Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton - America's dilemma

OUR changing language. In a radio debate on the EU, a politician informed us that the most important task was "how to skill our economy."

YOU would think by now that our cool, damp and endlessly inventive nation would have a name for every type of weather. Not so. We have no term for those days, usually following an unseasonal cold snap, when it's warmer outside the house than in. Over to you.

DONALD Trump faces questions over a 50 million dollar investment allegedly designed to avoid tax. Hillary Clinton stands accused of breaking government rules by misusing an email server. It is a mystery how the nation that loves calling itself "the greatest democracy on earth" has managed to engineer a presidential election between this pair. Whoever wins the election on November 8, does anyone doubt that the losers will be the American public?

WE were at a dinner party the other night where everyone around the table was planning to vote for leaving the EU. That cannot possibly reflect the national consensus and yet I bet the same thing is happening in pubs, clubs and parties all over Britain. What we are witnessing, as the June 23 referendum gets closer, is the the Scottish Effect. This is the phenomenon seen in the lead-up to the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence when, because passions ran so high, people tended to discuss their views only with like-minded folk. The result was that Yes voters rarely heard the No case, and vice versa. The consequence is that each group comes to believe it is on the winning side – by a mile.

THE truth, at least according to the EU opinion polls, is that the vote is evenly balanced and could go either way. So whatever happens, the next few decades will involve about half the population pointing at the other half every time something goes wrong and saying: "I told you so." Without firing a shot, Brussels has created what it always wanted - the Disunited Kingdom.

I WROTE recently about the prototype driverless car boasting a sticky bonnet which, in the event of a collision, would seize pedestrians and cyclists in a limpet-like grip and prevent them from being thrown into the road. A reader suggests a refinement. On grabbing the unfortunate victim, he says, the driverless car could be programmed to go directly to the nearest A&E department, "giving a new meaning to the term hit-and-run."

ANOTHER reader makes the sobering point that if one unarmed person can break into the grounds of Buckingham Palace, as happened recently, there is no reason why ten men brandishing Kalashnikovs cannot do the same. The reader is not mightily impressed with the security arrangements: "These people could not secure our toilet, let alone the Palace."

I SUGGESTED some time ago that people-smugglers would be mad to head for our great ports such as Dover when so many minor harbours have no security. A British yachtsman has just been remanded in custody charged with trying to smuggle 17 Albanians into the country through pretty, upmarket Chichester marina. No surprises there.

IN fact, the only surprise is the authorities' bold claim that eight of the Albanians, jailed for attempted illegal entry, "will be removed from the UK at the end of their sentences." Anybody taking bets on this?