Would you come and live here if we give you fifty grand?

I mean who wouldn't want to live with your family in an idyllic Swiss village - even though it lacks things that might be useful, like a school, for example:

The Swiss town of Albinen, located in the scenic canton of Valais, wants to pay people 25,000 Swiss francs (£18,900) each to move there.

The council will soon be voting on the new initiative, which aims to repopulate a community that has dwindled to just 240 residents, reports The Local.

Under the scheme, each new adult resident will be paid the fee, with an additional 10,000 Swiss francs (£7,600) per child. For a family of four, that’s more than £53,000.

So you've to build or buy a house and commit to living there for ten years but (and I do hope they've thought this through and have half-way decent broadband) if you're in a business where remote working is easy and are fed up with the hustle and bustle of the big city, why wouldn't you?

This offer masks a bigger issue with Europe's countryside and small towns - people are leaving them unless they're close enough to the city for people to be able to commute. And they're leaving because there's no work, no decent amenities and everything is more expensive. Perhaps the coming world of driverless vehicles, drone deliveries and robots will change things and make it appealing to live in a remote village, but right now it isn't and paying people to become residents is the only way to keep the population levels.

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