What special relationship?

THE housing crisis is caused by two issues. Firstly, houses are in short supply. Secondly, they are too expensive. Or so we are told. A sceptical reader in his 70s writes: "Hang on. Can anyone remember a time when houses were cheap and plentiful?"

MORE suggestions for a collective noun to describe a gathering of colorectal surgeons. One reader suggests a rearguard. Another proposes an asset.

AH, yes, the Special Relationship. Let us enjoy a misty-eyed moment over that great connection between Britain and the United States, the bond forged in blood, war and all that stuff. Why, only this week that great British columnist Peter McKay banged the drum for the US/UK relationship when he declared that: "Backing the US gives our leaders supporting-actor roles on the world stage." However, when four British yachtsmen are lost in the Atlantic and a capsized hull is spotted, the Yanks turn up, have a look around, call off the search after 48 hours and go home. They resume the hunt only after a vast internet campaign and pleading by the families involved. I like to think that if those missing men had been Americans within 600 miles of the UK coast, we would have moved heaven and earth to save them, or at least recover their bodies, for the sake of the families and out of common decency. Sometimes the special relationship is a very unequal relationship.

I WROTE a few days ago about some unusual motorway gantry signs. A reader tells me he spotted HIGH RISK OF DEER ON ROAD in that well-known bucolic paradise and nature reserve, Glasgow.

LATEST claims from research clinics. Too much exercise is bad for your heart (Barcelona). Excessive mobile-phone use is linked to brain tumours (Bordeaux). Don't panic. The usual routine is for other teams of experts to come along a few days from now and claim exactly the opposite.

STILL on health, I like this viewer's email to a BBC discussion: "I am over 60 and have drunk full-fat milk and eaten butter all my life. I weigh 10 stone and my oil pressure is normal."

A SAD little centenary. Down to Stratford-upon-Avon for the final lowering of the flag at my old Territorial Army drill hall where for exactly 100 years part-time soldiers trained and mobilised to defend their country. In the finest traditions of Whitehall, the bean-counters spent £2 million modernising the drill hall just before deciding to close it as part of the great plan to double the size of the TA. If that sentence doesn't appear to make sense, that's because there is damn-all sense in the plan. In time, a fine little drill hall with all the latest facilities and a century of tradition will doubtless be bulldozed to make way for a mini-estate of upwardly-mobile town houses. Soon, no-one will remember where the old drill hall stood, or how eager, excited troopers paraded in 1914 and 1939 as the Warwickshire Yeomanry went off to war. We stood in the evening sunshine, serving soldiers and old comrades alike, as a bugler played the Last Post and the flag came down.

THE clinical, agonising but oh-so polite dissection of Ed Miliband at the hands of Radio Wiltshire presenter Ben Prater is almost too painful to witness. A few well-chosen questions revealed that the Labour leader had no idea who runs the local council or even who leads the Labour opposition on the council. Miliband emerged as a prize chump. After a performance like that, I don't give much for his future. Ben Prater's future, that is.