Stopping the mortgage madness

OH, the indignity! From tomorrow, anyone borrowing money to buy a house will have to convince the bank that they can afford the repayments. This tough new procedure has been denounced by one City slicker as "onerous and intrusive." The rest of us will regard it as common sense – especially if it's my bank lending the money.

IT was, of course, a lack of such financial control under the Blair / Brown governments that led directly to Britain's financial crisis. I recall one couple some years ago at the height of mortgage-madness who told me they'd borrowed £400,000 to buy a restaurant without any savings or proof of income. It all ended in tears, for them and millions like them.

THE BBC at first blamed "sound issues" for the incomprehensible lines in this week's mini-series Jamaica Inn (BBC1). Did anyone buy that? What we heard was an exercise in that ancient theatrical craft of speaking in Mumbleshire rural gibberish. The actors could have spoken more clearly. They either chose or were directed not to ("It's Cornwall, darling, no-one's supposed to understand."). The result was lots of us switching on the subtitles.

I WAS reminded of a night at the theatre when I seriously thought I was going deaf, so bad was the muffled mumbling on the stage. And then that great actor and all-round national treasure Celia Imrie made her entrance. Every word she spoke was crystal-clear. Cancel the hearing aids.

UKIP stands accused of racism over its election posters. But then we are all racists - it's just a question of how low you set the qualifying bar. I was accused of "appalling racism" a few days ago for suggesting that the US diplomat Zbigniew Brzezinski had a name like a winning line in Scrabble. A Daily Telegraph reader recently described being ticked off by a teacher for uttering the word "blackboard" (negative ethnic overtones, apparently). Ukip's posters are certainly blunt, but whoever said election posters had to pussyfoot around the issues?

I REFERRED recently to the curious fact that despite receiving vast amounts of public money, BBC News and BBC Sport actually get very few scoops. A low point came this week when, hours before David Moyes was sacked as Manchester United manager, the BBC's flagship radio programme Today rang the Manchester Evening News to find out what was going on.

A FREEDOM of Information request reveals that 67 NHS doctors have signed abortion forms without even seeing the woman involved. But no-one is to be prosecuted or even reported to the police by the General Medical Council. Labour MP Jim Dobbin says: "This shames the GMC and makes a mockery of the Abortion Act." Actually, it's worse than that. It is a warning of how euthanasia will work if it is ever legalised. Over the years, all the safeguards on abortion have been swept aside and the safeguards on euthanasia will go the same way. Abortion on demand has been promoted as "a woman's right to choose." Euthanasia on demand will arrive with the slogan "a family's right to choose," or some such nonsense. But remember - as ye sow, ye reap. For the babyboomer generation, now in their 60s and 70s, who have allowed abortion to happen on an industrial scale will be the first generation to be helped off this planet with a lethal overdose, whether they want to go or not.

MEANWHILE, the friend whose car mysteriously broke down and refused to start has been told by the garage that it's probably a fault with the immobiliser. On the other hand, it could be the immobiliser working perfectly - but at the wrong time. Progress, eh?