Wanted – a cyberfist to whack the online crooks

SCIENTISTS at University College London have discovered that people who feel younger than they actually are and have younger friends are likely to live longer. Hang on. If you choose younger friends you are, by definition, landing them with older friends. That's not very friendly, is it?

A CITY executive who dodged £43,000 in rail fares has been banned from any senior job in the financial services industry. So far, so good. But don't you wonder how many City high flyers are still at their desks on telephone-number salaries, having gambled away the sort of sums where £43,000 barely registers as small change?

A FEW days ago I thought I had come up with the perfect analogy of today's politics, the Twix bar made of two chocolate bars. If you believe the TV advert, the makers of the left and right bars are convinced they are totally different products, but we can all see, as with the Labour and Tory economic plans, that they are identical. A reader points out that at the end of the Twix ad, two rival vans get stuck in the gate and neither can get through. Well spotted.

SO does a simple confectionery advert forecast the result of the next General Election, now only 20 weeks away? Or will one of the Twix bars be helped to the winning post by the intervention of a Scottish deep-fried Mars bar?

AND yet another first on the nature front. I have just held a goldcrest in my hand. I'd never seen one before. It is a tiny, beautifully marked little bird, smaller than a wren and as gaudy as a jezebel's jewel box. It must have flown into our window, although being such a lightweight it didn't produce the usual "perdoing!" that signals the impact of blackbirds or pigeons, or the kinetic energy to kill itself. The goldcrest was stunned and sat on my hand for a few minutes until it flew off into the nearest tree.

YOU might imagine that a creature as tiny and beautiful as a goldcrest could never be associated with any sort of nastinesss. Think again. Some years ago there were reports of a pub quiz which turned into a Wild West-style brawl when someone disagreed with the judge's ruling on what was the smallest British bird. It developed into a punch-up between supporters of the ****ing wren, the ****ing goldcrest and the ****ing firecrest. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds website tells us: "With the firecrest, the goldcrest is the UK's smallest bird." Why are we not surprised that the RSPB can sit on a fence?

EMAIL from HSBC: "Your account has been locked. The reason provided is: You have exceeded the number of three (3) failed login attempts." Of course, it's not from HSBC. There is no account. Nothing has been locked. It's just one of the millions of attempts made every day on the internet to rob us. One day someone will invent a cyberfist which you'll be able to send instantly down the line to punch the crooks in the face.

THE recent thread on the joys of paraffin heaters and hard winters reminds one reader of the days when frost formed on the inside of windows: "My favourite trick was holding a penny (pre decimal) against the window and the frost glueing it in place." Can anyone explain why such arctic discomfort has left us with such warm memories?

HERE'S a tentative explanation. Back then, kids didn't feel the cold.