The voice of the people

ISN'T it odd that while so many MPs, supposedly the people's representatives, are in favour of HS2, it takes a committee in the House of Lords to recognise this pointless, ruinously expensive scheme for the madcap vanity project it is? The Lords say we don't need it and we can't afford it. Here, in the ermine-trimmed trappings of privilege, is the true voice of the people.

"THAT'S quite a return on a fiver," said the lady on Antiques Roadshow (BBC1) as the necklace she bought in a charity shop for £5 was valued at between £3,000 and £6,000. It certainly is a good profit. But what about the ethics? If you discover something you bought for a song is worth a fortune, does the fact that you bought it from a charity shop matter? Would you share your good luck with the charity? Or are Oxfam and the RSPCA fair game?

ONE thing has been missing from Leicester's finest week as the bones of Richard III are laid to rest. How great it would have been for Leicester's most illustrious diarist to have recorded the royal occasion for posterity. Where are you when your nation needs you, Adrian Mole?

THE daffs have hardly flowered but here's an early sighting of Ebenezer Scrooge. A reader tells me he was watching his newly installed solar panels glistening in the spring sunshine, cutting his bills and, who knows, maybe even generating a profit. And then, out of the blue, there was a solar eclipse. He writes: "Just my luck. One sunny day and a planet gets in the way." Actually, Mr Scrooge, I think it was the moon.

WHAT remains to be said about Afzal Amin, the Conservative candidate in Dudley, exposed as a cloak-and-dagger wazzock? I simply do not get it. This country is full of decent, honest, hard-working people who would die for the chance to earn £62,000-a-year as an MP, and do a damn fine job. So why do party selection committees offer the job to an endless stream of oddballs? Maybe the weakness of the system is that it depends on people putting themselves forward. I recall a senior police officer who said anyone who wanted a firearm was, by definition, an unfit person to own one. Perhaps the same rule should apply to political candidates. Anyone seeking power should not be given it.

FROM Warwick Crown Court comes the tale of a dim juror. The jury retired over the weekend and he went on the internet, discovered the defendant had a previous conviction and, when the jury next assembled, shared the news with them. The other jurors complained to the judge who imposed a suspended prison sentence for contempt. But as one juror is punished, how many other jurors elsewhere have quietly checked out defendants , discovered they are serial offenders and, without breathing a word to the other jurors, held out for guilty verdicts? It would be fascinating to know whether defence solicitors, skilled in the art of making hardened crooks look like saints, have noticed a decline in acquittals since the arrival of Google.

AS the grab-your-annuity vultures gather, watch out for dubious emails with dodgy spelling. I received one yesterday offering to turn my money into "tonns of cash." Straight in the trash.

MIND you, even the most gifted and intelligent of writers have the occasional bad-spelling day. I referred on Tuesday to the old Celtic kingdom in west Yorkshire as Emmett. It was, of course, Elmet.