Happy birthday to us! (LocalFocus)

The LocalFocus blog is now EIGHT! Eight years, nearly 1400 stories, and 100,000 hits.

Obviously most of the hits are local, but we've had readers from 186 countries. Here's a big hello to our one reader each in Kazakhstan, Burma and Belize - we hope you found the blog interesting.

If you know anyone in Greenland, please tell them what they're missing.

The countries where the LocalFocus blog has readers

Seriously, please comment below or email the editor on paul.hulbert@gmail.com to tell us what you particularly like reading about on this blog, and what you would like us to cover more.

You can make sure that you don't miss local news by:

• joining our Facebook group (Focus on Sodbury, Yate and Dodington) or
• following us on Twitter (@localfocus)

A new feature - Search This Blog

You can now search for any stories on this blog (or on pages linked from it) by using the Search This Blog box in the sidebar on the right.

Going mobile

We're trying a little experiment - if you can access the Internet on your mobile phone, you can see a cut-down version of this blog at http://localfocus.mofuse.mobi/

You just get the latest stories without the comments or the sidebar, but it loads very quickly. There are a few sponsored links at the bottom of the page, but that's because it's a free service.

You can click here to preview how it will look.

If you use it, please let us know how you get on.

Missing links

The Evening Post has reorganised its website and consequently a lot of older links on this site no longer work - clicking on them just takes you through to their home page.

The Gazette has reorganised too, but in their case you just get an error message.

We've also had to take the Evening Post headlines feed off the sidebar because their feed no longer gives the complete addresses. We've written to them about it. The Gazette headline feed does work, however.

Apologies to our regular readers.

Update 12 August - We have removed the Evening Post dead links. The Gazette search facility is offline, so we'll wait until it returns - we might be able to resurrect some of their links.

Update 16 August - We've located all the old Gazette links in our articles, so they should all work now. We've had no reply yet about the problem with the Evening Post headline feed.

One in a thousand

This is post number 100 on this blog since it started in the middle of January. It's now attracting a regular readership (thank you all!) of over 300 visitors a month.

According to Technorati, the blog search engine, this blog ranks at no. 97, 290 out of the 108 million blogs indexed worldwide - so it's in the top 0.1%. Can't be bad - mind you, I wonder how many of those are never updated?

If you enjoy this blog, please tell your friends about it.

Freedom of speech at risk from big money?

Not a local issue, but an important one nevertheless.

Uzbeck billionaire Alisher Usmanov - the one that is trying to buy Arsenal football club - has taken exception to bloggers writing about his past criminal convictions.

Letters from high profile lawyers have forced an internet service provider to take down the blog of civil rights campaigner and former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray. Others removed from the Internet range from Arsenal fan sites to (accidentally) Boris Johnson MP's blog.

You can read about it at http://freecommonwealth.blogspot.com/2007/09/disappearing-blogs.html

More4's TV report is available here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOKnhHUSrkQ

Despite the websites being removed, you can still find out what all the fuss is about - there are many copies still out there on the Internet -just try this Google search:
potential arsenal chairman Alisher Usmanov

If you're on Facebook you can join the group "Craig Murray's blog should return"
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5716459921&ref=mf

New feature - links to local street map & travel planner

We've put a couple more useful websites under "Local Links" on the right.

Can't find a street in Chipping Sodbury and Yate? There's a link to the Standbrook Guides online map.

Planning a journey by public transport? There's also a new link to the Traveline South West journey planner.

We read it there first - Steve Webb's blog and the Sustainable Communities Bill

Blogging is a good way of keeping people up to date. Yesterday Steve Webb's blog reported the debate on the Sustainable Communities Bill at least an hour before it was reported on Radio 4.

This Private Member's Bill, which has wide cross-party support, aims to give communities powers to tackle issues like the closure of post offices and independent shops, and threats to build on valued green spaces.

To take one example, between 1999 and 2004 no fewer than 3700 post offices closed - that's one in five. Many closed because the Government took services away and made them uneconomic. Other local post offices closed because the shops they were in were taken over by big supermarket chains that didn't want to run post offices. Now the Government is talking about closing up to another 2500.

But will the Government give this bill parliamentary time, or will they kill it off? (like they did with the recent bill to bring mobile phone masts under normal planning controls) - we'll have to see.

To read more about the Sustainable Communities Bill, click here.