Bring on the 20mph limits

THE computer strikes again. A letter arrives from our local garage to let me know "our records indicate your MoT is due December 13, 2015." Another year gone.

"WE marched to the bar like gladiators who had just emerged from the carnage of the Colosseum, bloodied, speared, stabbed and bitten by lions – but alive." A meeting with Jeremy Clarkson, as described by Piers Morgan, a man clearly in need of a mirror, a pair of spectacles, or both.

I'M not a great fan of the speed-camera and driver-courses industry. And yet I welcome the newly-announced spread of 20mph limits into UK towns and cities. Why? Because every time I suggest the 30, 40 and 50mph limits are enforced to generate money, not to improve safety, I am buried under an email storm from self-righteous, and usually older, drivers on the lines of: "If you don't want to get fined, sonny, simply obey the limit." The 20 mph zones are a game-changer. Suddenly, slowcoaches who have never been caught in their lives will find themselves nicked for driving at 22 or 23 mph. They will complain bitterly - and quite truthfully - that it is impossible to drive safely in a busy town or city street while constantly watching your speedometer. But no-one will be interested. Just pay up, old chap. Your time has come.

AS anyone will tell you, the British Broadcasting Corporation stands for British values and concentrates on quality broadcasting, not the sort of rubbish preferred by the commercial channels. So much for the myth. The truth is that while the BBC was bending over backwards to save a show in which three middle-aged blokes go "phwoar!" at Ferraris, Channel 4 was quietly buying the broadcasting rights for the exhumation and this week's reburial of an English king. And doing a fine job of it, too. With not even a struggle, Auntie Beeb has surrendered prime Dimbleby territory to Jon Snow. I hope someone at the BBC is vaguely embarrassed about missing the Richard III story.

MY item on the huge number of visitors to the new Birmingham Library prompts a reader to write: "Personally, I was hugely disappointed as I had to ascend three floors before I even saw a book, all floors being crammed with rows of zombies doing what presumably they do at home, at work and every other waking moment, staring at computer screens."

OXFORD University's fascinating new DNA map of Britain must be a disappointment for many. It turns out there is no great Celtic fringe, no united Welsh clan and not much difference between the people of northern England and Scotland. As this map shows, the differences between us are often not in the blood or the genes but mostly in the mind.

THERE is, however, a surprising and entirely separate genetic group found by the researchers amid the wilds of West Yorkshire where once stood Ye Ancient Celtic Kingdom of Emmett. I think I know this clan. They wear hairy tweeds, view Lancashire as the devil's territory and are forever informing total strangers that there are more acres in Yorkshire than words in t'Bible. That's my family. I can only apologise.

THE DNA map also reveals there are two distinct tribes in Northern Ireland. No kidding?

I HAVE a new lawnmower. The instruction booklet runs to eight pages with no fewer than 53 safety tips covering every conceivable risk, including not allowing children or the mentally ill to use, plus the very school-teachery: "Walk, don't run." Nothing about taking it in the bath.