The end of terrorists?

I HAVE just encountered my first 1914-2014 commemorative £2 coin with Lord Gray's epic words inscribed on the edge: "The lamps are going out all over Europe." What happens if you put it in an electricity meter?

ANOTHER word bites the dust. According to the head of BBC Arabic, Tarik Kafala, the word "terrorist" is too "value-laden" and "loaded" He suggests reporters should say: "Two men killed 12 people" and leave it at that. One man's opinion appears to have become BBC policy which may explain why this week's terror attack by terrorists in Libya who inflicted terror on their terrified victims before killing them in a particularly terrifying manner, was not – according to the BBC – carried out by terrorists at all. They were "militants." The sooner we scrap the TV licence fee, the better.

WHEN Prince Charles and Diana announced their engagement in 1981, a collective self-censorship gripped the media. We could all see that he was too old for her, that they seemed uneasy together, that her fingernails were gnawed to the bone. It just didn't look right. Yet so powerful was the fairytale yarn of a prince and his English rose falling in love that we all subscribed to it and dissenting voices were stifled. After it all ended in tears, we solemnly swore it would never happen again and we would tell the whole truth. And now along comes the affair, marriage and month-long honeymoon of Stephen Fry and Elliott Spencer. Fry is a national treasure who has had a hell of a life with bipolar disorder and a suicide attempt. I am sure we all wish him well in his marriage to a man 30 years his junior. But is that widespread desire for a happy ending blinding us to the evidence of our own eyes? Having seen the images of Fry and Spencer together, including the ones officially released by the happy couple, where is the eye-contact between them? I hope I'm wrong but once again, as in 1981, it just doesn't look right.

THIS year marks the 70th anniversary of the atom bomb. It also marks 70 years of protests against nuclear weapons, climaxing in Scotland with the SNP's threat to kick out Trident submarines and ban all nuclear warheads from Scottish soil. This year also brings a warning from US scientists at the Los Alamos research centre that the risk of the Earth being hit by asteroids is far greater than had been thought. Twenty-six huge explosions, now believed to have been caused by asteroids, were recorded between 2000 and 2013. Now the ethical dilemma. The only weapons powerful enough to destroy or deflect an incoming asteroid, and thus save the world from Armageddon, are nuclear weapons. Still want to scrap them?

ED Balls says Labour is not considering a deal with the SNP to form a coalition government. Or to be exact, what he actually said was: "I don't think anybody is suggesting any suggestion of a deal with the SNP at all, we're fighting hard for a majority." Lots of wriggle-room there, then.

MEANWHILE, what is it with Ed Balls and his eyes? At every hint that the UK economy may be in trouble, his eyes glitter with pure glee. Unseemly, or what?

AND another thing. In Tuesday's column I began a sentence with "and" and was given a sound tut-tutting by a reader convinced that this is poor grammar. As a rule people who believe in this non-existent rule are only repeating what their teachers told them some time in the last century. Pity no-one educated the educators.