A couple of years from now, Britain’s record companies expect to be generating half their revenues from digital.

I nearly choked on my cornflakes when I read this sentence in Dan Sabbagh’s Guardian article this morning. I’m totally amazed that digital revenues don’t already account for way over half of record companies’ revenues, but apparently 90% of Susan Boyle’s records – to cite just one example – are sold on physical CD.

I haven’t had a physical CD player in my house for some years now. Sure, I can play via a computer’s optical drive, or the CD player in my car, but I rarely do. I’m amazed that physical formats remain so popular.

I’ve just realised that I forgot my “photo-a-day” yesterday… I’ll do two today to make up for it! Sorry!

Let the prayers remain in the agendas and let those who do not want them opt to sit out, because in doing so you are not being presumptuous about people’s faith and viewing your own particular beliefs as more important than others.

According to Ms Bisset of Southport, having Christian prayers formally included on council meeting agendas is the best way to avoid favouring one religion.

That’s an interesting logical leap, to say the least.

I am a dog lover and had many as pets over the years and I ask the question to irresponsible dog owners: why can’t you clean up after your dog?

This teaser was posed by Mrs Sharon Hawkins in a letter to the Southport Visiter. I’m not a dog downer, but I suspect that the irresponsible behaviour of irresponsible dog owners may reasonably be attributed to their irresponsibility. Any other theories would, however, be welcomed.

I’ve decided to give the site’s masthead a bit of a makeover, as the old one was starting to feel more than a little dated. The new one still has elements of the old: the same background image, the guillemet, and a bit of bold-italic verdana being the most obvious examples. But I hope the overall effect is a bit more modern, and a bit more typographically interesting.

The old one (see here) had remained basically the same since 2005 (see here), albeit with various different tag-lines, a couple of different size variations, and a short-lived change of background image. I can’t think of another website that’s had the same basic masthead for seven years – and the last masthead itself was an updated version of the original 2003 logo (see here).

Anyway, I hope you like it. I’m sure I’ll tweak it over the next few days and weeks – the curse of perfectionism, I’m afraid – but it’ll settle eventually!

The first argument against the Bill is that we don’t need legislation. Those who articulate this argument all of a sudden should be asked why, then, do they oppose it?

Because it isn’t needed, perhaps? This utterly bizarre defence of the Health and Social Care Bill by Baroness Warsi is car-crash online commentary. It’s poorly informed and logically flawed.

With friends like these, does the Health and Social Care Bill even need enemies?

Which of the following numbers represents the biggest risk of getting a disease? 1 in 100, 1 in 1000, or 1 in 10?

Almost 30% of Germans and 25% of Americans answered this question incorrectly in this study of statistical numeracy.

It’s an interesting reminder that healthcare professionals shouldn’t underestimate the statistical complexity of risk concepts: I think I’d previously have thought that these descriptions were fairly clear, but clearly they are not well understood.

Those readers who view my posts directly on this site can’t have failed to have noticed a few design tweaks over the last couple of days. I’ve been attempting to improve the readability of the text, and make it easier to delve into the archive. There are a few graphical changes too, to make things look a bit more modern.

A lot of the changes are really tiny – text sizes, contrast and line spacing, for example – but some of the more obvious ones are the improved handling of archive pages (which now show full posts rather than lists of titles), the ability to flick through the blog chronologically, and the vastly clarified “calls to action” under posts on single post pages.

The latter includes one-click access to similarly tagged archive posts. Unfortunately, few of my posts actually have tags, as they’ve never had any practical function from the front-end until now, but I am determinedly ploughing through the archive tagging away.

I hope the changes are to your liking – as ever, I’d be delighted to hear your feedback.

For all the undeserved flak it has received, Love Never Dies is one of the greatest of all Lloyd Webber’s musicals… the original cast recording sends shivers down my spine whenever I listen to it.

Charles Spencer was always a fan, but seeing an ever-increasing number of positive reviews of the Australian production of Love Never Dies, like Charles’s in the Telegraph today, fills me with happiness. It’s a breathtakingly brilliant musical, phenomenally under-rated and under-estimated. I’ll be amazed if it doesn’t return to London to rave reviews before the decade’s out.

Sadly, it is a fact of life that people do need to use the toilet.

From a letter penned by a Mrs R Anderson to the Southport Visiter.