Government by ostrich

AFTER a couple of near misses between drones and airliners, the world seems to be waking up to the fact that you can buy drones and fly them anywhere you wish, including into the air intake of a Jumbo jet's engine. Drones are, in effect, camera-guided anti-aircraft weapons available on eBay for a few hundred quid. How did that happen?

THIS was the week, 100 years ago, when the recruiting band came to my grandfather's village and he, aged 20, joined up for the First World War. Grandad signed away five years of his life. He was in uniform from December 1914 until well into 1919, staying in Germany after the Armistice as part of the Army of Occupation. He took part in two great battles, Cambrai and Second Marne, was gassed in the final few days of the war, recovered and almost died a year later after contracting pneumonia in Cologne. "That was when I nearly became a German landowner," he noted wryly in his war diary.

GRANDAD thought he had emerged unscathed but over the years that followed the damage done to his lungs by mustard gas got worse. He died when I was young and I remember him as a dark-eyed, bedridden, wizened old man, yet he was just 55. Such is fate. The generation born in the 1890s was doomed to suffer and die before their time. Yet their grandchildren, we babyboomers of the 1950s, are the luckiest and most cosseted generation in history. The irony is that Grandad and his mates never complained about anything but we moan about everything.

IS there anything sillier than the claim by Ukip leader Nigel Farage that he was late for a party in Wales as a result of immigration causing traffic jams? Yes, there is. It is the monstrous, head-in-the-sand delusion among so many politicians that the population of the UK can rise from 50 million to 70 million in a single lifetime and cause no problems at all. Voters are tempted by Farage only because they are governed by ostriches.

SO what ails Tiny Tim? The hero of the best-loved yuletide story of all time, A Christmas Carol, is usually depicted in illustrations and movies as a little lad with a crutch, as though he is lame in one leg. But Dickens's original text suggests something far more serious: "Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron frame!" Modern medical sleuths have come up with two likely diagnoses, the kidney disease renal tubular acidosis or the vitamin-deficiency illness, rickets. Both conditions can be eased by the right diet which presumably explains why Tiny Tim survives once he has the help and support of nice old Mr Scrooge.

ONE of the great traditions of a British December is some religious figure popping up to denounce Father Christmas. This time it's Father Dennis Higgins, an elderly and respected Catholic priest in Buxton who has allegedly told schoolchildren that Santa does not exist. Here is someone whose entire belief system ( not to mention his pay packet, home and pension) is based on the notion of a deity. It's the old, old story: I have faith but you are superstitious. Tell you what, Father. You believe in your invisible friend and we'll believe in Santa.

MIND you, I do rather admire the priests's handling of the media. When asked to explain his message, Father Dennis reportedly launched into "intemperate language," for which his bosses have apologised. Father Ted's (C4) curmudgeonly companion Father Jack is alive and well and living in Buxton.