"We've searched dozens of these floor tiles for several common types of pheromone trails. If there were intelligent life up there, we would have seen its messages by now." The world's first ant colony to achieve sentience calls off its search for us.

After a month or more of campaigning, the Fishwick by-election concluded yesterday in a rather substantial victory for Labour county councillor Jennifer Mein.

It would be dishonest of me not to own up to feeling rather deflated but I’ve learnt a lot, received a tremendous reception from others on the ward and feel I can deservedly view the whole experience as a fine springboard for May, when the seat once again comes up for election.

To be beaten by Labour’s leader on Lancashire County Council and by the woman who, up until last year, represented the ward for the Liberal Democrats is no disgrace.

But next time I shall have to remind my agent to wear his lucky yellow socks.

The Conservative (who lives just down the road) claimed she didn’t receive the invitation until Monday (three or four days after the same postman delivered the same letter to me). She also had a prior engagement.

The Labour candidate claimed the chairman of the meeting (the independent councillor for the Town Centre ward) would not be independent and that she had a prior engagement.

Preston North End lost 5-1 to Spurs tonight.

JALGOS has spent 46 years quietly serving much of Preston’s Afro-Caribbean community (which is certainly not to say that it is a closed group). It is a club which has hosted the wedding receptions, christenings, wakes, 18th birthday parties and family reunions of hundreds of people.

The club offers a dining club for its elderly members and delivers meals to those who are housebound.

It regularly hosts visitors from across the country and, indeed, the Commonwealth including the Jamaican High Commissioner.

If this club were called a community centre no-one would dream of sending in the bulldozers. If this club had an altar, it would certainly be safe.

Yet it would appear that the plans to redevelop Preston’s city centre have now changed such that the building will need to be flattened in order to create a bus turning circle.

JALGOS is the beating heart of a significant proportion of Preston’s community. It must be saved. Join Preston’s Liberal Democrats in campaigning for this asset to the city to be saved.

That’s not the bit I find remarkable, however. Someone called Jess Butterworth, from Walton-le-Dale, is quoted in the Lancashire Evening Post as saying, Children hear stuff like that all the time at home.

I don’t think he’s done anything wrong.

It speaks volumes.

The panto, by the way, sounds as though it would be best avoided. A spokesperson for the production company told the local rag, Our shows are for families and do not even have any innuendo in them.

¹ Look, I don’t have to like all the celebrities, I just have to have heard of them. And besides, that moment in Carry on Camping is surely etched on the minds of all red-blooded males of a certain age in the land. And, yes, they really are the first four famous people I could think of. Just in alphabetical order.

iTunes is an a la carte model: you see the track you like and pay your 79p. A big drawback with iTunes is that it has inbuilt digital rights management (DRM), which prevents you playing ‘your’ music on anything other than an iPod [my emphasis], although iTunes has begun to introduce some DRM-free tracks. On Napster, you can listen to your chosen music for as long as your subscription is valid, including music stored on your MP3, but it too is not ‘your’ music (you can’t burn it off your computer onto CDs).”

It’s always disappointing to see how the press continue to misrepresent the iTunes Music Store: you can in fact play iTMS downloads on anything because you may burn each track to CD as often as you wish and any given playlist five times. The dealbreaker with Napster must surely be that when the customer (and it’s nice of him to write) stops paying his £14.95 a month, or when the service closes, the music files become useless.

It would surely be sensible to view iTMS as a shop that makes life ever so slightly awkward for customers who want to listen to files on their Creative Zens, iRiver or other mp3 player (as well as cassette player, minidisc, 8-track cartridge…) while Napster is a subscription radio station that allows its customers to choose the tracks which they would like to hear each month.

On a completely unrelated note: I was nearly mown down at a zebra crossing yesterday. The rider of the scooter in question made no attempt to brake until I stopped, irrationally, in his path (demonstrating the pedestrian equivalent of target fixation). He left two or more metres of rubber on the ground and stopped within a couple of inches of me. I tried to say something like, Have you ever thought of taking lessons to use that thing? but think I may actually have said, Have you ever hungmpht dabrkl…

As the rider repeated that I should go forth and multiply out of his way (or something on those lines) and then tried riding his bike through me, I rang the police while realising that the chap was now surrounded by witnesses who were noting down his registration number and giving me their details. The police are coming tonight to take a statement. At the very least, they should be able to prosecute the chap for riding on a street which is open only to buses, taxis and bicycles and for not giving way to a pedestrian on the crossing.

The letter concludes:

Basically, if their entertainment is not provided electronically at the push of a button, they are lost. Exciting people? You’ve got to be joking.

Now I understand it: the kids were playing Sensible Soccer.