AN EPIDEMIC of doing Britain down is sweeping Britain – and it’s so depressing. UK Ltd is currently doing so much that’s right that instead we should be feeling uplifted.

At least Oswestry is glowing with optimism with good news about our Innovation Park and fresh interest in the long-forgotten old leisure park site.

So why, nationwide, are we being swamped daily by a tsunami of depressing news? Both Oswestry and Britain have truly rosy futures – particularly if we start to believe it – so please, moaners, stop wanting to do us down.

Gambling with taxes...

I’M CONVINCED Shropshire Council has lost the plot. On top of gambling £51m on three Shrewsbury shopping precincts – when its raison d’etre is to serve us – it’s now forking out a further £544,000 on consultants to‘process’ the purchase!

Its strange plans even include shutting down its Riverside precinct to establish mixed use. Has no-one whispered to them that the retail trade is a tricky wicket right now, with online shopping making hurtful inroads?

...and killing off trade

MEANWHILE, Shropshire Council’s plans to raise on-street parking charges to the higher level of £1.80 an hour – compared with Oswestry’s 50p – should really succeed in killing off trade in one fell swoop!

Not only will many not have enough change, but they won’t want to pay an extortionate amount!

By the way...

No wonder some Shropshire folk believe fictional Scrooge was a real person. A tombstone marking the body of an ‘Ebenezer Scrooge’ appears in Shrewsbury’s St Chad’s Churchyard.

HOW delightful that Prince William has launched a hunt for a new Wilfred Owen poet, just as Oswestry gets into gear this summer to celebrate our gifted war poet.

HURRAH that common sense has prevailed, allowing 2,500 solar panels to soak up the sun at Cefn Y Maes to heat and light several thousand homes free, from the sun, once installed!

FINALLY flats in Walnut Close, Pant, both tenanted and privately owned, have had their gutters painted black and white, so it’s hardly surprising locals have nicknamed them ‘zebra flats’.

AS YOU drive towards Welshpool, past Ardleen towards that two-mile long straight to Pool Quay, glance up at the flat-topped hill ahead of you. Look very hard and you’ll spot a small tower amid a group of trees. That tiny pin is a TV transmitter, repeating up to 300-plus channels to the folk of Welshpool and beyond – because they live in the shadow of the Wrekin or Birmingham transmitters!

Llanymynech links

A Q&A page in a national newspaper asked if any golf courses span two countries. After discovering Tornio Golf Course in Sweden and Finland, it highlighted Llanymynech Golf Course spanning England and Wales. In fact, on one hole you can tee off in one country and putt out in another!