Vandals have smashed the battle axe from Wantage's iconic King Alfred statue almost a year to the day after it was last attacked.

The statue, which has stood in Market Place for 130 years, was vandalised at about midday on Christmas Eve, and the axe left in pieces at the base of the statue.

Mayor Patrick O’Leary and townspeople condemned the attack as an assault on the town and appealed to anyone with information to come forward. Wantage Town Council is offering a £200 reward for information leading to a conviction.

Earlier this year, a 24-year-old man handed himself in to police after part of the right hand and the axe was damaged last New Year’s Eve, which caused uproar in the town. He was cautioned and paid £1,500 for repairs, which were completed in August.

The science of demographic projection and the art of scaremongering enjoy a relationship akin to that of the sadist and masochist: first comes the threat, then the relish with which the punishment is anticipated.

Thus forecasts of increasing population numbers are guaranteed to produce dystopian visions of social collapse.

The godfather of apocalyptic demographics was the Rev Thomas Malthus, who famously proposed in the late 18th century that unchecked population growth would lead to starvation. Population, he said, was destined to increase exponentially in relation to food supply.

In the event, Britain's population grew from a hungry eight million in Malthus's time to today's well-fed 61 million.

Decentralised English government with new ideas, resources and institutions is a better solution than more metropolitanism.

There is, as ever, a beam in the eye of the London body politic. Glasgow East has been swept up into the "last days of Brown" narrative, and any discussion of the place itself thrown to the usual canaille of restaurant critics and motormouths. It was a crushing SNP victory, as core Labour voters must have deserted in droves. I thought Margaret Curran would scrape in because the aspirational "life-changers" were off on holiday; but there must have been a seismic shift, with the elderly Catholic ranks becoming responsive to SNP argument.

Common spelling mistakes should be accepted into everyday use, not corrected, a professor has said. Ken Smith says the most common spelling mistakes should simply be accepted as "variant spellings".

He lists the 10 most commonly misspelt words, which include "arguement" for "argument" and "twelth" for "twelfth".

The professor says his proposal, outlined in an article in the Times Higher Education Supplement, follows years of correcting the same mistakes.

Mr Smith, a criminology lecturer at Bucks New University in High Wycombe, listed the 10 words most commonly spelled wrongly by his students.

Why can't 'truely' be accepted as a variant spelling of 'truly'? Ken Smith

He said: "Instead of complaining about the state of the education system as we correct the same mistakes year after year, I've got a better idea.

"University teachers should simply accept as variant spellings those words our students most commonly misspell.

Aside from the cows, there isn't much in the way of traffic here. There is a bus service, but it comes only once a week and goes as far as the bright lights of Blandford Forum. If you find yourself here for no reason, you are well and truly lost.

The traditional cliche for pretty little villages such as this is 'sleepy'. But there's nothing bleary-eyed about the Dorset backwater of Chettle.

This is a village which defies every statistic and market trend. It has zero unemployment. Its businesses are booming. It has no problem with outsiders buying up second homes  -  because they are simply not allowed. Rents are way below the market rate.

This is the village the credit crunch forgot. Young couples are not driven out by property prices and there are as many children (22) as there are pensioners.

Everyone knows everyone and crime is virtually non-existent. The last intruder was driven off by a lady pensioner with a pick-axe handle. So what is Chettle's secret? The answer is enough to make a sociologist or a Labour MP weep.

The Cross of St George will remain above Poynton Civic Hall - despite calls for it to be scrapped in favour of the Union Flag.

The issue was raised at the Parks, Buildings and Highways Committee meeting of the Poynton With Worth Parish Council, held last week, where it was decided to replace the hall’s flag - at a cost of around £50 - because according to some ‘it was beginning to look old and tatty’.

While the Cross of St George has flown above the hall in the past, there was a suggestion that the flag should be swapped for a Union Flag - the Union Jack - because the St George’s Cross has in the past been used as a symbol for the British National Party, a link that has seen it removed from some public buildings.

Only £230 has been spent by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on promoting St George's Day over the past five years, it has emerged.

Figures released by Margaret Hodge, the Culture Minister, were branded a "shameful indictment" by Andrew Rosindell, the Conservative MP for Romford who is also chairman of the all-party St George's Day Group.

Mr Rosindell has called for a "change in the culture" and said the Government should be doing more to promote the day, after hearing that just £230 has gone toward raising the profile of the patron saint of England.

More than half of Britons think Christianity is likely to have disappeared from the country within a century, according to a survey.

Research by the Orthodox Jewish organisation Aish found that just over a third of people thought religions like Christianity and Judaism would still be practiced in Britain in 100 years' time.

Although four in 10 people said they would choose to be a member of the Christian religion, almost the same number said they would rather practice no religion at all.

Buddhism however, proved more attractive than both Islam and Judaism, and was chosen by nine per cent of those questioned.

A momentous, once in a lifetime exhibition

A campaigning Stokenchurch resident has been named a modern day St George after he helped re-establish a community centre.