Furious George: Another Prick in the Wall

As the champion of British farming forsakes his own in favour of colonial produce, I learn the masters want to tear down my wall; yes - it's been the week of the paradox.

Bonny Prince Charlie, aka the Prince of Wales, has raised the ire of Welsh farmers by selling New Zealand lamb under his Duchy Organic label. How, they ask, can the Prince sell product from 20-thousand kilometres away to UK Supermarkets when they've been battling the elements lambing for the past two months?! Besides, they claim, the New Zealand product is over-priced and laden with fat and the Prince of Wales has always been a massive supporter of British farming!

It's been suggested by one or two prominent Kiwi farming commentators the story simply isn't one. Organic lamb isn't readily available at the best of times and the Brits are out of season at the moment so there's a natural shortage. Duchy Organic is simply using New Zealand lamb to meet the demand from their buyers. It's also been suggested the Welsh farmers are simply moaning for the sake of it - they're under pressure and are venting their frustrations. What better targets than their own Prince who has seemingly abandoned them in their time of need and that pesky colonial outpost with their inferior meat?! I've also been assured by one of the aforementioned agricultural luminaries it's virtually impossible to find New Zealand lamb in British supermarkets anyway. So, issue done and dusted.

The other paradoxical episode I've encountered this week runs much closer to home. I've heard through sporadic snippets of information that the Dommune (the office I share with Hanoi Jane at Farming Show HQ) is to be destroyed via the elimination of a wall. Perish the thought! was my euphemistic reaction upon joining the sparse dots of intelligence I've gathered over recent months.

It's widely, yet incorrectly, accepted that the Dommune is a left-wing den of liberal iniquity, adorned with hammers and sickles as far as the eye can see and a haven for the disaffected to conspire against the local illuminati. Of course it's nothing of the sort, merely a myth perpetuated by the odd ignoramus who feels threatened when the topic of conversation moves uncomfortably from the weekend's round of golf to something slightly more substantive. The interesting part, of course, is the destruction of the wall. Usually they build walls to keep the riff-raff out, not expose them to the rest of the populace! Prisons, camps, detention centres; they're all designed to enclose the undesirables, lest their evil little thoughts end up poisoning the minds and actions of the innocent populace. So to knock the wall down and assimilate the Dommune into normal society is an odd move indeed.

I for one cannot, and here's the great irony, work in a 'communal' space. I've heard it's in vogue now for offices to be big sprawling, open-plan designs where privacy is essentially forbidden. Such a work environment runs contrary to my genetic make-up and while I can foresee the potential for some sort of rebellion, the wise move it to let this idiocy run its course.

As with most fads it will reach a natural conclusion and a trend will emerge in a few years where people will have their own private work space once again to increase productivity. What was the first thing a teacher did at school when you were talking out of turn? Remove you from the rest of the class to avoid disruption to the other students. It's natural for human beings to babble on about the details of their lives when put together with other human beings. To be human is to communicate and vice versa.

But the proletariat has always been subject to the whims of the bourgeoisie, no matter how nonsensical. It is in this spirit I shall adopt a guerrilla mentality; moving from office to office, space to space, setting up for a while then disappearing into the corridors and storage cupboards of the office jungle. That should appease those in their ivory towers with their fanciful notions of communal living! I will be no threat at all...