Yet another rapacious landlord has their eyes set on Penryn’s industrial sites, and I wonder when it will ever end.

No sooner have councillors fought off plans for a Home Bargains on one bit of precious working land than someone else wants to demolish Rebel Brewery and put student housing in - a proposal being debated by the town council as I type.

Now, just two doors down from that, a national estate agent and the pensions fund of John Lewis -purveyors of schmaltzy Christmas crud - want to tear down Cornwall’s only climbing wall and put more students in.

While this would obviously make a nice quick buck for Buster the bleddy Boxer and those who tug his leash, it will diminish the joy of youth groups, young people, and even the university’s own climbing club, who would lose their base to yet more identikit shoeboxes.

And it’s hardly a heartwarming Christmas present to the workers of the businesses that will be displaced, including the crew who have built the Granite Planet climbing wall up from nothing with years of hard graft.

This is not something that can just be dismantled and relocated, it would take investment and work to rebuild, even if a suitable site could be found.

I don’t expect Savills or John Lewis to put people before profit or their pension fund, and the university has no say in off site planning applications, but I can only hope Mabe’s council fight this as hard as Penryn's fought Home Bargains.

Having pondered this overnight, the Skipper wonders if Mabe's Cornwall Councillor will declare an interest in this, considering he has a similar scheme for his own land just a stone's throw away.