It could have been an anti climax. It could have been a mobile apathy zone. It could have rained.

The sun is out, and the crooks are smiling, as once again it gives them a unique opportunity to pay an uninvited visit to your home through that open window or the door left ajar, before walking off with some loot and leaving behind a legacy of misery.

Another day another council planner telling us how to live our lives . . .

It is to the shame of Britain that foreign cities and landscapes are pristine and litter-free, while over here they are a litter-strewn disgrace.

With this week being Local Newspaper Week you would expect us to blow our own trumpet, but it is pleasing for all those who have the interests of local newspapers and the communities that they serve at heart that the Queen has shown herself to be a champion of local journalism.

No doubt David Cameron will see the £3.7 billion owed by absent parents in child maintenance as evidence of a broken society, but it is also evidence of a broken bureaucracy.

In the middle of the night, when virtually everybody is tucked up asleep, Shropshire’s street lights stay on, burning up energy and burning up money uselessly.

As today’s jobless figures are analysed and pored over for every last trend and twitch of the economy, human stories raise the question of how much faith we should put in the official figures.

Shropshire’s parks should be places of fun and relaxation for families and children, not places where boozed-fuelled yobbery rules and drunks claim permanent ownership of the park benches.

We should be doing everything in our power to help cash-strapped families during this time of recession. So it is depressing to see that Rip-off Britain is still very much alive and kicking.

Ditherington Flax Mill should be a jewel in the crown for Shrewsbury. Instead it has become a millstone around the town’s neck.

If you are having no luck in winning the lottery, there is a lucrative alternative – land yourself a top job on a council.