Why handguns are like smallpox

A COMMITTEE of MPs has criticised the Royal Household for spending money unwisely. So that's a stern memo to Queen Kettle from the House of Pots.

IN FACT, is there a more wasteful institution in the world than the UK Parliament? You would think by now, with 70 per cent of our laws passed in Brussels and separate governments established in Scotland, Wales and Ulster, that the Commons could do its job with far fewer MPs. Yet 650 fat bottoms are still crammed on to those leather benches with a further 800 – an all-time record – in the House of Lords. Never in the field of human politics have so many done so little and charged so much.

JUSTIN Bieber has an open road and a rented Lamborghini and manages to get nicked for driving at 65 mph. At his age I used to do worse than that in a Triumph Herald.

JUST when you're thinking that Nigel Farage talks common sense, the Ukip leader suddenly goes bonkers. He says it's time to repeal the "ludicrous" ban on handguns because "only the criminals carry the guns." The two terrible massacres in Britain, at Hungerford and Dunblane, were committed not by crooks but by men who held their weapons legally. After the bloodletting, Parliament, supported by the vast majority of the population, decreed that there is no civil right to possess a pistol. We got rid of handguns just as we got rid of smallpox. We don't want them back.

MEANWHILE, Mr Farage has promised to root out the Walter Mitty tendency to ensure that Ukip's election candidates for 2015 are "reliable, steady, solid people." And not before time. If you need to know what sort of irrational, irritating barmpots Ukip have been scraping from the sticky depths of the barrel, let me reveal a secret that will chill your blood. A couple of years ago they approached me.

I DON'T know many people rich enough to pay the top 45p rate of income tax but I suspect my eye consultant is one of them. I see him once a year privately and he charges £100 for about 40 minutes of his time, and the use of some hugely expensive equipment. Of that £100, £45 goes in tax, so the consultant sees just £55. This is probably less than the average tax-dodging plumber or electrician gets, working cash in hand. Under Ed Balls's scheme to impose a 50p rate of income tax, the consultant would have to pay the future Chancellor Balls an extra £5 in tax per appointment. Frankly, I would rather see that £5 kept by the consultant, who prevents people from going blind and is therefore one of the most useful people in the country, than see it go to Ed Balls who is, to be charitable, not quite so useful.

BALLS'S plan for a 50p rate appeals to the politics of envy, that deep-seated British belief that the "rich" (which usually means those earning £10,000-a-year more than us), should be made to suffer for their success. Yet surely the ocean-cruise industry is a more effective cure for our envy than the tax system. This week, another 300 well-heeled passengers have been stricken with sickness and diarrhoea in the Caribbean. Own up. Is there any greater joy than hearing that your rich friends, having boasted for months about their forthcoming cruise, have just spent £10,000 and six days sitting on the loo?

AFTER Monday's item on the new Johnny Cash album, a reader recalls the day his old music centre went wonky and played a Cash album backwards. In the space of 49 minutes Cash's straying wife came home, his faithful dead dog came back to life, his son was let out of jail and he found his long-lost Pappy. Yessir.