They know where you live

After Dudley and Birmingham councils are banned from using the DVLA database because of widespread abuse, when are we going to wake up to this fact that Big Brother is watching us at every turn? What chance patient confidentiality once they compete a national NHS database, for instance?

Puffed up

Every year or so, a group of self-appointed experts calls for drug use to be made legal. These self-same do-gooders would outlaw cigarette smoking, ban drink-drivers for life and impose a massive "fat tax" on fast food. I fear they are probably right to say we lost the "war on drugs" years ago. But if you legalise the use of drugs, surely you have to make their supply legal too. And where do you draw the line between "soft" and "hard" drugs? 

Lions and donkeys 

They couldn't run the armed forces. They wasted billions on defence systems we don't need or don't work. Now they are hiring out their services as lobbyists for foreign arms manufacturers. Are there no depths or top brass won't sink to? We lost in Afghanistan years ago. Talk about lions led by donkeys. 

Welcome to the real world 

MPs should be encouraged to have jobs outside Parliament not forced to give them up. A cap or even a ban on outside earnings would mean simply more full-time professional politicians with less and less connection with the real world. So much the worse for the rest of us. 

Yes or no to in or out? 

The Tories can fiddle about all they like with with bits of the EU but the only referendum worth its name would be a simple one: In or out? 

Abandon ship 

If they make that tedious twit Lord Turner, the euro-loving ex-CBI boss, governor of the Bank of England we may as well all abandon ship and move to Greece. 

Do you still need them? 

As we celebrate 50 years of the Beatles and the Stones prepare for more concerts, we should rejoice that John, Paul, George and Ringo gave up while the going was good. Anyone paying a grand to see the Stones must have more money than sense.