It seems like there might be some progress at last on two of the worst areas of Trowbridge this week, as the old factories at the former Bowyers plant keep tumbling down and there are plans for the Peter Black factory, which has become increasingly decrepit.

It does seem to be taking them an awful long time to do anything with the Bowyers development, after their much-supported and strident campaign to win permission for a second cinema, supermarket and restaurants there.

Surely if there are firms so keen to move to Trowbridge they have signed up to the scheme then they want to be in as soon as possible? At this rate it’ll be next Christmas before we can do the food shopping at Morrisons.

On the other side of town, M&S, Majestic Wine and a Toby Carvery are the big names being touted by another firm as they hold a ‘pre-planning permission exhibition’.

The thing that jars a little about these exhibitions, with their glossy maps and brochures, complimentary cups of coffee and tubs of toffees, is that they also include a kind of hidden menace.

Because when you ask ‘what happens if the council don’t like this’ the answer, however carefully it is cloaked, is ‘we won’t build anything for at least another year.’ You can call that being realistic, or you can feel, as sometimes I suspect our councillors who have to make the decision do, that it smacks, ever so slightly, of a threat.

While there’s nothing most of us can do to speed up the progress of change in our town, we can all make a difference to the way it looks in one very easy way, by helping keep it clean and tidy.

This week Trowbridge Lions Club, partly inspired, I’m told, by some comments I made about street litter in a previous column, have launched a campaign to get Trowbridge litter-free, with a poster competition to start things off and events like litter picks planned for next year.

Which is absolutely marvellous. Because, sadly, when they do get the bin bags out there is going to be no shortage of places for them to tidy up. 

I hope their plans to start with the town’s youngsters, by talking to them about litter and getting them involved with their poster competition (full details on Page 13, for all young artists) pay off.

It’s really sad that so many of the green, environmentally-aware, socially-minded youngsters in our primary schools turn into the litter louts who leave chip wrappers and milkshake cartons blowing about our streets, or boy racers who hurl their burger cartons and paper chicken buckets from car windows after grazing at the drive-through. If we could eliminate the litter lout stage of development from the human animal – most people become very litter-conscious again as they get older – it would be wonderful.