City of the Ants

SIR Sean Connery says that independence for Scotland is "too good to miss." But then he does live in the Bahamas.

THE former 007 actor, urging his distant compatriots to independence, reminds me of two people. The first is an Irish journalist I used to work with who would regularly declare: "I would die for Ireland but I could never live in Ireland." The second is the Commanding Officer, sleepily delivering his dawn briefing to the lads in the old comedy series It Ain't Half Hot, Mum: "The key to this exercise is total commitment. Carry on, sergeant-major, I'm going back to bed."

PANORAMA did a fairly good job of explaining the growth of food banks in Hungry Britain (BBC1). However, I would like to know what is meant, when describing an unemployed man, by the expression "the job didn't work out." In my limited experience it is not the job that does not work out. It is the bit about getting out of bed at 7am and putting in eight hours a day.

AND well done, the Beeb, for giving Evan Davis two hours in Mind the Gap (BBC2) in which to explain why London is steadily growing apart from the rest of Britain. The commonest response to images of stressed-out Londoners swarming sweatily in the Tube or cycling to their deaths in clouds of carbon monoxide is to demand some of that wonderful growth for the rest of the nation. London works only because of one vast metropolis-wide delusion, namely that Londoners are the cleverest, richest, most fashionable and most talented people in the land. Frankly, I'd rather live where the traffic is calmer, the air purer, the growth less frightening. If 10 million worker ants in the biggest termite nest in the world are happy to contribute their taxes to the UK's national good, I'll cheerfully take my share of any crumbs that tumble from their table. Well done, London. You poor suckers.

ON the first sunny day of spring we went to a National Trust mansion, joining the thin, post-winter trickle of people of a certain age in anoraks who take a deep interest in ye buttery, ye greate hall, ye olde Tudor brewerie and suchlike. We had ye same olde dilemma: shall we join the National Trust this year? It's a tad under £100 per year and they knock today's admission price off, meaning you pay only £80. So tempting. And yet I remember the last time we joined, way back in ye olden days. Having paid our NT subscription we found ourselves turning up at a succession of NT places which were closed, NT places which were free anyway and NT places which turned out to be not NT at all, but English Heritage. We didn't renew.

ENGLISH Heritage is an amazing wheeze. It's a government-supported quango and yet you can "join" it. So first you pay your taxes to support it. Then you pay some more for the privilege of entering for "free" a castle of which you are already a shareholder. I am amazed the NHS hasn't cottoned on to this. It's your choice. You can either go to the back of an eight-hour queue in A&E or join the NHS. As an NHS member you'll get a smart NHS car sticker, an embroidered NHS tie and enjoy instant appointments. I really shouldn't give them ideas.

THIS week's report that angry people are more likely to have heart attacks and strokes is another example of experts rediscovering the bleedin' obvious. The Victorians knew all about apoplexy. I had a great-uncle who died of it while swearing at the snow for daring to fall on his new car. Those of us blessed with high blood pressure know all about keeping cool. It's just that reports like this make us so infernally, diabolically, incandescently angry. Now, now, calm . . . .