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I'm back! Apologies for the extended absence.

I whisked myself away from it all to the US last week to hide from that significant birthday I mentioned. (I've somehow convinced myself it never happened - time differences etc).

I was expecting to battle snow and Arctic temperatures during my stay in New York, but actually it was colder here and I barely saw a flake until I flew back!

I thought it would be a quiet time while I was away, but it's been anything but.

Apart from Britain turning into a "White Hell", I seem to have missed several things of note.

for one (it seems we're going to need every ounce of political stamina to last the distance).

And . (What is it about Labour, they just seem to be lousy plotters.)

There were rumours of a North East connection to the anti-Brown plotting before Christmas but that seems to have fizzled out even before the Hoon and Hewitt damp squib.

I also missed the rumbling row that engulfed Newcastle East Lib Dem Greg Stone.

I arrived back into the office today to find , around .

For those of you who missed it, he had posted some pretty uncomplimentary, and some would say offensive, remarks about MPs on Guido Fawkes' blog using the alias Inamicus.

I won't go into all the gory details, you can read about them elsewhere, but his principal sin was some derogatory remarks about female MPs during Prime Ministers Questions.

Amongst his insults was a reference to Durham MP Roberta Blackman-Woods as sour-faced, and the description of Gateshead and Washington's Sharon Hodgson as thick.

She might well ask who looks stupid now!

It's just another example of the perils of the web. It can seem an anonymous and impermanent medium.

But as so many have discovered it's not as simple as that. Comments can return to haunt you for a long time after you've posted them.

Mr Stone did apologise, and there is , but with his political opponents refusing to let the issue lie, you can understand why his position has become untenable.

It remains to be seen whether this will be an interruption or an end to Greg Stone's career, but it is a blow to the Lib Dems in a seat they hope to win.

He's the second candidate selected for that seat since 2005, and now they'll have to find a third.

In the meantime, the MP he was trying to unseat - Labour's Nick Brown - hasn't given up. .

Just shows you should think long and hard before posting anything on the internet.

Something of course I'm always very careful about - and you thought I just threw this altogether!

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