My village isn't as superior as many villagers thought.

Awful murders, crimes against children and many other crimes happen anywhere, even in lovely villages, surely this is obvious as it’s reported every day in the media.
It always amazes me too VQ when interviewing neighbours on tv ( where a shocking crime has been committed) that they say ‘this is a quiet street! Nothing like that happens here’.
Sadly it happens everywhere.

Look at Midsomer Murders! ?

That’s villagers for you!
We live in a village which is not particularly attractive, several big housing developments. There are now plans to build some more, and the residents are acting as if someone has suggested building a nuclear power station.
Gets on my nerves!

Near where we live, and where I often walk, there are a lot of large and extremely expensive houses - I’m talking £3,4,5m and even more.

I often wonder how many of them are housing crooks, money launderers, etc., especially when one of the older, lovely but fairly unassuming-looking houses is demolished to make way for a much larger one that frankly looks like an ostentatious WAG-palace - especially since it’s supposed to be a conservation area.?
I’d put money on a few of them, at least.

lemongrove

Look at Midsomer Murders! ?

Of course it does.

However, it is known that gangs will come from other areas to 'do over' a locality as has happened here.

I have had a wall mounted hose stolen, two large pots with established plants, and the tops of our stone mushrooms, annoying, but hardly worth a criminal gang coming to the area .

Obviously not but I wonder why anyone would steal the heavy tops of two stone mushrooms ?

Sorry, very annoying for you but it struck me as funny!

People in well-off villages have more money for expensive drugs. They don't need to mug old ladies to get money for a fix, but I'd be amazed if some of your neighbours aren't taking drugs. I know some of my neighbours do. One of the children of undoubtedly the richest resident has done time in prison for dealing. I think your villagers need to open their eyes vampirequeen.

Callistemon
Well exactly, you can’t do much with the stone tops, the bottoms are cemented in, so it was probably too much trouble to take then.

I live in a desirable village with many expensive, not so expensive and holiday properties. The only crime we have is from ‘travellers’ on a static site 3 miles away who cause no end of irritation. A few garage/shed break-ins, occasional cars disappearing from driveways, kids catapulting the ducks on the river ..... until last week when a man beat his wife to a pulp in a drunken rage. ?. I’ve been here for 3 years and have yet to see any obvious police presence.

I live in the same kind of village as you do Vampirequeen, where they tied themselves in knots when a few new houses are planned. The irony is that more than half of the village houses were built in the 1970s and beyond, and no doubt the people who then lived here in the Edwardian and far older properties had a fit when the 1970s areas were built! We have very little crime apart from the odd irritating random act of vandalism but if you listened to some people you would think this was Toxteth in the height of the race riots. We too had a cannabis farm, a nice quiet 'student' had rented a house in plain sight and nobody knew until the raid, that caused a fair bit of pearl clutching! The usual big fuss here is about lazy dog owners not clearing up after their dogs, irritating that's for sure, but not quite life altering crime. Lemongrove I always wonder about Midsomer, who would buy a house there?

Most crime in the area is drugs related.
Cannabis farming is the root of many crimes.
We had a dreadful burglary that cost us emotionally and financially, it was drugs related.

A cannabis FARM suggests rather a lot of cannabis surely? Hydroponics etc?

We also live in a rural village like the one you describe. I realised during lockdown that my adult children have taken for granted how safe where we live is. My adult son came to live with us and was going out for a run every day, after a few weeks he said 'who is that man in the back field?' and I said 'what man?'....he replied 'the one with the gun'



I still laugh about it. He was apparently sitting in a make shift tent with a pigeon on a stick. He MAY have been perfectly fine (shooting game, I don't know) but as a former townie I felt rather horrified, whereas he had just assumed it was COMPLETELY NORMAL. It's all very Hot Fuzz.

