Hey, it's Sunday. Bring out Cross of Ross

I didn't know Terry Wogan had a column, too.

As an issue he raises is one I am tracking, I decided on a punt:

"I do believe the DVLA only knows the precise location of any car owned, insured and parked in the driveways of those who can be fined without much effort, having possibly simply forgotten and not been given a fair opportunity to do so.

Those requiring a bit of effort or a certain amount of cojones to tackle seem to be mysteriously less attractive to track down.
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Meanwhile, rewarding bad behaviour is obviously on the up and up. Following Ms. Goody's invitation to tour India, I have pondered expressing a certain amount of ignorance and insensitivity about my wife's homeland in the hope of scoring a subsidised family trip to visit the in-laws.
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A lot of blogs have thrown up a high proportion of 'serves 'em right' retorts to TV companies' shell games. If the criteria are clear then OK. But I have still to hear an adequate official explanation from the authorities (who, I thought, are in charge of licensing these companies and those telecoms operators who act as their collecting agents) as to why practices that would in any other arena be called fraud (from at best omitting certain key facts to the conduct of a show to outright misleading the public) are subject to less stringent rules and policing."

Time to dig up Voltaire... again

There more than a few words I see or hear that now seem to set off various twitches. One near the top is 'activist'. I am not too sure what it means, but it seems to describe someone who cares a lot about an issue (fair enough), wants to do something about it (also fair), tends to try and do something (laudable, depending) and... seems to think that they have a god-given right to impose their views on other folk as the only course of truth, justice and the 'ist' way. The latter can lead to me getting twitchy.

The BNP is, as far as I am aware, a legitimate (at least in legal terms) political party. So, if you share their views, you can vote for it, vote against it and/or join it.

Like so much in politics, I am uncomfortable with broad brush-strokes, but on balance they don't seem like my kind of people, so I won't be voting for them. But, and here's the M. Voltaire bit, I will defend with my life your right to do so if that's your fancy.

Hence this - Activists taunt the BNP ballerina - did not go down well at all with me (as reported), and if anything left me less impressed with the cause of the 'activists' than the one they are so set against.

As to talks of bans and the like, I'd say you can make a personal stand in support of your views, but when the pols and grants bodies get involved on 'our' behalves, that is a can of worms no one should be considering. 'Nazi' is a term that can apply - if usually inaccurately, but often successfully by the cynical and opportunistic - in many directions.

A bit like much in the environmental world. See, it did have a point for these pages.