Ah, days of meths and gunpowder.

A NEW super-computer means the Met Office will be able to give us 100 per cent accurate weather forecasts. And where's the fun in that?

HERE'S a silly T-shirt. If you don't wear the silly T-shirt you're a bad person. Here's a bucket of icy water. If you don't pour it over your head you're an uncaring person. So this is the level of political debate in Britain today?

HANDS up those who actually admire David Cameron for not wearing the T-shirt with the slogan: "This is what a feminist looks like"?

I SHOULD have known that mentioning the Mamod steam engine would trigger all sorts of dangerous yearnings among blokes of a certain age. One reader confesses he drank the methylated spirits that came with his Mamod, just to see what it was like. Yet another reader fondly recalls his first chemistry set which not only contained the ingredients for gunpowder but gave you the proper names for the chemicals, so you could order much bigger quantities at your local chemists. There was a time in the 1950-60s when a fair proportion of little British boys were not only in possession of bomb-making equipment but out of their heads on meths. Mind you, we didn't have a Terrorism Act back then.

INCIDENTALLY, Mamod, founded in 1936 is still in business, chugging away at a factory in Smethwick.

TINY victory for common sense. Stephen Gough, the so-called "Naked Rambler," has lost his case at the European Court of Human Rights. The court ruled that the law "does not go so far as to enable individuals, even those sincerely convinced of the virtue of their own beliefs, to repeatedly impose their antisocial conduct on other, unwilling members of society." In other words, there is no human right to behave like a total prat.

IF HS2 goes from London to Birmingham and HS3 from Leeds to Manchester, what next? A reader suggests HS4 to whisk MPs from the Commons to their free bars, and HS5 to take "out-of-touch politicians and greedy bankers" out of London and straight over the 500 ft cliff at Beachy Head.

JUST like the old days, isn't it? First "sources close to Tony Blair" tell us the former prime minister says Labour under Ed Miliband will lose the next general election. A little later "sources close to Tony Blair" insist that Blair said no such thing. I dare say the truth is that Blair said Weird Ed would win the election, and lose the election – depending entirely on who he was talking to.

MY own prediction is that we should not pay too much attention to the Westminster bubble. Next May's General Election will be decided not in London but in Scotland where Labour, almost by divine right, has always expected about 40 MPs. If the defeated Yes voters from September's devolution unite and turn their fury on Labour in Scotland, almost anything is possible.

PUT away the hankies, stop that sobbing. Father Christmas is not dead and there will still be holly on the pud. The news that Cadbury is no longer making chocolate coins for Christmas has been announced with all the solemnity of a royal death, as though it heralds the end of some rich yuletide tradition and undermines all we hold dear. No-one is suggesting there will be no Xmas chocolate coins. It's just that they won't be Cadbury's. And hand on heart, are you even sure the coins you bought last year were Cadbury's? Or did you perhaps just grab a few bags of own-brand at the supermarket check-out? Humbug.