My reader, not you, the other one, tells me that I mention sausages too often in these pieces, so I will not this week. The humble sausage does represent, however, one of the main problems which have beset this country. It is the propensity of people to think in the short term. The sausage's image was ruined for short term gain by producers who used poor-quality ingredients.

A perfectly good trading relationship between Rover and Honda was jettisoned, at not much more than a moment's notice, because the then management could see the chance of a quick buck.

Building societies have been de-mutualised despite that process producing reduced returns for investors and higher interest for borrowers, for the sake of a few hundred pounds of short-term gain.

Those responsible were not worried about the long run, only about the immediate, short-term profit.

In the 1930s when there was serious deprivation, widespread unemployment and very real hardship in this country and elsewhere, it was a different matter. Then the important thing was to survive to the next day, on the basis that that led to survival into next week and so into next year.

Keynes, arguably the greatest economist of the last century, could remark that in the long run, we are all dead. But it is Keynes who is dead, and we are all still here.

The philosophy that a short-term solution is good enough because someone else will pick up the pieces when we are gone will no longer wash.

We have been warned, often enough, that if the West does not change the way it lives and uses resource there will not be a world left for those who come after us.

We have to be open for repeat business not just for next week, but for next year and for the next decades.

The countryman has always known this, though some of them have, from time to time, chosen to ignore it. He has instinctively operated on a different timescale from many others. The seasons, which govern the lives of those - whether gardeners or farmers - who grow things for decoration, for pleasure, or for the tables of themselves or others, are far more definite arbiters of time than months or years. The manufactured item can normally be produced this week or next week, subject to supplies of components. There are times of the year when you just cannot grow a cabbage.

Politicians, with their overarching need to be re-elected, are frequently the worst offenders when it comes to short termism. They seem incapable of thinking beyond the next election, and few of them make decisions on the basis of what is right, but merely on the basis of what is popular and politically expedient. They tell us all to operate on the basis of long term sustainability, but refuse to take the decisions on which that sustainability is based. GNER cannot plan for a sustained business on the basis of Stephen Byers's two year extension of the East Coast Main Line franchise.

Few actions would improve the chances of there being a genuine environmental gain as much as getting cars off roads and people on to trains.

The environment is not ours to do with as we like. We are accountable to those who follow us for our actions and for the state in which we leave the world. The sooner we get started with the improvements, the better.