A question...

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What if the projections are wrong? What if, rather than the city growing younger and larger it grows older and smaller? What if the economy becomes dominated by the business of looking after that older population? And what if the older people who remain are the poorest and least healthy?

Residents of seaside towns, large and small, will be familiar with this picture. From being wealthy places of leisure and pleasure they have - from Blackpool to Bridlington, from Southend to Littlehampton - become just these kind of places.

The question for people in marginal northern towns - whether in East Lancashire or Yorkshire of the North East - is whether this picture is a real possibility for our future?

I ask because the happy thriving future we're being sold be politicians and planners might not be real.

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