I’ve just spent a very pleasant afternoon sitting out in the garden. My next door neighbour, who is a very keen gardener, recently “qualified” as a bee keeper and has a new bee hive. Since he acquired it and populated it with bees I’ve noticed that we seem to have a lot more of the little creatures flying around in our garden. A very welcome sight given the concerns about falling numbers of bees. Of course it might just be a coincidence or we simply acquired a lot of new neighbours. As I watched the bees working on our lavender plants I singled out one for closer scrutiny. He/she worked away on a number of flowers but never revisited one that had already been visited. How on earth does a bee work that out? The bee didn’t appear to think “did I do that flower properly? Perhaps I ‘d better just check”. He/she did it right first time and moved on! I think my brain is bigger than a bees but I find myself revisiting stuff all the time. If the computer starts misbehaving I keep trying t...

Well another bank holiday over and I hope you enjoyed yours! It’s my wife’s birthday this week so we decided to celebrate by taking everyone off to a Point to Point race meeting on bank holiday Monday. To say we all froze is an understatement! The wind howled and hailstones stung our cheeks! To cap it all we all lost the stake money my wife had so generously given each of us!! The one ray of sunshine concerned the provision of two fully wheelchair accessible toilets right in the middle of a field! Well done I say! Have a great short week!! ELECTION 2010: Key concerns remain over welfare reform Striking differences have emerged between the Liberal Democrats and the other two main parties over how they would treat disabled people on out-of-work benefits. Important questions also remain over both Labour and Conservative plans on welfare reform. Both Labour and the Conservatives plan to reassess every person currently receiving incapacity benefit (IB). Labour plans to start doing this fro...