All over for Schumi

Michael Schumacher's highly anticipated return to F1 won't be happening after all. The neck injury that he suffered in a motorbike accident in February has proven too severe to overcome and following extensive tests it's been decided that his neck won't be able to put up with the stresses that racing in Formula One would put on it.

It's a shame as F1 fans worldwide were looking forward to seeing him in the cockpit again, and particularly seeing how he fares against the current crop of championship leaders, not to mention Kimi in the sister Ferrari. It must be disappointing in particular for Lewis Hamilton, who thought his long-held ambition of racing against the German was to be fulfilled.

So will it be Mark Gene or Luca Badoer sitting in for the the injured Massa in the next race - or will Ferrari continue to shun their official test and reserve drivers?

River access

I've been really enjoying "Rivers with Griff Rhys Jones" on BBC1 lately, despite the series' somewhat unimaginative title. In the first programme and in some of the publicity leading up to the series, good old Griff highlights the issue that while in Scotland anyone is allowed to row along any stretch of waterway as long as it is navigable, the same is not true in England: the landowners of land alongside a publicly owned river are allowed to place restrictions on how the river itself is used. This is of course both shocking and wrong - public should mean just that.

I've just read a letter in the Radio Times from a certain Derrick Hale of Derby , who likens rowing along a river next to his land to parking your car on his drive. What a stupid analogy; the equivalent of parking a car on his drive would perhaps be mooring a boat on his river bank. The motoring equivalent to rowing along a river is closer to cycling along the road past his house - something that nobody should have the right to stop.

A bad sign

A furniture shop in Eastbourne has banned all foreign students from entering. The manager of the Perfect Homes store, Chris Moffet, claims that this is because the students were taking fast food into the shop, sitting on the sofas and using the coffee tables, and in doing so had damaged some of the shop's stock.

In which case, anyone with half a brain would have put up a sign saying "no food or drink" - something that's totally acceptable and can be seen in shops up and down the country. Instead, the apparently brainless Moffet barred all foreign students from entry - something that is quite rightly illegal.

There's no excuse for a "no foreigners" sign in this country in this century. Let's hope Moffet is prosecuted; if he is, there's no limit to the fine a court can impose on him.