Here is a story which I found profoundly shocking.

30 years ago Alan ‘Tutty’ Brough bought some Shetland ponies for his four daughters. When his daughters outgrew them he released the ponies onto Caldbeck common where they thrived, bred and multiplied and their numbers grew to 102. They became a well known tourist attraction. When the ponies seemed to get too numerous Mr Brough engaged a firm of vets, Paragon Veterinary Group, to castrate the males and the numbers stabilised. However the parish council objected to the ponies and they raised concerns about their wellbeing. Early in the morning on Friday 23rd July Mr Brough was arrested. He was held in a cell at Durranhill police station whilst all the ponies were rounded up by the RSPCA and taken to various sanctuaries. Mr Brough was released without charge that afternoon. When he discovered what had happened to the ponies he went to a nearby church and then to a riverbank where he hanged himself. His body was found by his 18 year old grand-daughter. His daughter Kathleen said: “We begged him to carry on and fight for the ponies. He spent half his life fighting the parish council to keep the ponies on the common. He got up at 5am every day to go out and gather grass for his horses. He spent every day with them”. David Black, from Paragon, said: “Of the ponies we saw, considering their management as wild ponies, the vets involved did not have concerns about their body condition”. The RSPCA at first offered to return the ponies to Mr Brough’s widow, but later withdrew their offer, saying that although there was no evidence of the ponies being maltreated, they were concerned that they might be at some time in the future. Many local people believe that the RSPCA have blood on their hands.
There is a support group for Mr Brough’s family mission to return the ponies to Caldbeck Common – here’s the link- http://en-gb.facebook.com/pages/Tuttys-Shetlands-of-Caldbeck-Common/143354495690305

I love Rod Liddle. He’s one of the few journalists who manages to be entertaining and thought provoking at the same time, which is why I never miss his columns in the Spectator and the Sunday Times. There was no question whose side I was on when Derek Hatton called him a “f****g fat, useless lump” and a “pathetic bully” when he appeared on “Come Dine with Me”. I was chuffed today to see a reference in his Sunday Times column to my appearance on “How The Other Half Lives”. He said he had watched the programme and was struck by the irony of someone from West Cumbria saying that they lived in a crime free area only weeks before Derrick Bird embarked on his killing spree. An excellent joke, only slightly spoiled by the fact that we don’t actually live in West Cumbria, which is an hour and a half away. But Rod Liddle is an excellent journalist and the first rule of journalism is not to let the facts get in the way of a good story.

You’d have thought that on a bleak Tuesday night in January restaurant tables would be easy to come by- not so in London. Our first choices of Zuma and Scotts were already fully booked when I rang in the morning but fortunately there was a table free at the Ledbury, a small stylish restaurant in Notting Hill which has just been awarded its second Michelin star. The evening was enlivened by the presence of a group who call themselves the “Wimps”, a wine appreciation society whose table is pictured here. What “Wimps” stands for I don’t know, but there was nothing at all wimpish about their capacity to knock it down, as glass after glass was brought to their table. The extraordinary thing is that although they seemed to drink enormous quantities, they didn’t show the slightest sign of drunkenness.

There’s a certain irony in the fact that on the very same day the Government has announced a series of measures to discourage alcohol consumption, which they intend to bring in before the election. The proposals include a ban on “all you can drink” offers in pubs and hotels and a requirement for pubs and hotels to offer wine in a range of glass sizes. Similar proposals had been put forward a year ago and had been quietly shelved after the British Hospitality Association and others had pointed out their numerous flaws. The proposals have been re-introduced solely as a vote-attracting policy now that an election is in the offing. The government is saying that alcohol consumption is on the rise. The truth is that it is falling- the Government’s own “Statistical Handbook” shows that it has fallen in each of the last five years and is now 6.4% below the level of 2004. In fact Britons drink less than the French, Germans and Spanish, and much less than the Czechs, who are the European leaders with a consumption of 12.4 litres of alcohol a year compared with the UK’s 8.1 litres. Most studies of the effects of alcohol on health show that regular drinking has health benefits, particularly for the heart. A recent Spanish study for the cardiology journal Heart concluded that in men between the ages of 29 and 69 alcohol intake was associated with a more than 30 per cent incidence or coronary heart disease. Which is good news for the Wimps.