FROM reading the many comments on our website, it seems a substantial number of Worcester News readers are in favour of the completion of the city’s orbital road.

This has predictably not escaped the attention of MP Mike Foster, who appears desperate to be in the very first vehicle – a bandwagon, presumably – that will travel down this contentious highway.

I can understand some of the arguments for the project. After all, what is the point of an existing ring road that is not actually circular?

It’s an apparently convincing argument when one considers such a fundamental contradiction.

However, before the earthmovers start to chew up even more of the county’s fast-vanishing countryside, it is perhaps a good idea to pause and start to think about consequences.

I’ve noticed that a number of the pro-road lobby are also against New Labour’s plans for thousands of new homes. Yet if a road was driven through green fields in the Hallow and Bevere area what do people think would happen to any land left in between? There would be massive infilling, naturally.

Therefore, we can assume that these very same people are also in favour of a future Worcester metropolis comprising a city conurbation that has absorbed Kempsey in the south to Grimley in the north. And all so that motorists can shave a few minutes off travelling time.

Then there’s the jealousy aspect that’s never far away. Terry Sims and his anti-road supporters are routinely called nimbies as if there’s anything wrong with being such a thing.

But think about it for a moment. If the authorities wanted to drive a road through your back yard and lower your quality of life, you’d oppose it, right? Or are you a pathetic idiot and say “yes sir, three bags full, sir?”

To be sure, Mr Sims and his friends live in a nice part of the world. But being resentful of that fact is no argument – especially when the entire nature of this part of Worcestershire would be irrevocably changed if the increasingly vocal pro-road factions get their way.