The Village View

When plans for the “new” Longbridge were first being discussed in the years after the closure of MG Rover in 2005, there was widespread recognition that the development would increase traffic flowing between the new homes, shops and businesses that would be created there and the motorway network through this area.

Times, they are a changin’ . . . and they will keep on changing whatever any of us may feel about it.

It’s not often that New Year predictions come to pass, but this year we can claim some success.

Faceless bureaucrats in their Whitehall ivory towers, drawing lines on maps without a care for how they will affect us in our villages 100 miles away from the capital . . . where have we read those words before?

We often hear people talk about how nice it is to live in our villages and how lucky we all are to do so.

What will our villages look like in 20 or 30 years? The answer most of us hope for is: much the same as they do now, thank you very much.

With the rest of the world apparently heading to hell in a handcart, these quiet days of summer in and around our villages have perhaps had an extra sense of the idyllic.