Jeremy, right or wrong?

IN just 24 hours, 300,000 adoring fans signed an email petition calling for Jeremy Clarkson to be reinstated in Top Gear. I wonder how these numbskulls would react if their son, brother or husband came home and said: "I got punched at work today"

LAY 100 pennies on the table in front of you to represent the annual spending of the UK. Now, given that politicians of all parties agree that "Defence of the realm is the first duty of any government," how many of those pennies would you spend on defence? The answer so far, from all the main parties, is barely 2p.

ONE serious suggestion in Whitehall is that Britain could hit its target of spending two per cent on defence by including the money paid in pensions to old soldiers. This is not soldiering; it is creative accountancy and proof that the Ministry of Defence is run entirely by bean-counters.

PALESTINIAN groups have complained about homework in Scottish schools which referred to "terrorism" committed by Palestinians. It is curious how politics and propaganda creep into the classroom. Some years ago, in the old Arab quarter of East Jerusalem, my arm was grabbed by a teenager asking urgently: "You speak English?" I assumed he was trying to sell me something until he drew me and my colleague, an American reporter, into his father's cafe and showed us his English homework for that night. The illustration showed a bearded prisoner, clearly a heroic Palestinian, escaping from what was obviously an Israeli prison. The homework, using the verb "to sneak," was to fill in the missing verb in the sentence: "The brave prisoner ( ) past the sleeping guard." I said it depended on the tense. If this happened in the past, then the prisoner sneaked past the guard. If it was happening in the present, then he sneaks past. At which point the American chimed in. "What about snuck?" she suggested. I explained to the lad that "snuck" was a terrible Americanism, to be avoided at all costs. In the end we settled on "sneaks." One small diplomatic success for the UK, one little triumph for proper English.

IN general elections, the homing instinct is powerful. Dyed-in-the-wool Tories and Labour voters who dabbled with Ukip in by-elections tend to drift back into the fold. I dare say thousands are looking for an excuse not to vote for Ukip on May 7, hoping for just a hint that Nigel Farage's party is not yet respectable enough to be trusted. And then yesterday Farage shot himself in the foot by announcing he would scrap some of the laws against racial discrimination in the workplace. Alarm bells ringing? Thursday, March 12 may go down in history as the day when Ukip blew it.

REMEMBER how computers were going to create "the paperless office"? This week I bought a shirt on the internet. As soon as the deal was done, I received a form to print, confirming my order. A few minutes later, I got an emailed receipt, followed two minutes later by an order reference number which was followed, after another two minutes, by an order confirmation. The next day the boss of the shirt-making company sent yet another lavish email, this time announcing that: "Your first purchase has made me delighted." We have swapped the paperless office for a dark, dense forest of electronic clutter.