Housing is the issue on everybody's lips this week it seems - if you can get past the taste of horse meat.

In fact as I write these words Cornwall Council is busy squabbling over the number of houses that will be built in the county over the next 20 years.

The meeting has already been called a farce by certain councillors with internet connected phones and to the casual onlooker it does have the look of a kitchen with far too many cooks.

As amendment after amendment is thrown around the room your pal the Skipper is getting sorely tired of listening to the various blowhards trying to save their political skins ahead of the all important elections in May - and don't even get me started on the promised vote to U-turn on allowance rises.

Meanwhile, as reported in the pages of this paper, communities in Mabe and Mylor have seen two hefty planning applications given the green light by the unitary authority this week.

You can argue the rights and wrongs of both these plans until the cows come home and indeed, in Mylor at the very least, residents have been up in arms since 2011.

There is no denying that we need to think about future generations and it is true that affordable housing in Cornwall is sorely needed.

But is there really nowhere better to build than on an Area of Oustanding Beauty and former productive market garden, as in Mylor, or on a perfectly serviceable piece of Grade 3a agricultural land that the parish council wanted retained, as in Mabe?

Perhaps it was best put by a particularly eloquent commenter on the Packet's website, who said: “So long as the job of providing 'affordable' homes is effectively outsourced to the rapacious will of the free market then only one mantra will mean anything anymore: If it's cheap, build on it.”

It's down to greater minds than mine to decide the future of our great county - it's just a shame there's such a lack of them up at New County Hall.