A BMJ article suggests wine should be widely available by the half bottle, as in the US, to tackle middle England’s excess drinking. Fab! «

Photo by Paul Watson, modified under licenceThe experiment in mini-posts seems to have worked well, and has received positive feedback from readers whilst being very easy for me to use. I therefore intend to continue with it.

As you may have already noticed, I’ve made some changes to the display of the posts to give them a more permanent identity, as I felt that having a screaming headline format didn’t really work for the mini-posts. For that reason, I’ve renamed them ‘My Diary’, and given them their own special design, which I feel works rather well – and I hope you do too.

Let me know what you think, keep commenting, and help the very discussion to thrive.

One government body (the rail regulator) fines another government body (Network Rail) millions. Who actually benefits from such charades? «

The fact that a member of the Lords can claim with confidence that nurses are promiscuous is far more intriguing than whether he’s right. «

Cameron suggesting US Presidential style debates is very interesting: It’s the first time the leader in the polls has done so. Encouraging! «

Any fool can learn, but without innate wisdom he’ll merely become a foolish irritating egotist. True intelligence is knowing when to use it. «

If the investigation into MP’s expenses can suddenly be expedited by months, was it planned to be slow or is it now going to skip things? «

“Local Authorities spent £1m bidding for the cancelled Super-Casino”. Will Government refund it so that local money can benefit local people? «

This is my first concise mobile post. Well, possibly my first concise post full-stop. I’m not sure I do short! «

The Sun says 99% of voters favour capital punishment. Wills said "Voters don’t decide issues, they decide who will decide issues". Good job. «

Mr Martin shouldn’t resign over his use of public funds. He should go as he’s a bad Speaker who doesn’t uphold the rules of Commons debate. «

Photo by velorowdy, modified under licenceIn something of an experiment, I’m going to try something new for the blog.

Previously, I’ve made the occasional post from my mobile phone when I’ve something interesting and time sensitive to bring you. I’m now planning to expand that idea somewhat.

Given the fact that I’m struggling to find the time to write the longer position-piece type blog posts that take a bit of thought, I’m going to try and fill the gap with daily bursts from my mobile phone. Through a convoluted process from Twitter, a Daily Digest of my momentary fleeting political thoughts of the day will be posted right here.

Then, on the occasions when I find time, I’ll expand some of those ideas into more fulminant posts.

Hopefully, the ‘Daily Digest’ format will be a slightly less irritating solution than making lots of mini-posts. I haven’t extensively tested the technology, so I guess it will be a few days before we know if it really works.

The most likely outcome is that this will end up like Guest Posts and Liveblogging. But then, this whole blog was an experiment at first, and it’s still going… For now.

I’ve just past one million hits for the year-to-date: That happened in March last year, July in 2006, November in 2005, and not at all in 2004. Given the relative paucity of new posts this year, the archive must be driving much of the growth – which is great news.

Peter Hain’s resigned (finally), MPs are being bugged, political funding has become the watch-word of the week again, and your favourite political blog hasn’t had a peep to say about any of it – sorry about that.

The truth is simply that I’ve been busy with 101 other projects recently, from applying (successfully) for my first doctoring job, catching up with AQA, working on other bits of writing, planning for the site’s fifth birthday, to actually doing some medicine now and again. I’ve been too busy to read the news, let alone comment on it!

As I write, results are coming in from the various Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses… I’d dearly love to be live-blogging the action, but that’s not going to happen when I’m in work at 8am tomorrow – so try Iain Dale for that (or The Guardian).

I should tell you that I’m now running WordPress 2.3.3, and the site’s SMS and MMS messaging services are temporarily suspended due to technical problems, which will be fixed as soon as I get the chance.

I will post here again before long – but, in the meantime, feel free to enjoy over 1,200 posts from the archive.