Generally looking, farmers can be one of the nicest folk you will meet. The only thing to get a farmer very furious is to interfere with his work. Farms run on extremely tight seasonal schedules. Even one day of lost labor can cost thousands of dollars.
Needless to say, one farmer got completely enraged when a bunch of protesters settled on his land to protest fracking. Among the protesters, there was also Oscar-winner actress Emma Thompson. However, farmers are known to come up with efficient solutions to every problem. This farmer sprays manure all over the protesters on his land.
The Oscar winner and her sister, also an actress, staged a parody of the show “Great British Bake Off” on land near Fylde which was leased for drilling. Aptly titled “The Frack Free Bake Off,” the two actresses filmed an “episode” with the activist group Greenpeace to stand against any fracking activities by Cuadrilla, an oil and gas exploration company, as reported by The Guardian.
The injunction, or authoritative order, has been placed in 2014, banning protesters from the area. However, this did not stop the team from shooting their satirical take on the bake-off to speak against fracking.
The sisters baked energy-themed cakes, showing wind turbines and solar power, and released a series of videos on their work. The full episode, which can be viewed below, has also been released.
The “Nanny McPhee” actress said she has been made aware of the fracking issue with her involvement with Greenpeace.
“It came to a head for me when David Cameron went to the Paris Climate Conference and signed on to the protocol,” Emma said in the same report. “Then on the sly at Christmas, when nobody was looking, [he] gave the nod to 200 fracking sites in Britain.”
“It proved to me our government is saying one thing and doing the opposite,” she added.
However, not everyone is pleased with their action.
The farmer who owns the land they trespassed on got “very upset.” Irate for not being able to continue his work on the field, he drove a muck spreader around the makeshift studio and the protesters, spraying raw sewage on crew members. The liquid poop, however, narrowly missed the Thompsons and their cakes.
According to AWM, locals were shocked by the incident.
Kate Styles, a local cake shop owner involved in the protest, told the Telegraph, “The stink was temporary – unlike the impact of fracking on this community if Cuadrilla gets their way.”
Meanwhile, Cuadrilla, the company responsible for fracking the farmer’s land, released a statement from their chief executive Francis Egan.
Egan said, “Celebrities from London trespassing on a Lancashire farmers’ land, preventing him from working whilst lecturing us on where the UK should get our natural gas is beyond ridiculous.”
The local police also shared a statement about the manure incident.
“We were this morning made aware of a protest on land at Plupton Hall Farm at Little Plumpton,” the police spokesman said. “A local neighborhood patrol attended and spoke to a representative of the protestors to establish their intentions. It was not felt necessary or proportionate to maintain a police presence at the site, but resources are available to attend again if necessary.”
I could only imagine what these protesters were saying. I think we know what the farmer was saying!
Talk about turning a shitty situation into a shittier situation.
Police came to the area but made no arrests.
Watch the video below:
Sources: AWM, The Guardian