I READ the article in Monday’s Echo, December 1 – “Our roads are vital to future prosperity” – with mixed feelings.

The first thing that comes to mind is: what future? With more and more of our small island going under concrete and Tarmac “after all, only 94,000 square miles” with apparently no thought of ever stopping, all in the name of progress, of course there cannot be much future.

For example, December 1, page 5, “80 new roads to be built around England”. If anyone has the temerity to express an opinion against the continuing destruction of the UK they are looked upon as a lunatic and they trot out all the old arguments in favour of continuing along the path of destruction: “People must have somewhere to live and they must have transport, preferably their own, yes the car, always the car. The car is part of modern life, we cannot live without it. Think of all the jobs it creates in the manufacturing and the running of it, as well as the convenience.”

Of course, there is another side.

In its present state, think of all the pollution it creates, the poisonous fumes it pumps out and, of course, the need for more greenbelt to go under concrete.

If all this is progress, when will it stop? Or is it ordained to go on until the whole planet is made uninhabitable?

I have often heard it said the powers that be will not let that happen. Well, people who think that have more faith than I do.

MR C E WATTS, Southampton.