One of the achievements of the late lamented Lee (Cider with Rosie, etc.) was to save his beloved Slad Valley in Gloucestershire from housing development. Which writer, one wonders, will rise up and spare the one remaining green field site in Waterlooville from the same fate?

Of course, it is very easy for us to say "no more". After all, we are already here; we aren't going to be evicted. The Presbytery, to go no further, with its substantial acreage of well-manicured lawn, is hardly the best example of good people-land ratio.

Still, one has to ask, looking around at our car-clogged roads, etc.: How much more can we take? Is it necessary? In the next 20 years, up to 4.4 million new homes will be built in Britain to cope with the increase in households: households, note, not population. Because many of these new homes will be occupied by single people, or single parents (and this isn't an attack on unmarried mothers, for behind every single parent there is usually an irresponsible, runaway man).

The fact remains that as community breaks down the land is gobbled up to house the fragmented residue. At the same time, our inner cities - where theoretically lots of people could live, conveniently close to shops and other infrastructure - are becoming deserted and rundown. We have caught the American disease. Mainland Europe, though far from perfect (look at horrendous Mediterranean development) has a lot to teach us about better distribution of people and things.

And what has all this got to do with the Gospel? Everything, because to the Biblical mindset the land and the people are one. The Chosen People inherit the Promised Land. The sabbath rest for the working people leads on to the jubilee rest for the agricultural land. We prefer to flog the land to death. We turn cattle into carnivores and produce BSE. We turn people into individualists and produce 'no-go' estates. As the Psalmist said: "Mark this, most senseless of peoples; fools, when will you understand" DS