A secret public? press conference took place today at an undisclosed location, probably somewhere in town, to reveal plans to 'Clone Nailsworth'.

This controversial news has shocked many residents, while a handful said that they were pleased by the idea. The rest just couldn't care less.

Dr Hatters-Mad-As, a respected scientist at the Nailsworth Institute for the absolutely bonkers, located underground far far below the layer of Inferior Oolite, said that multiple copies of Nailsworth would be good for the local economy (not sure 'which' local economy) and would bring some much needed competition to the only Chinese takeaway in town. He went on to say that the total number of jobs in the town would be multiplied by the number of cloned Nailsworth's, thus reducing unemployment levels.

He would not speculate on how this would effect the bus service to Stroud, which if also cloned, could start to become complicated. The anti wind turbine lobby started getting agitated when they realised that the turbine would also be duplicated, and thus be a blot on the horizon for any other Nailsworth's as well. Reading the literature that Dr Hatters-Mad-As provided, there was a small section on power (page 7), and it simply stated that an alternative to the wind turbine could be provided such as a small coal fired power station or a very modern and clean nuclear plant. These would have to be situated in the same location as the wind turbine, as the gene modification process was not yet perfected enough to allow 'alternative positioning' of alternative structures. (In reality, this sort of thing is more likely to happen by accident - Ed).

With regard to taxation, the tax situation in the cloned towns would almost be the same as in the original town, with the total amount of tax collected from all the towns being a simple multiplication of the number of towns, plus an additional 10% (linked to inflation) per town for the privilege of living in a cloned town. A sort of 'Clone Tax'. The current 'Council Tax Demand' letters would of course still be dropping through everyone's letter boxes once a year at the usual time.

A long term resident brought up the thorny issue of road signs, asking 'If travelling to Nailsworth from Birmingham, how could he be sure of arriving in the correct Nailsworth, as opposed to a cloned one?' This caused Dr Hatters-Mad-As to pause for a moment, and failing to come up with a sensible answer, just said 47.

Asked if the George Hotel 'carbuncle' would be duplicated, Dr Hatters-Mad-As said that he had added an extra gene into the clone process that would enable the cloned Nailsworth's to have a 'perfect George Hotel', a sort of blue eyed version. Dr Hatters-Mad-As became quite excited at this point and started to ramble until the nurse gave him another injection.

On the questions of risks, Dr Hatters-Mad-As said that there were none.

Nailsworth.com knows this to be a load of rubbish, as an early experimental failed clone of Nailsworth does indeed exist, in an unmarked hanger at the far west side of Nailsworth International Airport. We took a peek at it once during a stormy night when the power failed, and the security staff were busy having a night out down the pub. Chicken and chips in a basket were on special offer, with the first pint of lager thrown in for free. We could see the malformed buildings clearly, and it was not a pleasant sight. The failed cloned town that we could see through a gap between the door and it's frame didn't look much better either.

Of course, when Dr Hatters-Mad-As was asked about this he denied all knowledge of the experiment, instead, steering the topic back to the benefits of the scheme, which apart from the ones mentioned above, all seemed rather vague.