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In the year 2525 man might still be alive – but there won’t be a trace of Stortford




For me, 2025 is a lyrical number. I don’t know why, but I find it attractive. Is it because it takes me on a nostalgic trip back to my baby boomer past?

The number one hit, In the Year 2525, released by Zager and Evans in 1969 and, unusually, subtitled Exordium and Terminus (The Beginning and the End), predicted mankind’s journey through the next 10,000 years, with some dire outcomes for humanity.

The first couple of lines were: In the year 2525, if man is still alive / If woman can survive, they may find. But find what?

A mere 25 years have passed since, with some trepidation, we entered the new millennium. Threats of computer software bugs that would bring us close to extinction on the stroke of midnight and thrust us back into the dark ages came to nought.

Big companies and government organisations spent obscene amounts of money employing “millennium bug” hunters to ensure disasters didn’t happen, and the entire scare turned out to be nothing but a hugely expensive false alarm. It’s hard to believe 25 years have passed since that great non-event.

There is one millennium creepy-crawly that did slip through the net, though, and it has been bugging me ever since, so may I beg your indulgence and get it off my chest? Whatever happened to the second “t” in twenty?

For the first stumbling decade or so, we couldn’t seem to decide how we should refer to the new millennium years, so we introduced the “two thousand and...” prefix, as in “two thousand and ten”. To me, this prefix has always sounded wrong, having no elegance, no poetry, no refinement, so I was glad to see the back of it when we finally resumed the traditional way of vocalising the year by saying “twenty ten”. At least in theory. In practice, we now constantly hear “twenny” – even from the BBC!

I’m not convinced that this is any better than the prefix as an insult to the English language, but if it’s as close as the millennium bug got to orchestrating our extinction then I guess we can live with it. So, thank you for reading this far. May the lyrical twenny twenny-five bring you everything you desire. (That twenny is going to be stuck with us for a long time, I think – until twenny-nine ninety-nine in fact – so get used to it.)

Unlike the harmless millennium bug, recent disclosure of the embryonic proposal to build a thousand more homes on land in Uttlesford, very close to Stortford, together with the open admission that the proposal will depend heavily on our town’s infrastructure to be viable, feels to me like a very real potential extinction level event for the Stortford we know.

Are we expected to sit hopelessly to one side and watch the destruction of our town and community, by an adjacent planning authority, in the face of this massive upheaval and redevelopment that is going to be needed to accommodate the new Government’s housebuilding targets?

Stansted-based developer City & Country wants to build a 1,050-home estate between Stansted and Birchanger, on the outskirts of Bishop’s Stortford
Stansted-based developer City & Country wants to build a 1,050-home estate between Stansted and Birchanger, on the outskirts of Bishop’s Stortford

Let us imagine, for a moment, a hypothetical scenario in which the Government proposes that we take several thousand additional homes into Bishop’s Stortford instead of Uttlesford. Either we find the land or “they” will, it is suggested. Uttlesford is, of course, similarly threatened.

The implied suggestion that the supporting infrastructure to enable such a further large-scale development in Stortford is adequate is, quite simply, preposterous, and delivery of the development would require a cosmic upheaval that would make Stortford unrecognisable and close to uninhabitable.

It would require further land take and ripping out and replacing current public transport and road infrastructure, with all the adverse effects that this will have on the conservation area, green belt and current character of the town. Surely, we would use every tool in our box to fight it?

Our town council, which is being berated on social media for inactivity on the Uttlesford proposals, currently has no authority beyond the statutory right to be consulted by our local planning authority (East Herts) and even more limited powers to influence decisions made in Uttlesford, but it certainly has moral and civic responsibilities to speak on behalf of the rest of us. I have no doubt it will rise vociferously to the challenge when the time comes.

The very real Uttlesford proposal for land development within a stone’s throw of Stortford is even more preposterous than our hypothetical one, and it is beyond me that anyone should think otherwise. All I can hope is that East Herts, together with who-or-whatever else we can bring to bear in shielding us from the approaching tsunami, is mobilised and making their plans.

And what of the prospect of both? There is every likelihood that not only will the Uttlesford proposal eventually get consent but, in parallel, we in Stortford will also be tasked with delivering something similar, all relying on the same currently inadequate infrastructure.

Preposterous, I conclude, is not too strong a word to describe this madness, but I can’t find anything stronger.

Man might still be alive in the year 2525, but it seems unlikely that anything resembling our town will manage another millennium in any recognisable form. What will man and woman find 500 years from now? Not a trace of Stortford, to be sure. Happy New Year...



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