There is an old saying that you should live as though you are going to die tomorrow, and farm as though you are going to farm forever. It encourages farmers to understand that the decisions they make in their everyday business lives affects their heirs and successors and also the communities surrounding them.

If you chop down a tree or plant one, the effect is felt for decades, and often for centuries.

Either decision might prove to have been wrong. It is easy to foretell the future, more difficult to get it right.

Getting even most of the decisions correct is a fair achievement. It is important if the decisions are not reversible in the short term.

We all depend on each other's ability to get things right. There has been plenty of evidence in the countryside of the effect of agricultural decline over the past decade, and last year's foot and mouth outbreak emphasised the problems.

One of the ways in which country dwellers have recently made a living, or at least part of a living, is by the providing tourist accommodation.

They have done it either modestly in the home or on a larger scale, by converting bigger houses into country hotels and restaurants. It has brought much-needed cash into local businesses.

Some traditional public houses have struggled over the last few years, but many have prospered, especially by specialising in providing food and rooms for the many people who want to visit York.

Not all visitors are tourists. Some come here to do business, but choose to stay in the rural areas and not in York itself. However, in summer most of those wanting to visit York and the surrounding areas, are tourists, many from abroad.

They bring revenue not only to rural businesses, but also, massively, to York itself.

Everyone from the bus companies to the hotels and restaurants benefits by their presence.

It is vital to keep them coming, preferably in bigger and bigger numbers. The traditional industries upon which the York area depended, which employed huge numbers of people, do not now do so. Some, such as the York Carriage Works have closed, others employ fewer people because of automation and rationalisation. York, and the surrounding areas, needs the tourists.

Why do they come? They come because York has a great range of historic attractions, which lure people because they are there, and some modern ones which attract people because that is what they are designed to do.

The Minster and the City Walls are world-class historic features. York is full of interesting ancient buildings, the churches, the museums, the many Georgian houses and streets. It is a lovely place, with only a few modern errors such as Stonebow House.

Changes such as stopping the traffic going past the Minster have been a huge benefit, as has the development of the Park And Ride system. All these are modern improvements.

The number of sites remaining to be developed, within the city walls, is now small.

It is important to get it right. Clearly Piccadilly is in need of alteration. But does the development have to encroach into the area round Clifford's Tower? Does York centre really now need more shopping space?

I find it difficult to imagine that there is anything one needs or wants which cannot be bought already. The rates bill might be quite nice for the council I suppose.

Can't the powers-that-be not think of anything more imaginative than another shopping centre, which will seriously detract from the existing shops and nearby historic buildings?

Updated: 10:32 Tuesday, May 28, 2002