YET again I bring bad news. In anticipation I've googled 'how to deliver bad news' and the first point is to set and manage expectations beforehand.

So I should start by saying on a scale of one to ten with one being 'your fly is down' and ten being 'you would have won the lottery had I not put the £2 you gave me towards a large bottle of Lambrini' it's about a three. Maybe even a two. It's not that bad actually. The second point in the guide was to be quick so I should press on.

Last week a builder left five wheelbarrows worth of stones beside the road overnight ready to start work on a wall the follow morning. He came back the next day and every single stone had been pinched. I know what you're thinking. By taking our stone they are stealing our very essence, the thing that makes our landscapes unique and attracts thousands of motorcyclists every year who attempt to get home safely without slamming sideways into 1.5 metres of carefully arranged limestone. It's like making off with the Queen from London or a donkey and a boot full of light bulbs from Blackpool.

What gets me is that it would have been easier for the thieves to pick the stone off a wall as they wouldn't have had to bend down, but perhaps if your stealing stone in the dead of night you're not the sharpest chisel in the bag.

If people stealing our stone wasn't bad enough it came in a week when we find out The Wensleydale School's sixth form is under threat because of funding cuts and a national policy of centralisation.

Like hospitals, police stations, post offices, libraries, banks, courts and probably others that I can't think of, the trend is now to do away with services in the more far-flung places and make everyone travel to "bigger and better" facilities in the near-flung places. It's kind of understandable if you're an accountant - why pay two heating bills when you can squash everyone into one building?

But for a rural community it's just another kick in the bits and would speed up the leak of young people. It's also terrible news for the secondary school which I reckon would lose the best part of £200,000 in funding every year. Ouch.