When is £18 million not worth saving?

THE DVLA says there will be consultation on plans to reduce the cost of renewing a driving licence. So here's my response: don't be so damn silly. We renew our licences only once every 10 years. The plan is to reduce the fee from £50 to £34. That's a saving of £1.60 a year or about 0.4p a day. It is a piffling sum which most motorists will not even notice. Yet it will cost the Government about £18 million a year, which could surely be spent on something useful. Like filling in a few pot holes?

SO long, pardner. J T Edson, the writer of more than 130 Wild West yarns who lived in Melton Mowbray and boasted of never having ridden a horse, has died. Edson peppered his books with names plucked from real life. This explains how one of the villains in the book J T's Ladies was a notorious gunslinger called Roy Hattersley.

EDSON had a deep dislike of horses. He described them as "highly dangerous at both ends and bloody uncomfortable in the middle."

PSYCHOLOGISTS at the University of Toronto say married couples who use terms such as "my other half" tend to expect a perfect relationship. They are less likely to stay together than those who view marriage as a journey and say things like "look how far we have come." Another clue to the strength of your relationship is the expression I heard a wife use at a dinner party. It certainly surprised her partner. She announced: "I'm moving to York." I never saw a party end so quickly.

IN A perfect world every court case would begin with full disclosure of the defendant's previous convictions. Consider, for example, the recent drink-driving case which resulted in Guy Pelly, a great chum of the Princes William and Harry, being banned for two-and-a-half years with £7,200 in fines and costs. Pelly pleaded not guilty, offering the curious explanation that radio waves from his iPhone and police equipment had affected the alcohol-measuring device at the police station after the incident in May 2013. He was convicted by the magistrate who then heard that Pelly had been banned twice before, once for drink-driving and once for speeding. Now, supposing Pelly's previous record had been divulged at the outset. I bet he would have pleaded guilty. The court would have reached the same, correct, conclusion. The case would not have taken 14 months to come to court. Pelly would not have faced such a huge legal bill and by now he would be half-way through his ban. Under the present system there are very few winners. Apart, of course, from the lawyers.

THIS titbit, from a reader in a waspish mood, is supposedly an English teacher consoling a pupil who has just failed English GCSE: "There, they're, their."

MEANWHILE, back at the garden party of the year for our ruby wedding, I was sorting out some of our CDs including a cobwebby old Glen Campbell album. The intro to Wichita Lineman took me back, as it always does, to lunch at the Wheatsheaf (two cheese cobs and a pint of best, thanks) in the giddy, golden days on my first newspaper. I found myself doing the sum and realised this was another anniversary. Forty-five years ago this week, on July 28, 1969, fresh out of school, I became a trainee reporter, the lowliest of the low among those who can claim: "I am a journalist." Best job in the world.