Court Dress

Lord Neuberger recently said that we should allow people to appear in court dressed as their beliefs and customs dictate. Would that tolerance attend to a nudist appearing naked ?

Official Secrets

It appears that police officers fear they will be charged with breaking the Official Secrets Act if they tell us about the suppression of an investigation into child abuse by Cyril Smith and others.

Calls for those officers to be granted immunity have fallen on deaf ears.

I suspect that ministers are reluctant to create a precedent that may later embarrass them if in the future they want to cover up some skulduggery of their own.

Rare Optimisim

I recently watched a television news programme in which various people in a street somewhere or other were asked about their voting intentions. One man said he never votes. He'd like to do away with voting and politicians altogether and have everything decided by a computer!!

Such naive optimism is very rare these days, but 50 or 60 years ago similar hopes may have inspired at least a few of the pioneers of computing.

Mr. Blair

As I heard Mr. Blair assert the importance of Britain remaining in the European Union, I reflected that when he entered parliament in 1983 his party's manifesto included a commitment to withdraw from the EU.

Pencils that defy sharpening

For some years I've found that all attempts to sharpen a pencil fail. I have various devices called 'pencil sharpeners' They remove the outer layer of wood, but as soon as a little graphite is revealed, they break it off. Today I tried kitchen knives, but none was sharp enough.

As a schoolboy I carried a penknife that sharpened pencils quite well. I wonder if penknives are still available, or have they been banned by self righteous busybodies ?