I learned years ago that councils are their own little fiefdoms and, however much they may pay lip-service to working together, cross-boundary issues are always fraught with all sorts of difficulty.
The latest example was manifested last week when we saw the early moves in the creation of the next Local Plan for Braintree District.
The process begins with landowners putting forward sites which they would be prepared to have allocated for development.
This used to be a simpler process and more of a formality in rural areas, because, apart from the occasional chancer, landowners knew they were never going to be able to build outside the 'village envelope', as it used to be called, or in the green belt around a town.
But the world has changed and some things that were not possible are now possible.
Government targets for new house-building in the south and east of England are astronomical and councils are racking their brains and their area maps, trying to find acceptable sites.
This is how themind-boggling plan has been put forward which would nearly treble the size of a little village like Ashen.
On paper it seems ludicrous and it may be unlikely in reality, but the fact that people are even talking about it and, in the villagers' case, having to mobilise opposition to it, shows what a different world we live in.
South Cambridgeshire has been through this process, and it looks like a new town will be one of the answers, but villagers were again thrown into panic by the idea that there might be swathes of housing built next to them.
Against this background we still have the Suffolk structure plan which set quite a tight restraint on the amount of growth to be allowed in Haverhill, and has actually led to a slowdown in house-building around the town, however busy the scene may look.
When Meadowlands, and that whole area between what used to be Meldham Wash and the Rising Sun – but would now probably only be recognisable when described as being between the new Withersfield Road roundabout and The Fox – is completed, there is very little else left.
If you set that beside the continuing efforts of many people to improve the town's retail offer (that's shops to you and me), you wonder whether the two things should not work in tandem.
With a perfectly good bypass in place, there is no reason why Haverhill should not grow to the east and south.
However, what happens in Essex might as well be on the moon for all the connnection it is allowed to have with what happens in Suffolk.
If there is to be relatively large-scale development in this rural area – and it looks as if we can't escape it if any of us ever want our children to be able to afford a house – it must surely be better and more sustainable for everyone for it to be in Haverhill rather than in the villages around.
And that's not an aesthetic judgement – I like Haverhill, which is generally much-maligned, architecturally as well as in other ways.
It just makes sense for the population to be close to the facilities which, inevitably, growth would bring.
If Haverhill had been in the centre of its own local government area, development would have taken place naturally in all directions.
As it is, now the Gibberd Masterplan of 1970 is almost fulfilled, the skyline around the town has been taken as the limit of growth and any more will have to be squeezed along the western corridor on the A1307 and further and further away from the town centre.
The alternative is that we stop at the current unsatisfactory size and slip between the two stools of rural charm and economic viability, losing the one and never quite gaining the other.
But then, that may be what the bigger players in the region have in mind.