THE Rural White Paper released this week is the proverbial curate's egg - good in parts.

The parts to be welcomed are the initiatives on market towns, the proposed ending of the 50pc council tax discount on second homes and the small amounts of new money for farm diversification, rural transport and low-cost homes. The government deserves credit for these proposals.

The £37m set aside for rolling out the market towns initiative being pioneered in Yorkshire to the rest of the country is particularly welcome. Our Market Town Revival campaign, launched in March this year, has stressed the importance of thriving market towns to the health of the countryside as a whole. The government's announcement is official acknowledgement of that fact.

To those who say £37m does not go far nationally, it is worth stressing that the most effective market town initiatives are not necessarily those with the most money thrown at them. This week's announcement is all about helping market towns to help themselves. If effective regeneration efforts can be pump-primed in 100 market towns across the country - the White Paper's stated intention - it will be money well spent.

Sadly, the rest of the White Paper was the usual collection of fine-sounding words and trendy concepts. A rural services standard, a rural policy checklist, a rural advocate, rural sounding boards all appear exciting on paper, but that's as far as many them of will get.

The triumph of presentation over content mars what would otherwise have been a laudable, if limited, policy document.