Too soon, too simple?

I REFERRED recently to the American organisation, the Death Penalty Information Centre, which is firmly opposed to execution by firing squad. I see its website has an image of one Kirk Bloodsworth.

THE US state preparing to reintroduce firing squads is Utah, one of these huge territories somewhere in the middle with straight edges, a place that even Americans can't find on a map. Utah rarely hits any headlines but had a brief moment of fame in Friends when Ross sets himself the task of remembering the names of all 50 US states. Joey looks at Ross's list and says: "Utah? Dude, you can't just make stuff up."

BEFORE the Utah public-information department leaps into action, I am fully aware that Utah exists, has all sorts of amazing attractions and is a lovely place to live.

HE suffered "burn out" during training. He had depression. So that's why co-pilot Andreas Lubitz flew an Airbus into the Alps. Case solved? Maybe. But the lesson of history, from Waterloo to the Somme via Bloody Sunday, Hillsborough and a thousand murders mysteries, is that the first solution turns out to be wrong. Millions of people suffer depression. Few resort to violence, even fewer to mass murder. And what are the odds of a lunatic slipping through Lufthansa's strict vetting system and having a suicidal crisis which happens to coincide with being left alone on the flightdeck? You could be forgiven for looking at the simple solutions offered so far for the loss of Flight FU 9525 and thinking, there must be more.

FOOTAGE from Ukraine reveals what every British squaddie has known for years, the obsolete Saxon "battle bus," 75 of which have been supplied to the Ukrainian armed forces, is a bag of nails that can barely climb the smallest hill. Not to worry. The Russians will probably capture them soon and they'll be the Kremlin's headache.

ARE we too eager to demonise people? A reader writes: "Me and my mates want to torture everyone for all eternity, poking them with sharp sticks and all that kind of thing, but this has been part of our culture for a long time and is central to our own sense of cultural identity. For this we are demonised. Mind you, we are demons."

I TOYED some months ago with a list of predictions for 2015. One was that during the year United States warplanes would provide close air support for Hizbollah, the Iran-backed guerillas who start each day by chanting "Death to America" and praying for the destruction of Israel. I abandoned that forecast as far too fanciful. Today, in Tikrit, it is happening. The enemy of my enemy is my friend and Islamic State is everybody's enemy.

CURIOUS case in Kendal where a deaf man used sign language to call a police officer a pig, and was given a conditional discharge in the local court. The "confrontational" incident ended up in court because the cop happened to understand sign language and objected to the word "pig." Asked by the magistrate how long he wanted to pay costs, the defendant seemed to demand two months. Okay, I made up that last bit.

WHEN the insult "pig!" was first hurled at police by rebellious students in the States, I recall a senior officer suggesting it should be regarded as high praise, standing for Pride, Integrity and Guts. You could spend a lot of time trying to explain that to the desk sergeant.