On Monday night I slept with a total stranger. I have no idea who. I was in a two berth cabin on the ferry from Lerwick to Aberdeen and went to bed at around 10. I was vaguely aware at around midnight of someone else coming into the cabin and using the other bed. I briefly saw a pair of legs, but without my glasses and in the dark, could make out nothing else. He was up and out of the door by 6. I stayed in bed for another half hour. So to whoever it was – thank you for being so considerate and quiet.

On my drive south from Aberdeen I was reintroduced to the narrow world of BBC metropolitan politics by the Radio 4 Today programme.

There was a lengthy item about a proposal to build new transport links between the major cities of the north of England. Local politicians, asking for a huge mega-billion pound investment from the government, talked about the opportunities to create an economic region that could redress the imbalance with London. The presenter asked whether it would be better to invest that money in London which was crying out for solutions to its traffic problems. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was quizzed about this potential investment. The debate essentially boiled down to whether it was best to invest large sums of public money to promote growth in the north of England (and thereby create a second mega urban sprawl to rival London) or whether the same money was best invested in London to ease the miseries of congestion there.

It was an utterly unreal debate, filled with numerous bizarre assumptions that went utterly unchallenged. Why do the BBC and politicians assume, without question, that economic growth is a good thing? Growth surely is not the solution to our current economic problems, it is the cause. What did the people of Manchester and Leeds whose homes and lives would be disrupted by the building of new rail-links and motorways think of the idea? Is it right that they give up their homes to enable more people to live in one city and work in another? What sections of the economy would be encouraged to grow? Would there be more retails parks and shopping malls? Why would this be a good thing? Is there any need for more people to buy, consume and discard more goods? How would new rail links and investment in the northern English cities, help redistribute the wealth that currently exists? Why couldn’t the individual cities of the north be encouraged to be more self-sufficient and independent of the world of global commerce – rather than more linked in and reliant upon it? Does prosperity equate with happiness?

So many basic questions went unasked. It seemed extraordinary to me. But then driving on a dual carriageway heading south with a BBC current affairs programme on the radio I suppose I was entering the real world again. Or was I?