Votes in euthanasia?

"A MODEST additional levy." The proposed mansion tax, as described by chief Treasury secretary, Danny Alexander. Isn't it strange how taxes imposed on other people are always modest but taxes imposed on yourself are a diabolical liberty?

SOME pundits believe the new right to get your hands on your entire pension pot will lead to an orgy of house buying as pensioners snap up houses to let. There is a popular view that becoming a landlord is money for old rope. In fact, it only ever works if you have good tenants. In your 70s and 80s do you really want to be dealing with the sort of ratbags who stop paying rent and wreck the house when you ask them to leave? Letting property can be a nightmare. Buy the Lamborghini instead.

ONE effect of pensioners buying property would be that house prices would shoot up, making things even harder for first-time buyers. If the 20th century saw Britain divided by class, the 21st century could well see a new divide between young and old, with rich old wrinklies accumulating properties while bitter, hard-up young families are locked into rent. And that's when politicians will suddenly realise there are votes in euthanasia.

THE BBC is the only public utility with the power to criminalise customers who refuse to pay its bills. But now the game is up. This week the Government starts a review into making licence-dodging a civil issue, not a criminal offence - and not before time. Most viewers would carry on paying, just as they pay their energy bills, because they don't want a county court judgment. But a significant, and growing, minority of the iPlayer generation have never bought a TV licence and have no intention of starting now. Decriminalising licence-dodging is only the first step on the road either to a subscription-only BBC or a BBC funded from central taxation. Welcome to the real world, Auntie.

WHATEVER Happened to Spitting Image?(BBC4) took us back to the days of Fluck & Law's puppets and the golden age of telly satire when Norman Tebbit was a leather-clad skinhead and Maggie Thatcher rearranged her Cabinet with a baseball bat. One contributor made the point that in the 1980s, when Spitting Image had 15 million viewers, people recognised all the members of the Government and Shadow Cabinet. How could such a show work in today's world of drab politics when most people can't name more than half a dozen politicians?

NON-stop rolling news can be confusing. How many times in the past week have you heard about "new sightings" of possible airliner wreckage in the Indian Ocean only to discover they were the same "new sightings" you heard about on the same programme 12 hours ago?

THE BT engineer who fixed our line a few days ago told me a strange story of a colleague who had the ability to listen to a troublesome landline and know whether the fault was above or below ground. No-one else in the depot could do it and he was never wrong. I was reminded of the curious tale of the Chinese chicken sexers who worked at a poultry factory near my home town in Yorkshire. They could unerringly separate day-old male chicks from female chicks, a skill the locals envied but never acquired. A friend who worked for a water company had a colleague who, using a simple metal rod as a stethoscope, could tell the difference between a tap being turned on and a pipe leaking. We humans develop some very strange employment skills. Any similar weird and wacky tales from the workplace?