Pah! What, pray, do you know about Nottingham's modern and medieval malaise?

Now that this post has metamorphosed into one of these Guardian letters, it’s the sort of question my wife may ask. Quite reasonably of course but after being married to a know-it-all for more than a quarter of a century she might have grown used to it by now...

They left out my first paragraph in which I reminded people that, in his rant about New Labour’s alleged malevolent treatment of the East Midlands, Simon Jenkins revealed that he considers 1938 to be “recent”. Since writing the post and the letter it’s occurred to me that the faux Golden Age, which he eulogises, was before the Green Belt, which he’s so eager to leave exactly as it’s ‘always’ been, came into existence. Even London didn’t get one until 1938...