When my dastardly plans finally come to fruition, and my loyal military junta installs me as ‘el Presidenté’, my first declaration will be to banish agricultural vehicles from the roads during peak traffic periods.
It’s an absolute disgrace that some tractor, or other cumbersome creeping manure-stained farm-vehicle, should slow down ten or twenty cars that are carrying useful people to work. I’m not deliberately dissin’ the Amos’ and Worzel’s of this world, they do a great job, producing 60% of our food requirements while using less than two percent of our labour force, but at the end of the day, agriculture represents about 1.1% of our national output. This isn’t Stalin’s Russia, farmers aren’t the salt-of-the-Earth backbone of the nation; they’re a bunch of overly subsidised corn-chewing road hogs
I thought they were supposed to pull over when a certain number of cars were following? Nah. I’m pretty sure that they enjoy leading a convoy of frustrated office workers, who spit and swear, as they slowly wind their way through Britain’s country roads. I always make a point of acknowledging tractor drivers who do pull over, and let us followers speed past, “good-egg,†I always say. But I am absolutely convinced some sour-faced farmhands love to stick it to the city-folk who have the sheer audacity to populate the Queen’s Highways.
In my autocratic dystopia, one instance of holding up a convoy of 10-drivers would result in the sequestering of 1000-bags of grain, or the seizure of 2-bovines. One bovine, can of course be substituted for 30-chickens, or, one sheep and 2 barrels of scrumpy – I’m nothing if not flexible. Further hold-ups will result in more creative punishments, with the ultimate possibility of a term of 70-years hard labour in one of my many Gulags that are being planned (ever wondered what we can do with Butlins?).
So beware Giles, or whatever inbred name you’ve been christened with, let us get to work and generate the necessary taxes to finance your huge subsidies, because come the revolution, you’ll realise you never had it so good.
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Your description of foreign hands being, Amos’ and Worzel’s unfortunately doesn’t hold true any more. Gone are the days of the honest underpaid local sitting on the top of his under-insured completely illegal T20 tractor with no role bar or cab. Nowadays it’s a Rumanian or Ukrainian. He’s also not sure which side of the road he has to drive on, he still doesn’t have any insurance road tax or even a number plate… and another thing ,one of the reasons why he’s driving on the public roads in a very erratic manner is that he is aged 14. but now he is driving a 1500 horse power tractor the size of a tiger tank, its also fitted with an unsafe, very large piece of farm machinery that is fish tailing across two carriageways.
You may think that I am being ironic here, but the tragedy is that unfortunately this description is true. I live in a rural community and see this sort of thing on a regular basis. Its only a few years ago that a farm hand failed to secured the digger arm on a back hoe tractor, and decapitated 2 motorists when it Swung loose on a corner.
Wildrose suggested a piece of legislation that would make it a legal requirement that if more than five cars backed up behind a tractor, that the tractor must pull in to the nearest available safe passin point to let the traffic through.
I live in the country, I grew up on a farm. And I also happen to be a manager for the UK’s largest Ltd. agricultural company.