Well I suppose, because it matters. Perhaps not in the great scheme of things, but to me and that will have to do for now.

It matters because I suppose I hate to see something that could be fixed just left to slowly die because nobody could be bothered or thought it wasn't their job to fix it. It matters because I suspect it conceals generations of frustrated ambitions and kids who had to move away because they couldn't find work or a house in the town they were born and brought up in. It matters to me because it affects the people who live here, the slow draining of any kind of belief that things will get better, because they don't. Year after year they get steadily and inexorably worse.

It matters to me because it kills hope and optimism and a belief in a future which is a better one and not a worse one. It matters to me because it is really no one's fault, not the peoples, not the town's, not even the local politicians or local authority. Not totally. It is a shared failure, and it shows. It shows on the houses and the shops, along the streets but mostly in people's eyes. The pride has all but ebbed away. The energy drained away along with the hope.

As somebody said to me recently, someone who has all the energy and fight still there, one broken window that is not repaired will slowly but surely spread its message around the whole town. It may be in a shop that has closed down, or an old pub that has closed and not re-opened, or in a derelict church or church hall. Whatever it takes it needs to be repaired and whatever caused it to get broken needs to be repaired too. We ignore the broken window at our peril. Behind it, usually sooner than later are broken communities and broken people.