All we want for Christmas is guns

AFTER yesterday's item on yule logs at your doorstep, I have to admit ours cannot compare with the festive suggestion from BBC Gardener's World magazine - a wreath made of sprouts and peppers. I suggest you hang it on your door to greet visitors with the motto: "Look what the wind blew in."

APPARENTLY we haven't quite got Black Friday right. We Brits love to mimic the Yanks and we have managed to do the whooping, cheering, door ramming and fist-fighting for plasma tellies. But a reader who knows the States tells me in some American cities it is traditional to carry your cut-price goods as far as your car where they are taken off you by armed gangs. Maybe we'll do that next year, eh?

ONE reader finds nothing at all amusing in the Black Friday chaos. "If there was a food shortage now," she says, "there would be no orderly queues as during the Second World War, just anarchy."

I BUMPED into an old friend who was kicking himself, having just been nicked for speeding. Should have known better, he said. It was that spot leaving town where the hill makes it hard to keep your speed below 30mph and, dammit, he knew the cops regularly set up mobile traps. This sort of thing happens so often that we barely question it. Yet if the authorities were genuinely worried about excess speed at these honeypots, if they really believed there was an iota of danger, they would take steps to deter it, with extra-large 30 signs or flashing speed indicators. But they don't. They set up speed traps instead, creating millions of £60 fixed penalties and tens of thousands of customers for £100 driver-awareness courses. Speeding is a problem they would rather milk than cure.

THE plummeting price of crude oil has once again focused attention on Scotland's claim to its own North Sea oil revenues. During the whole independence debate there was no serious challenge to the notion that an independent Scotland (population 5.3 million) would rake in untold billions of euros from oil. I wonder how long it would be before the rest of the EU (population 500 million) decided "Scotland's oil" was actually a "community resource" and nicked it for the greater good. Isn't that what they did with the fish?

LORD Harries of Pentregarth, a senior bishop in the Church of England, says Prince Charles' coronation service should have a reading from the Koran. It seems likely that invitations will be sent to Islamic,Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish leaders. But hell, why stop there? Let's have a coronation that fully reflects the diverse beliefs of this great nation. I want Shakers, Quakers, Scientologists and druids. I want a flypast by elves and fairies, synchronised yoga by leprechauns and military drill by serried ranks of Jedi knights. I want witches and pagans and a special Coronation promise by the tooth fairy, a recitation by Prince Charles's talking shrubs, a non-sermon for atheists by Richards Dawkins and a reading by Psychic Sally ("I'm getting someone called Victoria, your majesty. She says she's very proud of you"). I suspect Charles' reign will be a batty sort of affair so let's start as he means to go on.

A READER asks how a wicked old atheist like me can defend going to a church service of remembrance. Simple. Religion requires faith. Remembrance, in the hope of avoiding future wars, requires only common sense and self-interest.