By Jane Wenham-Jones

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SOMETIMES, when I’m short of an idea with which to delight you, I revisit the Isle of Thanet Gazette from the previous Friday hoping to be inspired.

If it’s all wheelie bins (or lack of them), councillors making idiots of themselves or moaning that they haven’t any money, and zealots banging on about the airport – in other words, no change from any other week – I turn to the last Sunday Times for a national issue instead.

This week I’ve done both, am none the wiser and had to check the dates to make sure it really was Mother’s Day looming on the horizon (forget my flowers and chocolates at your peril, sonny!) and not April Fool’s.

So, we have “secret Stigs” patrolling Thanet (tho’ not quite so secret now, of course, that one of their faces has been plastered over the front page) trying to catch us leaving our cars in the wrong place, and these undercover bikers have netted £30,000 in fixed penalties.

Speaking as someone who stops on a double yellow line almost every day of her life, and so has a special interest, can I make two points.

1) They haven’t got me yet, and 2) considering the scheme cost KCC £40,000 to set up and Thanet council has still to pay for bike maintenance, insurance and petrol, hasn’t anyone noticed that it’s not exactly making a profit?

What can you expect from an organisation that brought us Who-on-earth-was-going-to-watch internet TV and spent God-knows-how-much putting sticking-out bits along a narrow road that needed its traffic congestion eased, rendering it even narrower and resulting in – guess what – worse hold-ups, before they spent even more taking them away again. (Note to “Stig” – the reason we’re all parking in the loading bays and at bus stops in Broadstairs at the moment is they’re the only places not covered in cones and building works.)

Then, just as I’ve got over that nonsense, I find that Ted Heath is to get THREE plaques no less – because there’s nothing around to name after him at the moment and, according to Cllr Chris Wells, “a commissioned painting is out of our range”. I should jolly well hope it is.

Council tax is for basic services not artwork of dead Prime Ministers, however, gloriously they led the singing each Christmas.

Couldn’t Frank Thorley re-christen one of his pubs instead? The Ted Heath Arms has got a certain ring to it and I understand the old boy liked a half (as long as he wasn’t buying, growls my husband, who sang in Ted’s Carol Party and says our one-time premier was never seen to get a round). Though if he cared about his waistline, a glass of red would have been a better choice. For moving on, the Sunday Times informs me that wine is not fattening after all – or at least not for us women.

Apparently scientists in America (good to see them doing something useful) have concluded that the liver of the regular female drinker develops a separate metabolic pathway to break down alcohol and then turns the surplus energy into heat not fat.

Therefore, the thinking goes, those on the vino will actually end up slimmer than others who stick to water. Well, hurrah, obviously – nobody could be gladder than I – but don’t these findings rather overlook a fundamental point?

When you drink water all evening it is perfectly possible, if a little dull, to nibble delicately on a few lettuce leaves and some flakes of tuna. Whereas the moment one has a glass of Macon Blanc Villages, one is into that packet of Kettle chips like a tramp on a kipper.

The gold award for ‘iffy story’ of the week, however, goes to the Isle of Thanet Gazette for the report on Euroferries. Despite missing the promised launch at the beginning of March, the company is still insisting their service will go ahead. When now then, boys? April first?