Mrs Thatcher and the Holocaust

ALL muxed ip. A friend was explaining that the air space over London was closed owing to a compluter gitch.

ANOTHER one bites the dust. Accused of making homophobic and racist remarks, Ukip candidate Kerry Smith stands down, blaming his outburst on the "strong painkillers" he was taking. So here's an idea. Why don't Ukip, and the other parties, insist that anyone wanting to be a candidate agrees to be interviewed after popping a few painkillers, or sinking a few pints? Just to see what they really think.

NEXT year marks the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. It is a little known fact that, during a lull in the fighting, the Light Infantry and Napoleon's Imperial Guard held a friendly game of football. Or if they didn't wouldn't it be nice to pretend they did? Over to you, Sainsbury's.

BEWARE, at this time of year, of a sweet old lady in the kitchen offering to show you ways of saving time and effort at Christmas. Her real aim is to get you peeling endless apples or whisking mousse for all eternity. We know your game, Mary Berry. So we watch the show, get some good ideas and then rush off to the shops to buy something similar, but frozen. Total time: 10 minutes.

HAS the BBC got a death wish? At a time when its future is in the balance, it decides to give Radio 4's coveted Book at Bedtime slot to Hilary Mantel's controversial book of short stories The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher. In the corridors of power of a Tory-led government, such things are not forgotten, or forgiven.

WHILE the Mantel row was raging, another anti-Thatcher barb slipped into the nation's consciousness. At the weekend Radio 4's Something Understood played a poem, God Moves in Mysterious Ways, which has a list of all the world's evils including cancer, Hiroshima, Belsen, cot death, multiple sclerosis – and Thatcherism. In what bizarre mind-set can introducing poll tax be likened to rounding up and slaughtering six million Jews? She was never my favourite politician but there is something about the Iron Lady that makes otherwise rational people lose all contact with reality.

ON a trip to the theatre I bumped into a bunch of friends I hadn't seen for ages. Do you remember a time in your life when these sort of encounters brought good news? This time we learned that two mutual pals have cancer, another has been diagnosed with motor-neurone disease and a third has clinical depression. One of the best descriptions of life I ever heard came from a colleague some years ago. He said life was like walking forward across a huge field with your friends and discovering it's a minefield.

IN the continuing thread of I Was Poorer Than You, a reader recently harangued me for using Esso Blue in a room heater when his family had to make do with inferior pink paraffin. A new correspondent joins the fray, recalling that his family were so poor they had to use a cheaper, industrial-quality paraffin. He writes: "We collected ours from a local garage that had an outside machine which dispensed a gallon at a time, into your own container, after putting two bob into the coin slot." Hard times, indeed.

MIND you, it is worth noting that every emailer in the paraffin debate is sitting behind several hundreds of pounds' worth of computer. Haven't we all done well?