Reports in the US state that dozens of US cities may have entire neighbourhoods bulldozed as part of drastic "shrink to survive" proposals being considered by the Obama administration to tackle economic decline. Some cities are expected to contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.

Much of the land will be given back to nature. In Detroit, shattered by the woes of the US car industry, there are already plans to split it into a collection of small urban centres separated from each other by countryside.

What an absolutely brilliant idea – when can we start doing the same over here? We’re constantly told that we need to build more houses by those crooks in government and those with a vested interest in the building industry, and developers are always buying up and building on allegedly protected green belt land. Well it’s time for this enviro-terrorism to be stopped. I therefore whole heartedly support this US initiative.

Obviously choosing which areas to knock down will be delicate but many of them were already obvious – I know that everyone who’s reading this will have areas that immediately spring to mind! For me, by the way, it’s Orpington and the Crays!

No doubt those enviro-terrorists out there will be outraged by this solution and consider it "defeatist" (as turning the whole country into a concrete jungle is apparently “progress”) but as one eminent American says, it is no more defeatist than “pruning an overgrown tree so it can bear fruit again".

Bring it on!