A few learning experiences for us I guess but everyone raved about the venue so it could be good for business. We spent today putting the house back to normal, the bar and the mobile toilets were taken away and now you would hardly know there had been an event here.

So its early to bed tonight - particularly as we both have stinking colds - with the house to ourselves and Henry the cat (who coped very well with the disruption to his usual routine by the way).

This week it is the stunning idea that people who have actually lived in an area for most of their lives and patiently waited for social housing (council houses to a past generation) should actually be given priority over teenage mums, immigrants and all the rest of them who jump the queue.

Link this to last week’s stunning idea that people who are given council houses (sorry social housing) should not be given life time tenure but be expected to move on as they earn more - assuming they do. Believe it or not there is apparently under the current rules no reason why somebody in subsidised housing has to move even if they become a millionaire.

I wait with bated breath.

So it was left to the local residents and farmers to mount a blockade and prevent the gypsies moving materials and plant onto the site. Our friend has spent a good part of the summer on the picket line - a considerable disruption to her life as she lives on Merseyside. Needless to say once the gypsies lost their planning application they appealed and the local residents are now having to find between £35-40k for a barrister to fight their case.

Yet another example of the crazy society we live in. The Government is now saying it is going to introduce measures to prevent this kind of thing in future. It certainly needs to.

My attention has been drawn to the trials of a fellow sufferer as reported in last weekend’s Sunday Times. This guy through great generosity of spirit decided to build a respite centre for Downe’s syndrome sufferers in Berkshire. So you would think the local planners might want to help him achieve this. How naive can you be?

You’ve guessed it - they turned out in force to put obstacles in his way. Multiple planners appeared together with listed building people and all the rest of the circus. I wish this came as a shock to me but it is all sadly familiar.

Then the Bat Conservation Trust turned up and persuaded the council to insist on a bat survey (at over £2k) which led to the requirement for a bat roost at the cost of nearly £3k. So nearly £5k in all for doubly incontinent flying rodents. The world has gone mad. I have nothing in particular against bats but do not see why humans should be forced to share their houses with them. On hygiene grounds alone they should be banished. And it is not as it we are running out of bats - apart from one or two threatened varieties we are overrun with them. Old buildings and churches are infested with them and their foul droppings.

Out in the countryside there is a conspiracy of silence about bats. Nobody will breath a word about where they inhabit for exactly the reasons reflected in the Sunday Times article.

So come on Dave. If you want a Big Society where people stand up to do the right thing then you have got to get rid of all this red tape and specifically the army of public sector morons who apply it. Don’t consult - just do it.

Hypocrisy does not even come close. This was the man who supposedly went into politics to fight for the common man and take on the rich capitalist bastards (Labour left words not mine). Not only does he stuff the working man without any hesitation and make oodles of dosh out of the whole post PM circus, but now he is so comfortable with the rich capitalist bastards he wants to invest their money to make more for him (which he probably won’t be giving to the British Legion).

It was reported that he once said he joined the Labour party - rather than the Tories or Lib Dems - because he thought he would have a better chance of getting to the top with them (because they were devoid of anybody who could be dressed up as a leader). The Labour left have always been suspicious of him and events have proved them right - in ideological terms that is.

And the rest of us were just conned. He trained as a barrister and they all trade in hot air. This he proved he was very good at - little sincerity, no follow up and all just a game really. Don’t get me wrong; I am all for people making money through their own hard work but hypocrisy I find very unappealing.

Anyway only a small fraction of all the money he has amassed since leaving office. Earns more that Clinton for a speech apparently. Oh the sacrifice these Labour leaders make.

There was a great fuss round here the other week when the local paper made known that our local council chief (of the least populated county in England) was paid substantially more than the PM in carrying out his sworn duty of immersing all of us here trying to run businesses in more ludicrous red tape than we have time to handle. It now emerges that over 100 town hall bosses earn over £200k for applying all the rubbish we have to put up with - rising sharply at a time when other salaries in the public sector are being held back or frozen. How these salaries can possibly be justified beats me.

His reputation is for cutting costs to the minimum in his companies and stripping out everything that is not absolutely necessary. I think I would pay good money to be a fly on the wall.

And have you noticed how left wing the BBC is over all this? Every time there is an announcement of a cut they manage to drag up somebody to say that the world will come to an end if the benefit or public service in question is axed. Meanwhile the great majority of the public are cheering the pushing back of the intrusive public sector we have all had to put up with. So who exactly is the BBC representing with tax payers money? Time to get some balance back in our news reporting as well as individual freedom in this country.

Apparently there are a quarter of a million people in the UK who have never worked - in some cases several generations of the same family, living the whole of their ‘working’ lives on benefit (so its not just Urban Eric). And this at a time when the economy was booming! No excuse for this institutionalised benefit culture. Even now the Inland Revenue is running adverts on radio reminding people to claim their tax credits - is it me?

Anyway I have now taken the plunge and embraced modern technology - I have an iphone. I can now walk down the street checking my emails instead of looking where I am going, access the news and weather at the touch of a button and drive everybody nuts by listening to my music on the train. And to think I just used to make phone calls on my phone - how limited is that when you can access all kinds of useless information? If I get lost it even tells me where I am - unfortunately it cannot tell me what I am doing there……..

This is the latest thing in corporate entertainment and was laid on for a hen party here this weekend. For some unaccountable reason I have been banished to the other end of the house!