Peter Rhodes on risky opinions, the bill for barracks and how Whitehall works

This is one that they came up with. If you utter it, be prepared for a knock on your door. Here we go (readers of a sensitive disposition, look away now): “Western culture is under threat from mass immigration and a lack of integration by certain ethnic and cultural groups.”

You see the problem? That opinion is probably shared by half the UK population. We can't possibly brand every one of them a potential terrorist and send them all on Prevent courses, can we? Imagine the furore on day one of the course when some hapless citizen asks, if mass immigration is such a great blessing, why does every major political party promise to reduce it?

The men in grey suits will probably be ordered to scrap this proposed definition and come up with something saner. Don't expect anything soon. The clapped-out Whitehall network which is desperately trying to answer the question “what is a potential terrorist?” is the same system that took years to decide “what is a woman?”

After a £1.5 billion increase in its budget, the MoD will be spending more than £7 billion on service personnel homes this year. Does anyone believe that providing Cpl Bloggs with new double glazing is in any sense “defence spending?”

Soldiers are citizens and their homes are a Government asset. By all means build and repair them to a high standard. But don't take the money from the MoD pot; take it from Angela Rayner's national housing budget. Save the big bucks for big guns.

 In the meantime, does anyone share my fears that in five or ten years from now, having upped the defence budget to three per cent of the nation's income and launched a fleet of new submarines and a super-fleet of drones and turned flabby old Britain into a lethal war machine, the crises in Ukraine, Taiwan and Africa will have been sorted and we'll all be the best of friends. All tooled up with no-one to fight. And skint.