As Brighton and Hove's planning system is widely recognised as hard-pressed to cope with the current crop of applications - something partly caused by time spent upon wayward schemes - one need not be unduly fazed by the far-fetched if sometimes stimulating ideas posited by Anthony Seldon in his view of the future, which The Argus wittily chose to publish on Friday the 13th.

One must, however, be alert to the noises made - literally so - over an "international" airport. So much for sustainability.

Anybody who has lived in the west of London knows the misery of low-flying jets. We can be sure any claims that these could be directed over the sea would, in the event, prove worthless, such are the different needs of take-off and landing as well as the holding patterns and redirections caused by operational circumstances?

This threat of an "international" airport is already proving a central issue in discussions about the spring election.

The parties that take a stand against it will be at an advantage.

Curiously, Anthony Seldon revives the failed idea of a directly-elected mayor but does not mention one of Brighton and Hove's distinctive successes: One of the country's most informed, interlinked groups of pressure groups whose accrued knowledge and resources can be deployed as future circumstances require.

Meanwhile, in the east, Dr Seldon's plan to demolish Peacehaven was anticipated by a 1926 article in which Virginia Woolf asked of it: "Would it much affect us if a sea monster erected his horrid head off the coast of Sussex and licked up the entire population... and then sank to the bottom of the sea?"

Perhaps this is the eye-catching stunt which, in Dr Seldon's vision, would bring the international attention he craves.

The rest of us would simply be happy to get on with our lives.

-Christopher Hawtree, Westbourne Gardens, Hove