IS it appealing or appalling - the concept of a "growth corridor" spanning Northern England, to challenge the "hothouse" of the South-East?

Running from Liverpool to Hull, with a spur up the A1 to Tyneside, the corridor is the brainchild of Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott. Need one say more? Yes.

Mr Prescott promotes his idea as The Northern Way, which evokes images of rucksacked walkers striding over stern fells. But what will stride over the Pennines, stomp up the Vale of York and doubtless fan out elsewhere will be an unbroken column of grot, a wilderness of big sheds stretching from coast to coast.

Of course, the businesses they house will enjoy excellent transport links. But what little is left of the North's countryside outside national parks will vanish under corrugated tin, concrete and tarmac, all bathed at night in hideous light.

Among its keenest proponents, found in Mr Prescott's beloved Regional Development Agencies, this tawdry ribbon is dignified with the title "linear city". But it will have no heart or soul. Rather it will debase the environment of the communities it binds by grot. What Terry Hodgkinson, chairman of Yorkshire Forward, the Yorkshire region's RDA, calls the corridor's "connectivity" will blur the distinction between places, urbanise swathes of landscape, and make it harder for millions to find respite from built-up Britain - the refreshment we all need - without having to travel to remote places.

The new face of industrialism, this is worse than the old in not being confined by source materials. And if, as the backers of The Northern Way insist, a vast growth corridor is the key to improving schools, housing and hospitals, this betrays a terrible failure of imagination and will to achieve something better. If our small island is not to become a madhouse, development needs to be compact and well-ordered, not strung out far and wide.

MEANWHILE... Once again we are meant to be excited by a newly-discovered dot in the solar system - the tiny planet Sedna. With such discoveries, in our own galaxy and beyond, coming thick and fast, is it not ironic that ever-worsening light pollution is blanking out the stars that have been visible to the naked eye since the time of Adam and Eve?

Though some modern outdoor lights are designed to minimise (though not eliminate) light pollution, the main source of the problem, too much lighting, remains unaddressed. A farmhouse outside my village that recently changed hands now has two very glaring security lights shining all night. A sports' field not far away is getting floodlights.

More lights are going up on the expanded local industrial estate, a new line of highway lights miles away on the edge of Middlesbrough has popped into view, and the other day at the garden centre I saw an elderly couple sizing up garden lights. I thought: No hope.

ISN'T Information Technology wonderful?. On the back of a bus I read: "Find out where this bus goes. Visit www.Arriva.co.uk.'' Just think of all the trouble you would have had to go through years ago - reading the bus's destination board.

ICONIC. No newspaper piece is now complete without this, er, iconic word. So here it is: iconic.