Peter Rhodes: Carving up Britain

JUST two more Mondays to the winter solstice then the nights get shorter and it's plain sailing all the way to the long, hot summer of 2017. As you scrape the ice off the car, think positive.

WHEN a massive road-swallowing sink hole in the Japanese city of Fukuoka was filled, resurfaced and back in use in a matter of hours, it was hailed as a great feat of Japanese energy and efficiency. Anyway, a few days later it sank again. Construction workers have apparently blamed the setback on "special soil". Or as we would probably say in English, the wrong type of soil.

MR Minh To's troubles began when his daughter, having seen his home advertised on the Rightmove website, rang to ask when he was moving house. Mr To, who lives in Stockport, had no plans to move. As he made inquiries, he was horrified to discover that a pair of thieves had stolen some of his utility bills and used them to persuade the Land Registry to change the name on the deeds of Mr To's house. An online auction for the property was just three days away when Mr To called the police. The villains were jailed last week but the case raises alarming questions. How easy is it to fiddle with the deeds to a property? And whatever happened to that old expression "as safe as houses?"

IN the wake of the Richmond Park by-election, some Lib-Dems were talking boldly of "keeping Britain in the EU." This ignores the embarrassing fact that there is no Britain in the EU's planning. Brussels' long-term vision for the UK was never as one state but as a collection of administrative regions. Scotland, Wales and Ulster would remain intact but England would be carved into nine units. There is no secret about this. The federalised UK appears on plenty of EU maps and briefing papers and "A Europe of the Regions," although rarely mentioned, is deep in the DNA of the Union. And who would benefit from a divided UK? As Norman Tebbit once put it: "The only gainers would be Our Masters in Brussels who would have achieved one of their great ambitions. The end of a European nation state powerful enough to be prosperous outside the European State."

AS for holding a second referendum, the Remoaners should be careful what they wish for. In the EU referendum, Remain scored a mighty 70 per cent of the votes in Richmond Park. Although comparisons are difficult, in last week's Richmond Park by-election the Lib-Dem candidate campaigning for Remain scored under 50 per cent. If that's a ringing endorsement of Remain, I'm Paddy Ashdown.

"SORRY to start your Monday morning off with a moan," begins a reader before doing just that. He opted some time ago for clean, green, save-the-planet paperless dealings with the taxman. So he did his tax return on his computer, paid his tax online and got an email from HMRC acknowledging receipt. And after all this hi-tech stuff, he reports glumly: "The postman has just delivered a letter from HMRC enclosing a paper calculation of my tax bill." So bang goes the planet.

I RECALL when the first computers arrived in the newspaper industry, we were promised the paperless office. Then the office vanished under piles of paper.