Well, a quick review of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursdays racing and it was a bit of a kick in the teeth for a couple of the Irish superstars, especially Zaidpour and Mikael D'Haguenet who both went off solid, odds on favourites and both got turned over. I still think Zaidpour will come good as he was only beaten by a neck and it may just be a slight blip, but the worry is for Mikael, who after a lengthy stint on the sidelines looked to be cruising when slipping at Fairyhouse a couple of weeks back. My view on Thursday was that, if he gets round, he wins. How wrong was I? A poor performance saw him beaten comfortably into 5th - Mr Mullins needs to think long and hard what route to take this horse down - the sensible route would be to ease him in and stay away from the Grade 1's until he's firing on all cylinders, but I'm sure Willie Mullins knows a fair bit more than me, and he'll get it back to winning ways before we know it.

First of all, I have nothing against Liverpool or the fans per se. In fact, I always quite enjoy them coming to SJP as they at least try to make a bit of noise (well every season but this one...). Mind you, those daft flags they bring with them with poems scrawled all over them are a bit self indulgent and sickly. My gripe lies mainly with the national press here.

England have retained the Ashes, however, Australia can still draw the series with a win in Sydney at the "New Years test", let's take a local and parochial view of the Aussie test venue.

Sydney is the birthplace of modern Australia, being the first settlement on the continent and the first landing point of Captain Cook in 1770.

You should see my house - it looks like a bomb's hit it. And we didn't even host Christmas. No, we are just back from a week in Ireland, staying at my aunt and uncle's house with the rest of my extended family.

Seventeen of us ate three meals a day, opened our own bodies' weight in presents and drank almost as much wine. Yet it is my home - the one we left at 5am on Christmas Eve in a scene reminiscent of Home Alone - that is currently groaning under the aftermath of festivity: suitcases half unpacked in the hall, bags of laundry, and a small mountain of glitter (our Dyson conked out when it heard my daughter's plans of sparkly cards for all). Clearly, I have a lot to learn.

We got the usual gift of NUFC - a miserable Christmas. We seem unable to put results together at this time of year.

The coalition has decided regional development agencies will be wound up by April 2012. But could that date be brought forward?

That is the warning from RDA Yorkshire Forward. On top of that, the agency's top brass has expressed alarm at the sale of assets and transfer of responsibilities - with little steer coming from Government despite an apparent deadline of January for RDAs to come up with a plan to deal with assets.

Before day 3 cricket, we visited the tourist attraction of Captain Cook's cottage just 300m from the MCG. So here's the trick question (background: The first European settlement in Australia was in 1788 at Sydney):
Q: Where is the oldest building in Australia and when was it built?

Following the disappointment of the King George meeting at Kempton being knocked on the head and moved back to July or some other ridiculous date, along, in what can only be an attempt to spoil my Christmas, Tuesday and Wednesday look to supply us with some decent racing instead of my pet hate, the all weather nonsense

This is not small beer. Assets worth half a billion quid are at stake. But the coalition has seen it fit to keep plans to flog the assets of regional development agencies (RDAs) under lock and key.

But do not taxpayers have a right to know what will happen to our money, especially when it involves such large sums? And many of those sites have been seen as key to development of local economies - a cross-party committee of MPs thinks so.

We had a pleasant evening after day one at my friend Bryan's house in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, happy with the first days play with the Poms comfortable on-top. Day 2 started with England 59 runs ahead and 10 wickets in-hand, I think everyone expected England to comfortably secure an unassailable lead, but life is never as you expect.