Rabbit Thought of the Day

I see our cyclists have been at it again, one more gold medal to add to the tally. Bradley Wiggins, Paul Manning, Geraint Thomas and Ed Clancy, utterly destroyed Denmark in the final of the 4000m of the team pursuit, and broke the world record into the bargain. It was Wiggins’s second gold medal of the games.

This must be our best performance at the Olympics for many a year and hopefully more gold’s to come.

A woman in the US was arrested by police after beating up her fiance at a pre-wedding party.

The woman's 12-year-old son told her he had spotted her boyfriend kissing one of her friends at the party in Paulsbo in Washington state. The woman, 31, hit him in the face and then rugby tackled him as he tried to leave before punching him, breaking his glasses and throwing his watch into the bushes. It is not clear whether the wedding will take place.

It’s very quiet in the office today, it seems like a lot of people are away on holiday. Come the end of the week it will be me away on holiday, it can’t come fast enough. It even looks quiet outside; from my desk I can see the Dartford Bridge and very little traffic seems to be using it. It’s probably just one of those day, as long as it stay that way I will be very happy, although I have rather a few hours to go yet before I venture out on the roads.

Some stretches of Britain's coastline have become so eroded they will have to be abandoned to the sea, the new head of the Environment Agency has warned. Former Cabinet minister Lord Smith of Finsbury said that the agency was already drawing up projections as to which areas of coast would be most at risk over the next 50 years.

In an interview with The Independent, he said the agency faced hard choices over which areas could be defended and which would have to be left to be reclaimed by the sea. Parts of north-east Norfolk and Suffolk were most immediately at risk, he said.

While the agency would do its "level best" to protect those areas where there were significant numbers of homes, he warned that it would not be possible to save all of them. "This is the most difficult issue we are going to face as an agency," he said. "We are almost certainly not going to be able to defend absolutely every bit of coast - it would simply be an impossible task, both in financial terms and engineering terms."

"We will publish next year details of the work that's been done, where we think the particular threats are, where we think there is current defence in place. We will begin to talk with communities where we think defence is not a viable option."

Lord Smith indicated that the Government would not always be able to rely on insurance companies to cover families who lost their homes, suggesting they would have to be re-housed at taxpayers' expense. "We need to start having a serious discussion with Government about what options can be put in place," he said.

CANBERRA (Reuters) - A plea for lovelorn female "ugly ducklings" to move to a remote Australian mining town to reverse a shortage of eligible women has landed the local mayor in hot water.

Mt Isa Mayor John Molony was refusing to apologize on Monday for angering local women with a suggestion that "with five blokes to every girl, may I suggest that beauty-disadvantaged women should proceed to Mount Isa", in north-west Queensland state.

"Quite often you will see walking down the street a lass who is not so attractive with a wide smile on her face. Whether it is recollection of something previous or anticipation for the next evening, there is a degree of happiness," Molony told the Townsville Bulletin newspaper last week.

"Some, in other places in Australia, need to proceed to Mount Isa where happiness awaits. Really, beauty is only skin deep. Isn't there a fairy tale about an ugly duckling that evolves into a beautiful swan," Molony said.

The mayor said he was "telling it like it is" in a testosterone-laden town more famous for cowboys and mining lead, silver, copper and zinc than for match-making, sitting atop one of the world's biggest underground mines.

"I'm a bloke who respects women. I believe we should look after women. I'm told men outnumber women here by five to one. If that's the case, then perhaps it's an opportunity for some lonely women," Molony said.

Fellow council members and the local chamber of commerce said they had been swamped with phone calls from both women and men complaining about the mayor's remarks.

"It paints the women here as second rate and suggests the men will settle for anything. I think it's quite disgusting," Mt Isa domestic violence worker Shirley Slann told the Courier Mail newspaper on Monday.

A quiet day so far in the Olympics for Britain we have only managed silver today. But we have high hopes once again for our cyclists who hardly ever let us down. We have two good medal chances in the athletics, Phillips Idowu in the triple jump and Christine Ohuruogu the women’s 400m world champion goes tomorrow in the final and is expected to win gold.

The weekend is over (far too quick for my liking) and I am now sat at my desk once again. It been a bit of a funny weekend didn’t do a great lot but I still managed to fit in a couple of bike rides and a whole lot of relaxing. Which is what weekends are all about?

With only five day left at work before a break of 2 whole weeks, it going to be great. I am out of the office on Wednesday, I have a meeting to attend in London, and Thursday I have a hospital appointment. The way I look at I have really only 3 day at work this week, which certainly sounds better than five days.