So when is a jihadist cured?

OKAY, one final offer to the Scots. Vote No and we'll get rid of the midges.

IT'S too late now but, with hindsight, the campaign to keep the UK together should have played the Celt card and appealed to the Scots' better nature and kinship with the people of Wales. Imagine the impact of a series of short TV commercials with much-loved Welsh celebrities pleading tearfully: "Please, please don't leave us alone with the English."

INEVITABLY, the rise of Scottish nationalism brings to mind the dark days of direct action in Wales when English-owned property was a target for arsonists. The bleak joke at the time, based on the advert for household coal, went: "Come home to a real fire – buy a cottage in Wales." A reader recalls how a family friend owned a cottage in mid-Wales which was torched by extremists in the name of their medieval hero Owen Glendower. What the fire-raisers did not know was that two weeks before they attacked, the Englishman had sold the cottage to a Welshman. Owen goal?

CHURCH authorities announce that the reburial of Richard III next March will focus on "dignity and honour." Which is only fair. Richard ended his days in a muddy melee at Bosworth and lay buried under a car park in Leicester. Second time round he'll have a proper ceremony, a proper grave and a proper mode of conveyance. A hearse, a hearse . . . .

DO you find your blood chilling ever so slightly at the suggestion that jihadist fighters returning to Britain could be re-educated into peace-loving ways? Or that some of these characters might even be "turned" to work for MI5 against the terrorist? We are all entitled to be wary. For a start, what sort of experts would decide when a lad from Cardiff or Luton who has spent the past five years murdering prisoners, crucifying Christians and buying and selling women in Syria was fully reformed, let alone cured? Would these experts be the same sort of bleeding-heart do-gooders and dimwit shrinks who have spent the past 50 years assuring us that a succession of psychopaths have been safe to release from prison - and then been rather surprised when they started killing and raping all over again? Predicting how any offender will behave is about as accurate as guessing where the ball will stop on a roulette wheel. The big difference is that the usual homicidal ex-prisoners tend to kill one or two people but a jihadist, when he receives the order, will try to kill hundreds or thousands. The nightmare scenario is of a British town or city centre burnt to the ground or doused in radiation by a bunch of Islamist loonies while an "expert" wrings his hands and says: "You know, I could have sworn they were cured."

I ASSUMED bigger brains than mine were at work in choosing someone to chair the inquiry into historic sexual abuse and cover-up within the British Establishment. I assumed, too, that the movers and shakers in Westminster would try hard to choose someone who is a good, safe, respectable distance from the Establishment. If anyone had suggested they would choose the Lord Mayor of London, we would have rolled in the aisles with laughter. So who do we get? The Lord Mayor of London. Yes, it is all very puzzling.

MORE curious paint names. We are about to redecorate the front room and have narrowed the choice of emulsion down to Churlish Green, Dimpse, Mole's Breath, Archive, Midriff or Placenta. All but two of these are genuine.