Only a Neighbourhood Plan can save our town
EDITOR - Saul Bellow said: “New York makes one think of the collapse of civilisation, about Sodom & Gomorrah, the end of the world. That end wouldn’t come as a surprise now. Many New Yorkers already bank on it.”
Old certainties are passing in the blink of financiers’ bonus-glazed eyes. Perhaps soon this notion could apply to developing Sleaford. How come you say?
Consider these aspects. We’ve jumped through hoops emulating their lifestyle. The demand for mass travel, with bigger roads catering for growing traffic. Then extra-large supermarkets expanding their trading reach; all marketed on the ‘easy come’ principle. In one-stop operations we fill shopping carts, and surge off home to trawl for more stuff via Internet home deliveries.
Subsequently some previous bargains become redundant or faulty and are given away or dumped. Earnings squandered on a heroic scale. Are we putting a fool’s gold premium on outward appearances?
Is it status driven, done to show that likewise we share this capacity? Perhaps the ego enjoys the power but your pocket reveals worsening vulnerability. It doesn’t maintain your health either, because we become reluctant to walk far from the car.
Economists say this modern way is unsustainable; it’s receding whilst still unfolding! The shrinking scope of permanent employment, widespread poor incomes and spiralling fuel costs: together with escalating food and transport charges, declining footfall, sales etc., all are eroding the system. Are we prisoners of addiction, or envy?
Comparatively recently, even tiny villages were reasonably self-sufficient nurturing communities, with homes, not housing pods. Increasingly ‘communities’ resemble expiring dormitories, hosting anxious souls, or second homes. And even once plentiful necessities are becoming increasingly remote, or unavailable like disappearing work.
What can we do? Sleaford must develop a community ‘Neighbourhood Plan’, because without such, it could follow other places into the desert of hopelessness.
DAVID BIRKS
Quarrington
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Weather for Sleaford
Saturday 26 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 10 C to 22 C
Wind Speed: 22 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 24 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: East
