A few months ago the excellent family-run ironmonger in a village near where I live announced it was seeking a buyer. More recently it has announced that in January it will close for good.

The result is that a village loses its most prominent shop, the one which was most likely to bring in people from further afield who would then make purchases at other shops in the village or buy a coffee in a café or have lunch at a restaurant.

Jobs will be lost, footfall will drop, spending reduce and the ratchet of decline tightens a further notch. Meanwhile, our beloved national water company has closed the road through the village, its main street, for several months in the run-up to Christmas, just to help things along.

Who is to blame for the hollowing out of our towns and villages? Mostly it is you and me. Sometimes we go to one of the shopping malls or a city centre but increasingly we buy on-line from the comfort of our sofa. The absolutely must-have printer cartridge is then delivered by somebody, always in a rush, the next day, having been plucked from a warehouse near Nottingham and driven overnight to a depot in Scotland.

People shake their heads and sigh at the decline in our........

© Herald Scotland