He was obviously bad, he would probably have done that if he’d been working. No one should start demonising everyone who is unfortunate enough to have to claim benefits because of the actions of one individual. I am on Jobseekers Allowance, I wish I wasn’t but when the only jobs you can get round here are temporary ones you have no choice but to have to claim some benefits. I would never harm anyone and think those who behave like Philpott are the lowest scum.

People on benefits are the first to be demonised about how much they cost the taxpayer, but no one ever seems to think about the extortionate pay rises that MPs award themselves for very little work, or the appalling amounts they claim on expenses for things that everyone else has to buy out of their wages – all that comes out of the taxpayer but people are always silent about that.

On 30th March I watched ‘War Horse’, on 31st March I watched ‘Battle of Britain’ and on 1st April I watched ‘The Dambusters’.

I’ve just had Norovirus, so I had plenty of time to sit and watch films once the symptoms had worn off, though I would rather have been outside in the sun we had here!

Harrogate is still lovely, but York (where I live) and Helmsley are pretty bad now.

Councils being greedy with parking fees and business rates are destroying small town centre shops.

I can’t comment on Helmsley parking fees as I go on the bus from Scarborough. This is my reason for visiting Helmsley sometimes
http://www.huntersofhelmsley.com/ it is a great little deli, we have nothing like this in Scarborough. When we’ve been going via Helmsley to somewhere else we always make time to look in here.

Pickering has a great market on Monday mornings with a nice cheese stall, something else we don’t have in Scarborough. I’ve seen cheeses there that I’ve not seen anywhere else round here.

York has my favourite beer shop in the country – House of the Trembling Madness, but we don’t get there very often because the train fares from Scarborough can be quite steep when you’re just wanting a trip out shopping. Very soon I will have to rely on York for HMV, I will be very disappointed when our’s closes, I used to shop there every Christmas and quite often through the year. We’re getting a Morrison’s convenience store in its place.

Scarborough is a horrible, vile place for shops, and we’re about to lose our HMV next week. When we first moved here there was a good variety of shops – nice butchers shops, nice fishmongers, greengrocers etc, but as they have closed down they’ve been replaced by cafes pretending to be butchers shops and bookshops, tat shops (cheap shops), £1 shops, pawnbrokers, cheque cashing. If we want to shop in nice quality places we have to go to Helmsley, Malton, Pickering, York, Beverley or Harrogate.

Monk’s Hood (a Cadfael book). I am a fan of the TV series but this is the first of the books I’ve read, or even seen.

I didn’t get anything “unusual”, but I did get an iPad, which I have wanted for ages, so I had a great Christmas 😀

Getting two “thanks but no thanks” responses to job applications in one day, that always makes me want to swear.

My Grandad told me that when he was in the RAF in WW2 one of the dogs on the base jumped up near a spinning propeller and had its face chopped off, but that dog didn’t survive. I hope surgery will help this dog somehow.