HERE’S an urgent message to every member of Durham County Council. Stop whatever you are doing, form a task force and get yourselves up on to the A66 - pronto.

From the west, the road introduces the ‘Land of the Prince Bishops’, still proclaimed on a sign. Some say it’s time for a change. The slogan certainly needs explaining to any newcomer.

A replacement that would immediately be understood by all would be: Land of the litter lout. For the A66 in its highest, wildest stretch, over Stainmore and Bowes Moor, easily England’s most magnificent stretch of trunk road, is currently nothing better than a linear rubbish tip.

Virtually starting at that Prince Bishops sign – Cumbria must have had a clean up - the amount of roadside litter is truly shocking. For several miles it forms an almost unbroken mass, windblown against the roadside fence. Numbered by the hundreds, if not the thousand, drinks cans and plastic bottles are its main feature. But remnants of plastic bags and sheeting flutter from the wire.

There are shredded tyres galore, even part of a car bumper. Durham’s A66 must be the most litter-blighted route in Britain.

The tragedy is that the superb landscape could so easily have been ruined by wind farms. It has escaped that fate only to be degraded by the detritus of a nation apparently content to sink in its own mess of rubbish.

Therefore, Durham county councillors, don the hi-vis jackets and set to work. You’ll need a fleet of lorries and possibly every thick black plastic bag available in the county. But there’s nothing better you can do today for the Land of the Prince Bishops, or however it is branded in the future. It’s your county. Make it worthy of pride.

THE nation awaits…not the general election but the birth of a baby. That was the picture in the days up to the arrival of the new princess. While wishing Mum, Dad and their new offspring well, the democrat in me chafes a little.

Kate had four top surgeons to oversee the birth. Four. Some babies are more important than others. Crowds gathered at the hotel-looking Lindo Wing. But would it not have been nice to see the royal couple and baby emerging from a hospital recognised as such by the rest of us?

And how about giving birth? Among our supposedly modernised royals, no woman can yet do that. Thus Kate was “safely delivered of a daughter” – a contorted phrase that puts messy images at a distance.

I’ve read that by the age of ten the new princess will be worth £1bn. How? In her first 12 months she will travel 20,000 miles. It’s good news for our planet that we’re not all royal.

AND so, tomorrow’s the day. Or rather it isn’t. If predictions prove correct several days of horse-trading will follow before a government of some sort emerges. We used to scorn the Italians for such electoral chaos. But the Left-Right certainties of our 20th-century politics have gone forever.

Looks like we’ll face rule from Scotland. What hypocrisy by the SNP – to detest Westminster influence in their own country yet have no qualm about interfering down here. Astonishingly no-one seems to have put this to Nicola Sturgeon.