So, the spectre of the superbug is with us again.

I was talking to a bloke on Saturday. He who works for a company that makes a product that, they claim, can disinfect a hospital room to kill the MRSA bug. Basically, it squirts out hydrogen peroxide vapour and then sucks it all in again, with the dead germs.

This chap told me that the machine does a room at a time and costs about £30k. But there is a cheaper version available.

Obviously this chap had an agenda but there is evidence to back up his claims. I understand that all BUPA hospitals use this technology and they’ve had no outbreaks of MRSA. £30k is, in the grand scheme of all things NHS, peanuts.

But perhaps dead patients don’t show up on a balance sheet.

The people who I presume are doing community service still haven't finished the job. Perhaps it's a form of torture - give then each a pot of Humbrol and a cotton bud. Or perhaps, as some on here have suggested, they are stringing out a soft job.

Following on from Martin's comment yesterday, what do you think is the biggest architectural eyesore in Devizes? The old One Stop/Co-op/Kwik Save, etc., must be right up there. But what about the old Post Office? Or Tesco? The bit above Boots looks like a Wild West fort than.

If we're not careful, the Asize Courts could soon head the list.

A couple of days ago, I was banging on about poor customer service. On Friday night, I encountered the opposite. It wasn't in Devizes - although, as I say, it does exist here - but at The Pear Tree in Whitley.

I'd heard good things about this place. Mandy and I were picking Izzy up from Bath so we decided to stop for a recce. Although it's got a decent reputation for beer, it's mainly a restaurant. Many places like that don't have a lot of time for you if you're not eating. But not there. The landlord came over for a chat and gave us a brief guided tour. I don't think he's seen that Mandy was drinking the pink Champagne at £6 a glass so we were well impressed, and the food looked excellent too.

In short, this bloke didn't know us from Adam, but he treated us with respect. And he's gained himself some business for the future.

I hear that it's odds-on that Gordon Brown will call a General election tomorrow or next Monday. He'll be taking advantage of a Conservative party that has had the decency recently to reveal itself for the joke it is. But it's still a cynical move. And Lord Ancram will still romp in here. Don't get me wrong, he's a very good MP but even he doesn't claim to be one of us. He's old school, paternalistic Tory.

If you really want to see what the Conservatives are about round here, go and speak to some of the District, Council, Town and Parish councillors. Not those who they push forward, but the ones who sit and vote and do naff all else. To call some of them sheep would be an insult to our ovine friends. Perhaps it's tha nature of things when any party has such a majority.

Sour grapes on my part? Perhaps. But I still stand by what I say. And, it goes without saying that some of my Tory pals are very clever. I certainly wouldn't want to have my IQ measured against Michael Ancram's.

You might have seen it: the half-timbered, faux-Elizabethan building over the road from the kebab shop.

As a building in it's own right, it's very nice. But that's it. Why did the architects have to hark back to a former age? I guess it was to preserve the character of the Market Place. I take that to mean bubble-wrap it and oppose all change.

This is the same sort of attitude that led some Devizes Guardian and Conservative Town councillors to try to throw out plans for some of those blue bars to be put up in the Market Place for people to lock their bikes to. "We need more detail", they whined. Despite the fact that we were given plans, photographs and drawings. But I digress.

Of course development in our premier location should be sympathetic but that doesn't mean it needs to be homogenous. Many generations have added and contributed to the Market Place in their own way, and mostly by celebrating their own times. There's an old German saying that translates roughly as "he who does what his father did, doesn't".

I'm pleased to say that the architects and planners are being bolder in Snuff Street.