Turning UK into Ukraine

WHILE you're wincing at the price of your latte, consider this expert opinion on the coffee caper. Duncan Rayner, a lifelong coffee merchant, tells the Daily Telegraph: "With quality ariba coffees costing around £1.75 a kilo raw, and yields as high as 200 cups per kilo, it is difficult to make a cup of coffee cost more than 2.5p."

AN APOLOGY on behalf of tabloids everywhere. In recent years the tabloids may have created the impression that binge-drinking, smoking and gross obesity are undesirable. Headlines such as "Binge-drunk yobs – the shame of our nation" and "Chain-smoking lard-arse slappers stole my burger van" could imply that public drunkenness and over-eating are social evils. However, having studied Ed Miliband's plans for compulsory sugar reduction, minimum alcohol prices and a smoke-free generation (see Daily Mail headline: "Red Ed - We will force you to get fit"), the tabloids now recognise that smoking, alcoholism and obesity are in fact precious human rights of all freeborn Brits, to be protected at all costs. Cheers!

THE chimney sweep calls. Sweeps are like dental hygienists. They both specialise in pained little homilies about your flossing / fuelling habits. Yes, I admit I have burned the occasional damp log / consumed the occasional Mars bar. I know that my flue / gob is not as squeaky clean as it should be. On the other hand, I pay the sweep / hygienist £40 a time and I'd like the clean-out without all the tut-tutting, thanks.

A REPORT suggests that by 2050 up to one-third of people living in Britain will be from ethnic minorities. That's not surprising. Half the world is on the move, no-one knows how to stop the process and we should be grateful we live in a country that people want to enter, rather than one that people want to leave.

IN ANY case, colour is not an issue, unless you subscribe to the vicious old National Front bile about the "mongrelisation" of the British breed. (I met a lot of NF members claiming to be members of the Master Race; you would not want your daughters to breed with any of them). Sheer numbers are more of an issue. The seething hell of the latest bank holiday, with fractious, jam-packed queues at every inland and coastal resort, is only a foretaste of what will become the norm as Britain's population rises to 70 million and beyond. But the biggest threat is the separate development of communities, the creation of Muslim estates, Somali quarters, and no-go zones where Third World customs, religious laws and casual corruption take root like an alien hogweed. A rainbow UK with a global vision, proud to be British and accepting British law, is a recipe for prosperity and harmony. A divided, apartheid Britain, delivered under the weasel word of "multiculturalism," will be quite unrecognisable as Britain, and very similar to Ukraine.

I HAVE just read a scholarly analysis of Ukraine which concludes that if Mr Putin does not invade soon, it will prove that subversion is his chosen method and his intentions "are about to become clear." I suspect Mr Putin's intentions are not even clear to Mr Putin.

LAST words on Scotland. We came back through Aberdeen, a city whose residents are reckoned, even by their fellow Scots, to be especially careful with money. No journalist can enter Aberdeen without recalling the legendary letter from an Aberdonian to an English newspaper. He was complaining about a column which suggested the Scots were mean. "This is a disgraceful slur on my nation," he wrote. "If you persist in publishing such deplorable stereotypes I shall have no choice but to stop borrowing your newspaper."