I know I've got readers from around the world, but I might as well provide a little commentary on my "local community", or rather my local newspaper. 
One 'bright' idea that made the front page regarding parking at railway stations: "It is not as if we're in the town centre or something here, no-one would park here if they weren't using the trains. We pay enough to travel on the trains anyway, I think the coast of the fares should be part of a package and you shouldn't be fleeced for parking as well."
Great. So people who travel by train but take the bus from the train station or share a car or get a lift or walk or cycle or just live close by should be forced to pay for parking their (non-existent) car? Somebody thought hard about that.
It seems my old school aced it's Ofsted inspection. Perhaps now they can focus on teaching people how to be intelligent rather than teaching them how to pass exams.
The district council is putting together an "Olympics Working Group" to see whether an event happening in London in seven years time might have an effect on tourism for our unsung little hamlets. Somehow I'm predicting the answer is "no". Why would anyone want to come out here in between watching drugged-up, overpaid bozos produce Coca-Cola adverts with some people playing sports in between?
If the general tourism industry in Britain is going to be affected by the Olympics in anyway, it'll be in central London and some of the easily-accessible places like Brighton. In between London and Brighton, we're flyover country - a land of middle-class pencil pushers with pretty houses that you can see through the train window while you slurp on your £1.50 can of Pepsi with rust on the bottom.
I can see it now: "What an amazing Olympics. Where shall we go before we whizz back to New York on our bio-diesel jet? I hear Brighton is quite nice. Or perhaps we could go to Cambridge and see all the university students toiling their way through The Usborne Junior Book of Science?"
"No, no, darling. There's this tiny little village called Wadhurst. They've got a couple of pubs, an Indian restaurant and a church! They've got a school which did very well in their Ofsted report back in '06, and they've got an almost dried-up reservoir twenty minutes walk from the High Street. It'll be so popopopmo! Plus, they've got this crazy-ass recycling center and a shop which sells clothes for old people! The railway stations also have some pretty major graffiti problems, and it can be cold as a witch's tit in November. Some of the local schools got together a few years back and put on a puppet show to raise money for charity. And their WI is popping!"
I'm having difficulty envisioning it ever happening. I can't imagine why.
