It is the mid Wales landmark that started out as a joke and lasted for 20 years.

Now, it is making a comeback.

Up until last November, there was a billboard for Llandegley International on the A44 in Powys between Rhayader and Kington.

But drivers who followed the directions to Terminal 1 or 3 ended up not at an airport, not even an airfield, but just a field on the outskirts of the village.

The sign was taken down last year when the man who spent £25,000 keeping it in place decided he would try to make it an official landmark.

Nicholas Whitehead launched a crowdfunding campaign with the slogan “give us a sign”.

Six months later, a brand-new one has appeared.

The airport’s “founder” said he was delighted.

“When the sign came down we gained thousands of followers on Facebook. There was so much support for getting another, I felt sure the crowd-funder would work,” he said.

“It is beautiful,” said Craig ab Iago, Gwynedd council’s cabinet member for housing. “But there is an emergency here, a massive wave of a problem. It’s out of control.”

That emergency is the number of homeless people, which has increased in Gwynedd by 47% in the past two years. “It’s hidden. You don’t see people sleeping rough,” said Ab Iago. “But people are sleeping on sofas, in hotels, in bed and breakfasts, in vans. It’s immoral that some people have a second home here while others don’t have one.”

Gwynedd council’s Plaid Cymru-controlled cabinet this week voted for council tax premiums to be raised to 150% next year and the £3m raised be used to tackle homelessness. The full council, which is controlled by Plaid Cymru, will make a final decision next week.

Council tax premiums on second homes in Gwynedd are currently set at 100% and the discussion has tended to focus on whether this is having any impact on the housing sales market. The rationale for introducing the premium is to free up homes for local people, to stop the hollowing out of communities, which affects the viability of the Welsh language.

But the council is now arguing that another vital issue is the impact the number of second homes is having on the rental sector. People who cannot afford to buy are renting, so the number of properties available is shrinking and homeless figures are soaring.

All young people leaving care in Wales at the age of 18 are to be offered the chance to take part in a basic income pilot scheme under which they will receive £1,600 a month for up to two years.

The money will be given unconditionally and participants will be able to earn from paid jobs on top of the basic income with ministers hoping it will help give some of the most vulnerable in society a better chance of thriving.

Officials, who investigated basic income schemes from California to Finland before designing the Welsh pilot, will study whether those who take part do better in the long term, financially, physically and emotionally, than young people who do not.

The scheme, set to launch in the summer, is believed to be one of the most generous of its kind in the world and will cost the Welsh government £20m over three years.

Those taking part will be taxed and will not be able to claim all benefits they would be entitled to if they were not given the money after the UK government refused to allow this. Benefits are not a devolved area.

The move was welcomed by UBI Lab Wales, which campaigns on the concept of universal basic income, under which every citizen, regardless of their means, receives regular sums of money for life to cover the basic cost of living.

A branch of Tesco in Wales has been accused of “promising more than it can deliver” after a mistake in the Welsh translation of “free cash withdrawals” meant it ended up offering a “free erection”.

Aberystwyth councillor Ceredig Davies said the new cash machine put up this morning at a Tesco Express was the topic of all the “gossip around town this lunchtime”, with the error immediately noticeable to Welsh speakers.

He later went down to see for himself, and posted a picture on Facebook with the caption: “’Codiad am Ddim’ translates colloquially as ‘Free Erection’.”

Mr Davies said: “We’re accustomed to people making an effort to consider the Welsh language but not checking it properly. We come across plenty of examples – but few are as entertaining as this.

“This piece provides an overview of how England and Wales are multi-faith. According to the Census, our towns and cities are global villages with an extra 2.9 million foreign-born people living in England and Wales since 2001 – most from India, Poland and Pakistan – and an additional 1.1 million Muslims, bringing the total to 2.7 million. Christianity, or at least the number identifying themselves as followers of the largest religion, is on the slide with more than 4 million fewer saying they followed the church than in 2001.

The march of the faithless has also continued with 14.1 million people, about a quarter of the entire population, saying they had no religion at all, a rise of 6.4 million over the decade. The Church of England said the figures “confirm we remain a faithful nation”, but adding that the fall of 4 million in those choosing to see themselves as Christians was “a challenge”. With Justin Welby (the Bishop of Durham) about to take the top job and become the next archbishop, and having turned round the diocese, can he do it on a much bigger scale and transform the way people think about Christianity?”

It is a matter of fact that under the 2001 census there were more active congregations in rural than urban England and it would be interesting to learn how this might have developed over the last 10 years. The 2011 Census can be accessed here.

Another really interesting “story” arising from the latest census releases refers to the role of migrant workers – very important we know in rural England. See also this piece on Boston.