Mr Miliband and the sandwich

TERMS for our time. A self-build project in London invites would-be home owners to put in 500 hours of manual labour as part of their deposit on the property. It is called sweat equity.

IT seems HSBC's only defence to allegations of tax fiddling is that it used to be a bit dodgy but that's all in the past and so everything's fine. Had he lived long enough, this is probably the defence we'd have heard from Jimmy Savile.

THIS is a tale of two energy firms. Let us call them Robdog and Fiddler. I have a friend who is about to transfer his account from Robdog to Fiddler, on the promise that his bills will be £300 a year lower. He has a neighbour who, it transpires, is transferring his account from Fiddler to Robdog on the promise that his bills will be £300 a year lower.

MY recent snippets on the rigour of primary education in ye olden days compared to today reminds readers of the puzzlers and brain-teasers they were set in days of short pants. You know the sort of thing: Tom has three-sixteenths of a firkin. Nigel has three-quarters of a furlong. If Nigel and Tom pool their resources, how many turnips can they afford, given that each turnip costs nine-sixteenths of a groat (answer to the nearest hectare)? You know, if you tell the kids about this stuff, they just don't believe you.

SO are you fit, then? Depending on your age, this can be an inquiry into a) the state of your health; 2) whether you are ready to embark on a trip; or 3) how attractive you are looking. "Fit" is a word undergoing change. So is "random." So is "wicked." So is "standard." And so is "gay." To our grandparents' generation gay meant light-hearted and carefree. Since the 1970s gay has meant homosexual. And today, in the mouths of schoolchildren everywhere, gay means weak, useless or undesirable. (That dress is so gay, etc.) Some Labour politicians are threatening to expel any pupils caught using the G-word in this way on the grounds that it is homophobic bullying. No it isn't. It's simply a word in transit. Twenty years from now gay will have changed fully to its new meaning. By then, no-one will dream of calling a homosexual gay because we will have finally accepted that, when it comes to sexuality (or race for that matter), people cannot be pigeonholed. Trying to fix sex or race labels on people will be considered rude, oppressive, old-fashioned and, frankly, a bit gay.

ONE of my old watering holes is in hot water. The Labour in Vain pub at Yarnfield in the wilds of Staffordshire no longer displays its traditional, and offensive, sign of a washerwoman trying to scrub a black boy white. But even the name is considered unacceptable by some and the brewery is suggesting a name-change for the pub. Pity. All that's needed is a new image to go with the old and cherished name to depict a modern-day "Labour in Vain." Ed Miliband struggling with a bacon sandwich would be fine.

WAY back in the old days, The Labour in Vain was the final RV (rendezvous) of many a long, hard night march for soldiers based at the nearby Swynnerton training area. Late on a Saturday night you could find 30 heavily armed Territorials enjoying a swift shandy and belting out Jerusalem. We had a great choir. The irony was that, being camouflaged, we all had black faces.