Show ambition to avoid oblivion

Once the single-carriageway link has been completed between the A46 dual carriageway at Farndon and the A1 dual carriageway at Fernwood (Road To Riches, Advertiser, July 10) the long-term aim of Newark’s unimaginative decision-makers will surely have been achieved.

That is assuming the Sainsbury’s supermarket and the new Newark and Sherwood District Council headquarters near the lorry park, so close to the archaic Castle railway crossing, will have already rendered access to the town from the north and west impossible.

Newark will be circled by gridlock: the modern equivalent of the Civil War siege, befitting a town whose official commemoration is three centuries behind every other community in the UK.

With transport crippled, there will be no interest from ambitious companies in the thousands of acres of land around the town’s perimeter that ought to be attracting new industry and commerce to this vibrant meeting of major roads and railway lines in the centre of England.

There will be no takers for the shops and offices vacant in our wonderfully attractive town.

There will be less and less to keep even the most loyal market stallholders turning up to pay ever higher rents for smaller returns.

There will be no incoming families wanting to live in such an introverted place and commute elsewhere.

There will be no influx of children requiring more schools to give them a decent education and no need to keep the hospital open with the town stagnant.

The small minds will have won. Newark’s road to oblivion will be complete. Well done, everyone.

Or, preferably, freshen-up decision-makers; think and act ambitiously like all the towns around us.