Alton Towers protest is so short-sighted

Call me unsympathetic to trees, but have parish councillors on the patch where Alton Towers operates lost their marbles?
If they haven't, perhaps they took one too many turns on the theme-park's Corkscrew ride before it was dismantled last year.
Because some of these parish representatives are apparently opposing plans for a new rollercoaster to replace the iconic yellow one, which was pulled down before Christmas.
Parish council chariman Tony Moult says the scheme will "encroach" on woodland.
Is he mad?
In an ideal world, the trees would be left alone, and residents living near Alton Towers wouldn't be disturbed by this attraction which provides Staffordshire jobs for thousands of people and brings in millions of pounds to the local economy.
But we're not living in an ideal world. We're living in a pretty dismal one at the moment. Just ask the poor workers from Wedgwood, JCB and countless more big business names who have lost their livelihoods.
There's a credit crunch on. No. Let's be honest. We're in recession, and anything that can safeguard jobs, or create new ones, should be welcomed.
I'm all for close-knit communities and people standing up for what they believe in.
But sometimes - as is the case with these whining councillors - you have to forget parochialism and see the bigger picture.

Doom and gloom at JCB

You know the credit crunch is truly biting when a company as big and iconically British as JCB stars to massacre its workforce.
I reckon most casual observers might have thought the 400-odd redundancies announced by the digger manufacturer earlier this week would have been enough.
But it seems the future looks grim for those left behind. According to my local paper, The Sentinel, JCB, based at Rocester, near Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, are now giving their workers an ubearable ultimatum: choose to reduce the number of hours you work (and brass you take home) or risk many more job cuts.
The economic gloom being experienced across the board already feels like it has lasted a lifetime. Soaring shopping bills (bad news when you can eat for Britain like me); a collapsing housing market; rocketing gas and electricity bills; and banking chaos.
You'd like to think that companies with as robust an image as JCB were equipped to weather the storm better than most. After all, the firm has enjoyed such phenomenal success from humble beginnings in a garage in Uttoxeter.
Yet there's no escaping it. The future's looking grim, and if firms like JCB are to slash their workforce, what hope is there for less mighty businesses out there?