A new development, including nine hundred houses, a school and a supermarket is planned for the outskirts of Haverfordwest.

Contractors will clear the land, architects, builders andworkmenwill be kept busy for months, if not a few years. Money will circulate, change hands, the townwill prosper. There will be jobs for five hundred peoplein the supermarket.

Wonderful news for the local economy and population. For too long Pembrokeshire has suffered from high unemployment.

Young families are hopingto buy starter homeson this new site andthere is an air of optimism and hope but, hark, I hear a rumble of discontent.

Some dinosaurs have reared their heads to ask hasn'tHaverfordwest got enough supermarkets as it is? This,not from a desire to protect the superstores we have but from a wish to highlight the plight of the small shop. Yawn, yawn. The small shop was wrapped in mothballs and fossilised years ago.Small shops I know make their money fromtheend of the day or early morning worker, someone popping in for a pint of milk and the newspaper,not fromsomeonetrawling for the family freezer.

Next moan please:What about Haverfordwest'sHigh Street?

In between the Shire Hall and St Mary's Church there are three banks, two charity shops, two hairdressers, a clothes shop, a high class gift shop, a public houseand a jewellery shop. The Shire Hall,with it's nod to Grecian architecture and Doric and Ionic columns accommodates some good quality restaurants.Enoughvariety here to attract a fair number of customers, I would say.

The next complaint: Why isn't Haverfordwest's High Streetlike Narberth's? I could offer some suggestions but can't see why the difference between the two streets has anything to do with this new development.

I've come to some conclusions about this whole debate. Boutique shopping is an entirely different concept from supermarket shopping. (Think delivery lorries all times of the day and night, remember large lorries have been banned from the centre of Haverfordwest so as not to disturb ancient foundations, frighten the shoppers and block traffic).

Choccy-box-town shopping involves buying artisanal bread at three times the price of a prepackaged loaf. Yes, I'll grant it's a different experience, but try telling that tothe workman in front of me who was buying six sliced loaves and ten bottles of pop. Heparked his truck in the car park and he stopped to buycheap food.

I rememeber the lamentations surrounding thearrival ofMcDonald'sin Haverfordwest. Letters to the paper, usually by people who hadn't set foot in the outside worldfor years, said there were enough cafe's in Haverfordwest without the need for the 'Big Mac'. This from people who had no concept of twenty four hour drive-through fast-food, free-toy for the kiddies and clean toilets thrown in. People must get away from the village pump mentality, 'y milltir sgwar'. We don't need this type of narrow minded parochialism any more, (if we ever did).

I find comfortin the 'inevitability of gradualism'. Change comes, like it or not, andPembrokeshire desperately needs it.Plain air isn't enough to live on.

I'm with Keynes when he says it is necessary to 'Spend, Spend, Spend' to boost the economy.