It looks like grim business as usual – only far worse – while election bravado manifests itself as acute danger for what remains of our brutally beleaguered countryside.

Hardly surprising to pin down so few campaign nods towards environmental matters beyond the official Green agenda while big guns set up targets for a solar revolution, armies of jackbooting pylons and enough voracious field-eaters to render recent decades just a tasty starter.

Eye-watering mandatory housebuilding figures coated in a far more urgent construction-friendly planning system must encourage fresh gangs of speculators, and spoilers towards sites of many colours and sizesto climb aboard the beckoning  economic growth bandwagon.

Some might think we’ve heard and seen this all before, not least when Nicholas “Let It  Rip” Ridley was Tory Secretary of State for the Environment in the 1980s and collected the accolade of NIMBY, Not In My Back Yard, when he opposed a low-cost development close to his own upmarket property

But this much-trumpeted current Labour development dash threatens untold destruction of remaining rural values even if only so many  frantic laps are completed in thousands of earmarked  backyards.  New towns from scratch ,sprawling additions  to larger communities already on the map and cities like Norwich with a notch or two left on the green belt are bound to catch a virulent expansion bug.

Norfolk and Waveney house over 700 villages of various flavours and sizes. How many of those could be destined for bloated futures as character, community cohesion and truly home-made qualities are sacrificed on the high altar of “progress” ?

I find a grain of hope in knowing romance clings to the word “village”  just as ivy and honeysuckle stay true to the old privy down the yard. The further we get away from the rural dream, forcibly removed in many cases, the more a need to pretend it still exists  I reckon we ought to keep that exercise going, if only to frustrate those anticipating a pushover.

They need reminders to listen and to wonder if our rural resistance movement has the capacity to stay intact much deeper into the 21st century. For all the newcomers, commuters, tourists, weekenders, and hand-rubbing developers, Norfolk village life is holding on to some of those qualities that sparked invasions in the first instance. 

I must make an important concession and warmly praise those who contribute plenty to their place of adoption. I accept also it is not too uncommon to find a native quite happy to receive but most reluctant to give. Even so, there are fundamental reasons why those good old Norfolk days, real or imaginary, will keep on demanding attention, especially in areas where radical changes have already been pushed through in a hurry.

Now the need to compare grows even stronger. Times have changed, say folk who sold up and moved to quieter smaller Norfolk pastures when such an event was a matter of some curiosity and powers of absorption were hardly tested.

“We met them halfway and they gradually accepted us . Now there so many newcomers we  feel like strangers all over again. Trouble is this time it’ll take something extraordinary to bring us all together”.

Coronations, Royal Weddings, Jubilees or being completely cut off by snow are comparatively rare. Village life can easily vegetate down a cul-de-sac.  This happens when worst aspects of suburban existence are allowed to dominate once-rural parts. Blandness and apathy are the main enemies and it is dangerous to regard loneliness as something that drifts only around towns and cities.

Competition along best-kept village lines can help keep alive the proper sort of spirit, sometimes resurrecting it and instilling a fresh sense of purpose into a community which had let itself go becoming rather drab and dowdy.

These are the lucky ones, welding together best intentions of native and newcomer. Often it takes blatant dangers to stir them into concern over what thy stand to lose. A host of once-attractive settlements  only woke to the fact they were being turned into dormitories when snoring reached deafening levels

Some parish councils know from bitter experience how often logical and well-argued cases can be shoved aside by hard-hearted folks  few rungs up the local government  ladder.  They in turn will complaint even louder how even more powerful national  forces above  them dictate pace and pattern of development in all areas.

We’re now on the cusp of a callous campaign to make small communities feel guilty for making a stand. “Stick-in-the-mud” and “snobbish” are two of the labels waiting to be stuck on parish notice boards. Too many planners and developers wilt pay customary lip service to “genuine local needs and wishes” and then carry on cramming and creaming off most lucrative end of the market.