IF the nose-dive by the economy teaches our rulers some financial sense it will not be an altogether bad thing.

I would like to think, for a start, it will mean the termination of those three examples of megalomaniac insanity:

a) Durham County Council’s obsession with butchering the Durham greenbelt by constructing two massive and totally unnecessary relief roads;

b) the HS2 abomination, which is costed at £100bn – such estimates are always a con: the reality is always far worse;

c) the plan to destroy the London greenbelt by expanding that existing monstrosity, Heathrow airport.

If the crisis spells the cancellation, sine die, of those three schemes, then I for one will welcome it.

Indeed it may well be the brush with raw reality we’ve long needed. We could emerge at the other end more frugal, unselfish and responsible.

We may even come to cherish someone whom we should always have loved and revered: Gaia – Mother Earth herself.

Tony Kelly, Crook