The Village "Destroyed" by "WAGs"

From the Daily Hate

Looking at Prestbury High Street, you'd think this picture postcard village had been badly hit by the recession. 

Dusty shop windows hide empty, unused rooms, the long-serving butchers and Post Office have shut down, and corrugated To Let signs clutter the black and white Tudor buildings - as they have done for months.

'The village is dying,' local residents commonly remark.

I know Prestbury very well. I used to work on the south side of Manchester for a while and stayed there for months. It was quite a posh and prosperous village. Sounds like the footballers have arrived and their wives go and do the shopping online or somewhere abroad.

Bill explains: 'It's stereotypical footballers' accommodation which doesn't look lived-in and half the time it isn't. That's part of the problem - they are always away.

'And meanwhile, young local people have been priced out of the area - children who've grown up here have to move out of Prestbury to be able to afford to buy a property.'

Those are young people who would, of course, be spending money in the village if they lived here.

You know what you could do? You could just build a load more houses. There's plenty of land north of Prestbury, and they'd then keep the shops going. It would mean that it wouldn't look like so much of a museum that it does now, though.