I should have been in Gibraltar today.

But thanks to French air traffic controllers my flight was cancelled and instead of spending the day exploring the Rock – including the World War II tunnels and cave system – I am at home in Cambridgeshire. Grrr …

Bit late to this but I wanted to write something about Mick Ralphs whose death at the age of 81 was reported last week.

A founding member of Mott the Hoople, Ralphs played a small but important part in my early teenage years.

Sorry to hear that Sandy Gall has died. The former journalist and ITN newsreader had a remarkable career that went slightly under the radar but he was up there with the very best.

He was also the first prominent person I ever interviewed. The year was 1979. Mrs Thatcher had just been elected prime minister and Gall was rector of Aberdeen University, having been elected to the honorary post the previous year.

Organised by Students for Liberty UK and Ireland, this was a far cry from the huge conferences and conventions hosted by the parent organisation in the US.

But I rather enjoyed the intimate, almost clandestine, nature of an event that was advertised and promoted at relative shortly notice.

Taking Liberties has moved. It’s also been given a makeover. And a new URL.

The previous platform, Squarespace 5, was released in 2008 and transferring the blog to the current version, 7.1, was long overdue.

The future of liberty is the subject of a special event in London on Saturday.

Venue is The Miller, a pub that features regular comedy shows. This, I can assure you, isn’t one of them!

I did a couple of interviews last week about smoking on beaches.

One was for BBC Look North, the local evening news programme. The other was for the BBC Radio Lincolnshire breakfast programme.

Great to speak to Duncan Barkes and Benjamin Elkes of the TaxPayers Alliance last week.

Duncan has interviewed me several times on radio and currently hosts the TPA podcast A Nation of Taxpayers.