Bah! Humbug...

It's good to be back, after a week tied up with a lot of other things that combined to prevent the daily output of this blog.

Catching up with the local news, it's an even worse diet of doom and gloom. A disabled Anglesey girl was refused the use of a tram in Blackpool in the rain, the MOD civil servants are all being paid bonuses for pencil sharpening above and beyond the call of duty, the A55 looks set to join Maesdu bridge in the competition for the 'Most road closures anywhere' award and Llandudno council - with uncanny foresight - says it might have to bin a large proportion of the expensive, attractive-looking explosives.

Now, even though headlines invariably make the running, especially when most of the country (and just about all the Labour party) wants to see the back of Gordon, we do need to look at the details behind some of these stories, because the truth is often somewhat different from what the agenda-driven headline writers would have us believe.

The little disabled girl can't leave her wheelchair, and the vintage trams in Blackpool are not built to carry wheelchair users who cannot leave their chairs. The company has apologised, and given the little girl a free trip.

We don't know the details of how, when and why the bonuses were paid to the civil servants, which - on the face of it - appears indefensible. But we need to wait and find out before jumping to conclusions - right or wrong.

The A55 - well, has anyone ever driven the full length of that road - or any major trunk road - without seeing roadworks? There's an almost warm, comforting feeling when the first cones appear, a sort of gentle reminder that you haven't passed through some sort of inter-galactic gateway and are still on Earth, when you start to slow down and join the seemingly endless lines of cars snaking their weary way through contraflows and endless corridors of worker-less coned tracks.

And the fireworks...well, it might have been a good idea for the council to check the same weather forecast that Carneades uses, which clearly showed torrential afternoon showers with associated blustery conditions. But they didn't, their roman candles got soggy and went limp which - in a rather interesting way - is almost an allegory for the council itself, and we were denied a splendid display.

But hey! It's not all bad. We're now rushing inexorably towards Christmas, the magnificent festive lights are blazing, the big parades already planned and the crowds pouring into Llandudno and Colwyn Bay. What's that?  Xmas lights not on until December?   A55 clogged, so no festive crowds?  Colwyn Bay being sold off for offices?

Where's that emigration stuff from New Zealand...