Country life gone to pot.

Byline: Sue Carroll

LIZ Hurley, waxing lyrical in Tatler magazine about the joys of rural life from her pounds 2.7million Gloucestershire estate, tells us: "People look sexier in the country." Maybe it's those rose-tinted glasses she's wearing because a new report from the National Housing Federation presents a far less romantic picture .

The population are not all making hay, as she suggests. They're not making anything - especially not money. Work is scarce, there's an acute shortage of affordable housing, local shops are suffering and pubs are closing.

Buses - not something Miss Hurley would know much about - are infrequent, and 20% of rural post offices have been closed since 2000.

Young people are fleeing because property prices have been driven up by second home owners and other countries are growing the food our farmers once provided.

Traditional village life, we're warned, will die out within a generation.

That's just a bit less than the 100 months Prince Charles claims we've got to save the world. Shouldn't he be rescuing his own backyard first?