State Statistics and Pointless Pictorial Portrayals

Infographics, three dimensional swingometers and election straw polls will burden our lives until the general election on May 6th. Don't be bamboozled with flashy graphics that tell you nothing or figures that prove that women who wear bras are statistically more likely to suffer from hay fever than those that don't (or that girls are, in fact, evil).

Informative and fancy, though, is the constituency map by The Times newspaper. You can view each constituency with a brief description of the local topography and how the constituents voted in the past and the predicted outcome this time round.

Sex, booze and fags

Awaking the new year in bright sunshine, amplified by a sprinkling of frost hardened snow, the hangover of a weeks excess came with the news that all our revelry is making us fat and bankrupting the NHS. The health police have now set their sights on merry fat people now their prime suspects are a hardcore willing to wheeze alfresco in all weathers.

Of course there is always the argument that, like tobacco sales, with the £16bn odd raised in alcohol taxes, the £3bn deficit should be well catered for! At least other NHS initiatives are more fun, how about losing some of those mince pie pounds with sexercise? Safely, of course. You might be less likely to be disturbed with plans to turn 27.000 Norfolk street lights out for certain parts of darkness, but I'm with the residents of Langham who like the stars to do the illuminating. When first coming up here I was amazed at how many more stars were visible, even with our local light pollution perpetrators, with none of the endless procession of orange glows on the horizon marking the next large conurbation. Wonder how many stars you would see at the observatory in Kielder Forest, officially the darkest place in England?