Firstly, last week, we had comments from supporters of the scheme who tried to say that the parish council is holding Driffield back. Back from what?

Do people really see the building of a new supermarket as progress?

Progress should improve the quality of life for all concerned. How is this related to the building of a new supermarket which will sell the same products as all the other supermarkets in the town and, indeed, in the country.

I think there is confusion here between progress and profit. This development is an advanced form of money pump which pumps money away from the area into the pockets of a few property developers and supermarket owners.

It works like this -
1: Buy cheap rundown site.
2: Get planning
permission(value of site
shoots up)
3: Develop and sell or lease
4: Repeat.

This is how these schemes are organised and run and the people running them have no interest whatever in the town, or the lives of its inhabitants. Indeed, most if not all of them, will have never visited Driffield and probably never will.

It may interest your readers to know when they see that the Driffield Cattle Market Company Ltd has applied for planning permission, that this company's head office is now in Lewes in Sussex (since 2004) and the directors(who between them direct more than 100 other companies) also live in either London or Sussex and have nothing to do with the people who used to sell livestock in Driffield (internet search at Companies House costs only £1 and can be very revealing).

Unless this project can be stopped at the planning stage, then in five or 10 years time we will have another eyesore shopping precinct with empty shops because the rent and rates are too high and the profit just isn't there (see Viking Centre for example. Does anyone remember the listed building that mysteriously collapsed one weekend? Look what we got in exchange).

By then, of course, the site will be just another title deed in someone's property portfolio, all the profit to be made will have been pumped out of the town, and the 'developers' will have moved on to the next 'development.'

It is the job of the local representatives to represent the wishes of those who live in the town, regardless of what those wishes may be (Messrs Fraser and Temple take note).

As far as I can see, that is exactly what Driffield Town Council is doing and they are to be applauded for it.

Here is a suggestion - turn the cattle market into a permanent farmers market open five days a week where local producers can sell fresh produce direct to the public and keep the profits of their labours for themselves and spend them locally.

Supermarkets make billions from selling junk food, and all that money leaves the local economy on a one-way trip. We certainly don't need another.
Supermarkets are a blight, not progress.

Philip J Whitley, of Eastgate North, Driffield, writes by email.