Now, over to the news where you aren't...

Whenever the BBC newsreader comes to the end of the national bulletin, he or she signs off with words to the effect..."and now over to the news where you are.."

Wrong. In Buckinghamshire our screens switch to the Beeb's central London newsroom where we hear lots of stories about unsafe tower blocks in south London, stabbings in north London, failing schools in west London and a daily winge about the Olympics in east London.

In fact the BBC has a major blind spot when it comes to Buckinghamshire, even though many of its staff and plenty of its "stars" live here. On radio, there's BBC Berkshire, and there's BBC Oxfordshire, but poor Buckinghamshire is lumped in with BBC Three Counties, based in Luton with a team in Watford, which, not suprisingly, concentrates on Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire. Rare sorties into Bucks usually stop at Milton Keynes, which is increasingly a law unto itself.

At least Aylesbury has a decent commercial radio station - Mix 96 - which gives a proper news service. In High Wycombe, with a population of over 200,000 in its environs, there isn't even that. It has to be the most poorly served radio/TV town in the country.

Reason to be nervously cheerful

The June jobless figures for the Buckinghamshire area, announced today, make encouraging reading.

In Chesham and Amersham, for instance, the number of people claiming unemployment benefit has dropped by a staggering 22 per cent compared to the same month last year. High Wycombe has the highest unemployment rate, but at 3.1 per cent of the working population - less than half the national average of 7.8 per cent - there's evidence that, as far as jobs are concerned, the area is leading the way out of the bad times of the past year.

Everyone now waits to see if the trend will continue. Some union reps reckon that up to 400 net jobs will go in the region following the Government's announcement this week to abolish regional health authorities and primary care trusts and hand over responsibilities to GP surgeries. And local authorities in Bucks alone estimate around 500 jobs will disappear in the coming months.

Meanwhile, businesses say that more people are settling for part time jobs rather than have no job at all.

But for now, a reason to be cheerful, albeit somewhat nervously.

Pigeon pie...first kill a pigeon (or try to)...

It was almost inevitable. As soon as the council in High Wycombe said it was thinking of culling messy pigeons in the town centre by hiring someone to catch them and break their necks - or use 'cervical dislocation', as the council report so delicately put it - the whole panoply of protestors descended.

A Facebook campaign; an internet petition; a residents' protest and letters bombarding the local papers (to kill them, wrote a lady from Lincoln, would infringe human rights because it would cause great distress to those who care about the birds. Even dafter, the council took the threat seriously and asked a lawyer to check that what they were planning to do was legal. It was.)

But from the majority of people in the area not a murmer, nor even a flutter. The fact is that although many people who live in the Wycombe area are "townies" who have moved here from the hustle and bustle of the cities, a substantial proportion have their roots in what is still a predominently rural area.

A couple of years ago one of the partridges that regularly swoop over Adams Park, even when games are being played, flew into the roof of one of the stands and collapsed, injured, onto the pitch in the middle of a Wasps rugby match. When Wasps player Josh Lewsey, a farmers's son, strode over, picked up the bird, and put it out of its misery with one professional jerk of its neck before handing it to a ballboy, he was applauded by a section of the crowd.

Some hysterics came later of course, but Lewsey was unabashed. He knew, as did most of the crowd, that he acted humanely.

The pebbles under the feather-bedded mattress

These are interesting times to start a regular blog about Buckinghamshire and its neighbouring areas.

The area is one of the most affulent in the country; unemployment is less than half the national average and house prices are some of the most expensive in the land.

Yet now, after 50 years of relentless growth and prosperity, people in Buckinghamshire and its surrounds face a real prospect of hardship.

For the first time, Government investment is being directed away from the south east, where Bucks is one of the wealthiest areas. Government grants to local councils and health authorities - which was already reduced under the previous Government - is being further reduced from a stream to a trickle.

There won't be many tears from areas of the country where unemployment is already high and where public sector cuts will have an even harsher effect, but the peoople of Buckinghamshire are in for a cold shower. Chancellor George Osborne and his partners are putting pebbles, not peas, under the feather-bedded mattress.

How will the people react? Revolution? Strikes? Street demos? Probably not

Stop voting Conservative for the first time in 60 years? That would be something.

We shall see.