I think the council will want to sit on this for ages until they think we've all forgotten about it. Which obviously we won't.

Following the disaster where the council imposed a £5 per person per day charge, it was first thought the loss could be around £200,000 – but now it could be significantly more than that! It will be incredible if that proves to be the case.

The hated £5 charge for the show was brought in to balance off the £70,000 'loss' that was made the year before. Some of us have been arguing that this so-called loss should be seen as an investment, but anyway, it now seems that figure could be four times bigger!! What astonishing incompetence!

The council Leader, David Tutt, has ordered a 'top to tail' inquiry. I have put in a FOI request to see what criteria they'll be using for this, so we can see if it's meaningful at all. I'll let you know in this column the response I receive.

I fear the council leader is missing an opportunity to apologise for the Airbourne debacle; it obviously needs to happen, but will be meaningless if he waits much longer. Perhaps he or tourism chief Cllr Wallis will make a statement at this weeks' cabinet meeting.

And I would take issue with the editor of the Herald who has said an option would be to downgrade the show to two days. That would have a massive effect economically and would just be a further running down of the once great show. I outlined last week what I think should happen to the future of the show in this column, and it's all do-able, if there was the political will to make it happen.

Race for the Whitehouse.

What a fascinating race in the US for the Presidency. It has been highly watchable all along, but now the candidates have announced their running mates, it's wide open again.

It's difficult to get an accurate picture of the electorate's feeling in the States, with all the pro Obama media here trying to give him that extra push – but I think McCains' choice of running mate is a real sign that he could just win it. I do hope so.

Barack Obama has the most liberal voting record in the entire US Senate, and I'm told Biden, his running mate has the third. Yes, he can make a good speech, but that in itself isn't enough, and I hated the sight of the football stadium in Denver this week all dressed up like a Greek amphitheatre as a backdrop to 80,000 Obama fans all screaming for their hero. All that razzmatazz doesn't quite hit the right note for me when it comes to politics.

Have a good week everyone!