Senate Member
Posts: 6,020 
April 20th, 2008, 01:38 PM
On Friday, a mysterious smell was smelled by thousands (possibly millions) of people across southern England.
Hundreds of people contacted the BBC to ask them if their Weather Centre can come up with an explanation as to what the mysterious stink was.
Now the mystery has been solved. The horrible stink that wafted across southern England on Friday came from our neighbours in Continental Europe - pig manure in Germany to be precise....
German swine own up to causing 'Der Gestank'
By David Harrison
20/04/2008
The Telegraph
The mystery of the foul stench that has swept across southern England was solved yesterday when German pig farmers admitted: "It's our fault."
Farmers said they had spread the manure from millions of pigs over their fields almost simultaneously after cold weather forced them to delay the start of the muckspreading season.
The stink culprits: maunure from millions of pigs
Germany has an estimated 25 million pigs with many farms concentrated in the regions around the port city of Hamburg. The pungent smell - Der Gestank as the Germans call it - from millions of gallons of porcine waste was carried across the North Sea and the Channel to England by unusual easterly winds. The smell spread quickly, causing people from Dover to Devon to hold their noses. The Met Office said the winds would continue to bring the pigs' aroma to England until Tuesday.
DPA, Germany's national press agency, accepted that Germany was to blame in a report yesterday which stated: "The cause for the foul atmosphere has been found: the east wind and the German pigs... a stinkbomb from Germany."
The respected broadsheet Die Welt said: "It stinks to Englishmen in the truest sense of the word - a foul smell of the European mainland in the air over the south of Great Britain.
"The stink is a mixture from dung and industrial exhaust gases, which even the Queen is turning her nose up at, it is said. The guilty parties: German pigs."
"German farmers insult English noses," said the headline in the Rhein Zeitung newspaper.
The N-24 TV news channel carried a headline on its website yesterday evening saying: "The Great Stink - English sour over German pigs."
The powerful odour reached Kent and Sussex on Friday morning and swept across most of southern England. The Met Office, emergency services and local radio stations received hundreds of calls from people demanding to know the source of the stench.
But farmers in Germany offered little sympathy to those whose nostrils were offended on this side of the Channel. They said they had to make a living and had no control over the wind.
Hauke Jaacks, a farmer in Rissen, north-western Germany, who sprayed 5,000 gallons of manure on his 25 acres, said: "Sorry about the smell but you have to put up with it. I need the grass to grow to feed my cattle."
A phone-in commentator on Bavarian Radio said: "The English like to blame the Germans for everything."
The "manure season" was officially allowed to begin on February 1 but farmers waited until Friday to begin, because until then it had been too cold.
Scheiße!
20/04/2008
The Telegraph
German farmers with uncontrollable wind: these, it turns out, were the factors that converged to create the malodorous atmosphere lingering over southern England for the past few days.
At the first sign of a break in the cold weather, the pastoralists of Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony had rushed out as one man to spread their fertiliser of choice - pig manure - across those rich northern meadows. The sun, remembering it was April and time to get warm, brought the accumulated ordure to perfect ripeness, and then the wind, blowing unseasonably easterly, carried the rich scent to us.
The Germans have had the good grace to own up to being the source of the antisocial fragrance, though the farmers themselves have given as it were a collective shrug and pointed out that "the wind bloweth where it listeth" - or whatever is Luther's translation of that verse.
This is probably not the place to broach the Brussels question, or to bemoan the swings and roundabouts of outrageous integration - what we put in, and what comes our way in return. Christopher Booker argues that the seat of our government has moved across the Channel. Nevertheless, since we have had to join in with it, we could at least have been granted some notice that our neighbours were composing, or decomposing, a new Pong for Europe.
telegraph.co.uk
On Friday, a mysterious smell was smelled by thousands (possibly millions) of people across southern England.
Hundreds of people contacted the BBC to ask them if their Weather Centre can come up with an explanation as to what the mysterious stink was.
Now the mystery has been solved. The horrible stink that wafted across southern England on Friday came from our neighbours in Continental Europe - pig manure in Germany to be precise....
German swine own up to causing 'Der Gestank'
By David Harrison
20/04/2008
The Telegraph
The mystery of the foul stench that has swept across southern England was solved yesterday when German pig farmers admitted: "It's our fault."
Farmers said they had spread the manure from millions of pigs over their fields almost simultaneously after cold weather forced them to delay the start of the muckspreading season.
The stink culprits: maunure from millions of pigs
Germany has an estimated 25 million pigs with many farms concentrated in the regions around the port city of Hamburg. The pungent smell - Der Gestank as the Germans call it - from millions of gallons of porcine waste was carried across the North Sea and the Channel to England by unusual easterly winds. The smell spread quickly, causing people from Dover to Devon to hold their noses. The Met Office said the winds would continue to bring the pigs' aroma to England until Tuesday.
DPA, Germany's national press agency, accepted that Germany was to blame in a report yesterday which stated: "The cause for the foul atmosphere has been found: the east wind and the German pigs... a stinkbomb from Germany."
The respected broadsheet Die Welt said: "It stinks to Englishmen in the truest sense of the word - a foul smell of the European mainland in the air over the south of Great Britain.
"The stink is a mixture from dung and industrial exhaust gases, which even the Queen is turning her nose up at, it is said. The guilty parties: German pigs."
"German farmers insult English noses," said the headline in the Rhein Zeitung newspaper.
The N-24 TV news channel carried a headline on its website yesterday evening saying: "The Great Stink - English sour over German pigs."
The powerful odour reached Kent and Sussex on Friday morning and swept across most of southern England. The Met Office, emergency services and local radio stations received hundreds of calls from people demanding to know the source of the stench.
But farmers in Germany offered little sympathy to those whose nostrils were offended on this side of the Channel. They said they had to make a living and had no control over the wind.
Hauke Jaacks, a farmer in Rissen, north-western Germany, who sprayed 5,000 gallons of manure on his 25 acres, said: "Sorry about the smell but you have to put up with it. I need the grass to grow to feed my cattle."
A phone-in commentator on Bavarian Radio said: "The English like to blame the Germans for everything."
The "manure season" was officially allowed to begin on February 1 but farmers waited until Friday to begin, because until then it had been too cold.
Scheiße!
20/04/2008
The Telegraph
German farmers with uncontrollable wind: these, it turns out, were the factors that converged to create the malodorous atmosphere lingering over southern England for the past few days.
At the first sign of a break in the cold weather, the pastoralists of Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony had rushed out as one man to spread their fertiliser of choice - pig manure - across those rich northern meadows. The sun, remembering it was April and time to get warm, brought the accumulated ordure to perfect ripeness, and then the wind, blowing unseasonably easterly, carried the rich scent to us.
The Germans have had the good grace to own up to being the source of the antisocial fragrance, though the farmers themselves have given as it were a collective shrug and pointed out that "the wind bloweth where it listeth" - or whatever is Luther's translation of that verse.
This is probably not the place to broach the Brussels question, or to bemoan the swings and roundabouts of outrageous integration - what we put in, and what comes our way in return. Christopher Booker argues that the seat of our government has moved across the Channel. Nevertheless, since we have had to join in with it, we could at least have been granted some notice that our neighbours were composing, or decomposing, a new Pong for Europe.
telegraph.co.uk
House Member
Posts: 3,171
Location: USA
Location: USA
April 22nd, 2008, 09:18 AM
Quoting missile
That's where I thought it was going.
Just happy to hear that this wasn't blamed on the French
