 1 mast and put up in the village .

[Mareille]

So country people are idle are they, how come when we have city dwellers visit after half a days slow work, can't work normally as they can't keep up, they need a couple of days rest to get over the experience often going to bed by ten and laying in until after eight in the morning the wimps.

Chris