Has the Chancellor missed a trick?

POOR Australia should not be beating itself up over why a deranged Islamist with a string of convictions was at liberty. There is only one perfect, proven system for spotting lone loonies doing something manic. It is called hindsight.

USEFUL winter tips from my insurance company, telling us what to do if the pipes freeze and burst. "Check for bulges in the ceilings of rooms beneath the burst pipe, indicating trapped water. Place a bucket underneath the bulge and puncture it to control the drain." I remember my father doing exactly that one hard winter. He punctured the ceiling, the water burst through, there was a huge flash-bang and the Old Man fell off his stepladder. Moral: if you must puncture the ceiling, use something sensible. Not an electric drill.

AND off to yet another funeral and another buffet of plates overflowing with black pudding, sausage rolls and ham sandwiches. Why is it that when a human dies the pigs suffer?

IT was the funeral of a photographer, one of our merry band who worked in the same office 40-odd years ago. In our profession, folk tend to drop off the perch early. But Frank survived the Western Desert, the invasion of Sicily, the Normandy landings and three decades in journalism. He made it to 96 and was still doing his daily crossword two days before the Grim Reaper called. It was a fine send-off. The strains of Morning Has Broken faded into the final music, We'll Meet Again. I don't believe we will but it was good to know you, Frank.

COME on, lads, you've worked hard all year and it's time to treat yourself. Have a few beers, go online and browse around the second-hand yachts section on eBay. It is amazing what a huge and impressive boat you can get for a song. And then comes the reckoning. Paul Thomas, harbourmaster at Fowey in Cornwall says he's plagued with abandoned boats bought "late at night and maybe after a few drinks." Apparently, it's the same story at harbours all around Britain where proud new owners, horrified at the never-ending bills for insurance, mooring, surveys and maintenance, have abandoned their boats. Some vessels will be seized and auctioned, or simply scrapped. What shall we do with the drunken sailor? Accept his PayPal payment, of course.

WE went to a Christmas performance of The Messiah. It is usually an uplifting event but I found it hard to concentrate on Handel's soaring celebration of "God upon his great white throne," the God of Abraham and Moses, without thinking of the unspeakable evil committed, only a few hours earlier in Sydney and Pakistan, in the name of the same God. Religions preach division, separation and supremacy. We are the blessed, the chosen ones or the followers of the true prophet and all the others are heathens, heretics, goyim, kuffir or the wrong sort of Muslim. The divisive creed of Them and Us is not an unfortunate side-effect of religions but their defining message. It is bizarre, in a modern society founded on the belief that all people are created equal, that we allow the preaching of such stuff in the name of "faith" and then throw up our hands in horror at the images from a school in Peshawar or a cafe in Sydney.

GEORGE Osborne has missed a trick. The price of oil is tumbling and looks like staying low for many months to come. If the Chancellor had slapped 2p on a litre at a time like this, motorists would hardly have noticed. Osborne could have slipped a few billion into the nation's coffers with virtually no pain. (Keep this to yourselves, right?)