Ban big boys toys?

Sir Mark said the EU should ban the sale of cars that do under 35 miles a gallon.

The motor men countered by saying that the drivers of the most polluting cars paid for their pollution by coughing up more road tax and petrol duty.

Sir Mark replied by saying that this simply let the rich avoid their responsibility to the environment in tackling climate change.

It got me thinking what would happen if the EU really got to grip with this issue and started removing big boys' toys from the super rich for the sake of the environment.

Just imagine it '“ they wouldn't be able to buy their gas-guzzling, huge, ocean-going liners or their executive jets and helecopters to travel from one luxury home to another.

Richard Branson would be banned from running pleasure flights into space at vast expense and pollution, and people would be restricted to homes with no more than, say, eight rooms.

It may also make some of them realise the pointlessness of just amassing money when there's no big toys to spend it on, and the utter selfishness of being one of the world's 1000+ dollar billionaires when millions of others in the world are starving.

Work or no subsidised housing

WOULD-be council tenants who do not work should seek employment or face not getting subsidised housing. The words of the new housing minister, Caroline Flint '“ and I wholeheartedly agree.

We've had decade upon decade when people who are fit for work receive benefits instead of being forced to take work.

And now, according to a recent report, half of all households paid for by benefits are without work.

Just why should one family be handed the keys to subsided housing, allowing them to sit back and wait for the next handout, while another family has to work all hours in the private rented sector to pay the bills?

I just hope the government has the courage to get tough on this issue once and for all and that it won't be another load of empty words to try to win votes.

Because it's this benefit culture which has produced unemployment ghettos, and has sucked into Britain a huge army of immigrants, illegal and legal, to do work that British people supposedly feel is too menial to do.

That immigration has put huge pressure on housing, education, hospitals and law and order.

Sort out Britain's appalling benefit culture and you sort out a raft of other problems along the way.

The one thing that amazes me is that this call for change is from the Labour party!

Who's bugging whom?

Goodness knows who's running the country when top people in government do not know who's bugging whom.

I think the most interesting thing that came out of the MP prison bugging saga was an opinion poll asking the public whether they think MPs should be exempt from having their conversations taped.

The vast majority thought MPs should not be exempt from police "bugging". There are just as many rotten apples among the 600 or so MPs as there are in society (some may say more!) so it is more than sensible for someone to keep a close watch on them.

But we also need someone to keep watch on the "buggers" '“ on the basis we can't trust anyone these days.

What a sad society we're living in.