Bandwagon Jumping.

How comforting to know that Westmorland is free of all major social problems.

No more worries about declining health services, shortage of homes for the poor, rises in Council Tax, traffic congestion, or job losses.

I say that because this week's press release from Liberal Democrat spokesman Tim Farron contains nothing more than the information that he has "written in disgust to the chairman of the Premier League clubs following the sacking of Adam Crozier, the forward-looking chief executive of the Football Association.

"His removal is bad news for football throughout England - and especially Cumbria," storms Mr Farron.

Which begs the question - why Cumbria?

The rest of the diatribe about the state of the FA does nothing to explain exactly what Mr Crozier did for the county.

Apart from the standard range of FA grants which most areas get, we on the Sports Desk can't remember anything to single him out as a great benefactor to the area.

Thinking about the reason for the press release, the words "jump"

and "bandwagon" kept popping into my head for some unexplained reason.

FESTIVE BOAST:IN THE bank at Grange on November 2 I noticed a big placard that said: "On the first day of Christmas NatWest gave to me...."

It had 12 little doors and the fourth was open.

I wonder if it is really wise to put money in a bank that appears to believe that the 12 days of Christmas start in November.

Even if they sort out the dates I doubt that the bank can actually deliver its boast as I can't imagine any branch being open to give its customers any sort of present on Christmas Day, Boxing Day or New Year's Day.

POETRY FOR 3d:SINCE including an old poem about the Allithwaite Blitz in this column a couple of weeks ago I have been deluged by phone calls and e-mails from people anxious to tell me all about it, which leads me to suspect that it must have been the only memorable event in the village for the last 100 years or so.

The most comprehensive memory of the day the Third Reich took on the might of the village is printed on page 15, in a letter from Michael Hodgson.

Meanwhile, Pat Lowrie, of Lindale, told me that her mother, who is 85 years old, remembers crawling under the kitchen table with Pat's older sister who was then only a baby.

Barbara Knipe e-mailed saying that poem writer, M.E.

Brockbank, was her father's Aunt Molly who wrote several poems and had them printed into a small book which she sold for the war effort at 3d each.

She even sold some in Canada when she went there in her seventies.

Barbara has offered to send me some more examples such as The Trials of a War Savings Collector, Our Village Hero! and London comes to Allithwaite for future use.

CARVED IN STONE: WOULDN'T you just know it - I write something about stonemasons who carved the letters N and S the wrong way round in ancient signs and the next day I get post and

e-mails pointing out that I had messed up by writing: "I wonder if their was a genuinely dyslexic stone carver working in these parts."

As I frequently take the rise out of other people's errors it is only fair to own up to using the wrong ' there'.

While pointing out my error, John Hazlehurst, of Dalton-in-Furness, wrote: "I think the reversal of letters such as N and S was probably quite widespread.

"I have a concertina made in about 1906 with the maker's address stamped letter by letter in one of the metal endplates.

The Ns are reversed in Kilburn NW6."