We had a ‘farm’ in our small village a few years ago.
We have residents that strongly come out to protest about anything that is proposed and yet don’t support ‘village’ life.
I still like living here though because the majority of our fellow villagers are lovely.....
So who is it that is stealing my sunflower bags? I’m selling them to support a village cause. A bag containing seeds, compost, an inner tube of a loo roll and instructions all for £1. There is also a prize for the tallest. I hope that one of the 12 (out of 68 so far) that didn’t pay doesn’t win. There is no way of telling. Oh well??‍♀️

Gill
Same with us here, there are posters up all over the village saying ‘save our village’ and other such nonsense.
Most of them live on an estate built about twenty years ago, and they obviously weren’t bothered about the village then, frankly, this is not a beautiful village, it’s popular because it’s within easy reach of several good schools, but otherwise, doesn’t have much going for it.

I guess at least it isn’t meth labs and cocaine you are dealing with. Didn’t know people still bothered with cannabis.

According to the police it wasn't just a little plant growing on a window sill. They were growing a saleable amount My neighbour is a proper villager (born here) rather than an incomer like me and most others. She knows everyone and has taken on the challenge to find out where the 'farm' is She doesn't like the snobbery that has grown in the village over the years.

People aren't necessarily botherd with cannabis Nanna8, but it caused a mass fit of the vapours here when the raid on a nice four bedroomed house happened I can tell you! Usual story, every room, plus loft was stacked with plants. Whatever one's views on cannabis, growing it for sale is against the law. I do like living here, the vast majority of people are decent, pleasant people and it is very safe to walk at night, walk on your own, go wherever you please and I realise we are very fortunate. The odd bother about dog poo is a small price to pay for the sense of safety and security.

I was startled to discover, what everyone else already seemed to know, that a large if somewhat run down cottage in the middle of the village was a drug dealers home.
Apparently, if there’s a blue vase in the window, he’s open for business.
The odd thing is , they are a quite ordinary looking couple, probably about my age.

I have heard about pampas grass on the front lawn, but not blue vases in the window. What an education!

We live in a pretty village which is rural and isolated like many in France. We have a couple living in the village who are drug dealers as is their son. We have had armed police at their house on a couple of occasions. They are always pleasant when they see us out and about and have invited us for the traditional aperos - early evening drinks. It's difficult as I don't agree with their drug dealing, the rest of the village seem to tolerate them.

Well, I live in a nice friendly village. Over the last 10 years, without protest, we have accepted roughly three hundred houses or more built mainly behind the houses straggling up one road. We did complain strongly about one estate, but that was because the access to it, each side of the school, was considered dangerous and that the council was now allowing 50 houses to be built where they had refused 16 a couple of years previously because of access problems

The son of a local businessman, whose family have lived in the village for generations, was drawn into crime through his drug addiction and, tragically died of an overdose.
We have had problems with drug dealing in the children's playground and hare coursing in surrounding farmland.

A local farmer whose family have owned land in the village for hundreds of years bought the local pub and then took a bulldozer to it in a drunken rage because the manager he appointed would not let him drink there out of hours when he was blind drunk. He got a couple of hundred hours community service, because he endangered lives as there were people in the pub at the time. He also had to completely reinstate the pub, which was a listed building, to what it was before his visit wtih his 'dozer, with the beady eye of the Conservation Officer visiting every day. It is rumoured to have cost him nearly £100,000 so no further punishment was considered necessary.

Since Lockdown the price of some houses in the village have been nudging £1 million, but these are all old timber frame houses built 300 to 600 years ago. So no modern gin palaces.

In fact a perfectly ordinary village

grew up, and have returned to, a rural area. Most of my working life was spent in a large town with significant deprivation and a lot of crime. Many of my colleagues were born and brought up there, and had a rather skewed view of villages - I would say to them that for really strange behaviour and serious criminals, the countryside is where you find them!
And yes, many cannabis farms are found in rural areas, and they are not harmless small-time stuff. They exploit vulnerable people and feed into big criminal enterprises. Unlike the 'old folk' of my childhood who knew exactly how to prepare magic mushrooms and would never have sold them.

I live in a very quiet village and prefer not to know what my neighbours get up to.
There was a cannabis business in one of the isolated houses. They used the double garage to grow it and there was access down a rarely used track for people to come to buy it.
A friend used to pass the place on her walk and said there was a strange smell.