SIR,

I have just read the rather depressing Local Development Plan (LDP), kindly printed on nice glossy paper at the council taxpayer's expense, which was shoved through my door recently.

In it I am informed Monmouthshire County Council (MCC) has a "vision" for my future which includes, among other things, building a more inclusive, cohesive, prosperous and vibrant community in which we can enjoy more sustainable lifestyles and have opportunities for healthy activity.

Just as I was reaching for the champagne I stopped and wondered how such a utopia was to be delivered.

I read on and discovered it's actually quite easy.

All you do is take a modest rural market town and without any regard for the inhabitant's needs or desires you build 400 homes on a flood plain nearby.

Voila! Job done.

It is cohesive because it is integrated into the soon-to-be inadequate road network, inclusive because we will all suffer together, prosperous for the farmer who sold the land and the building company that made the houses, vibrant because of the hundreds of extra cars on our roads and healthier because we will give up trying to drive through the gridlock and just walk.

Lets face it, the LDP is just mendacious guff flowered up to sell bad government.

MCC doesn't give a hoot about the man in the street, it just wants the boxes ticked; Cardiff demands extra housing all over Wales and Monmouth must takes its share of the pain.

To pretend it is in any way based on our future welfare or some local government vision of arcadia is insulting nonsense.

And if we keep importing a quarter of a million immigrants each year, you can bet your shrinking pension they'll be having even more "visions" like this in no time at all.

I was going to write a complaint about it to my local AM Nick Ramsay but I didn't want to disturb him while he had a punt at being the Welsh Conservative leader for an extra £26,000 a year.

Good to see where our AM's priorities lie in these troubled times.

Whoever said politicians were self serving careerists?

In fact if anyone knows what an AM actually does please write to the Beacon and let the rest of us know.

They get paid twice as much as a nurse or teacher so they must work awfully hard.

Gareth Dunn

(Monmouth)