There’s not many counties in England that don’t have at least one full-on, purpose-built university. There’s none in Cumbria, nor in the country’s smallest mainland county, Rutland – also, Rutland is the only county not to have a McDonald’s!

Somerset is arguably part of this exclusive club. We do have the University Centre Somerset, which I have no doubt offers some brilliant courses, but when you compare it to somewhere like Exeter, it doesn’t really stack up.

This lack of investment in the minds of Somerset is sort of reflected in the rest of the South-West. Plymouth is in the top 25 most populous cities in the UK, and yet isn’t serviced by a motorway. Only Brighton shares this position, as far as I can tell. Cornwall and Dorset don’t have one at all.

This inequality hurts the South-West in many ways. It drives young people away pretty much as soon as they are able – whether you consider that to be good or bad is up to you – to pursue their own advancements elsewhere. Not many come back.

This leaves behind an older population – again, can be a virtue – but in a lot of the more picturesque spots in the toecap of England, it leaves a lot of empty homes, where they’ve been bought by well-off city-dwellers as an escape for a few weeks in the summer. Or even as a project on Grand Designs. And then you have Kevin McCloud coming round every few weeks fretting about budgets and when the winter will set in. Actually, I think that bit is quite nice. I like Kev.

John Gilding