Flying as in I don't like flying and every time I fly anywhere I say to myself 'Never again', never will I go through this again. Bumpity bump, hang on, stop it please, just fly smoothly and get me another gin and tonic and don't look at me like that - I know it’s my third and stop this thing bumping around, this is the last time. Never again will I be up here… stop smiling, it’s not fun air host person....

Paul Smith

This shy, gentle young man was at the front door on an evening when the cold was setting in, to suggest ways we could improve our broadband package.

He was unlike the cold callers from overseas companies where sales people with no idea of timing - partly because they seemed to be working their own time zone - rang just as we were sitting down to dinner.

Think of a time in the future. Perhaps the not too distant future. You have come upon desperately hard times. So desperate you need a voucher for a bed in a hostel, where you will also be entitled to a meal. To obtain the voucher you have to pocket your pride and approach the Desperation Department.

Your turn comes to enter the cubicle for a computer interview. The computer asks the usual questions about your financial status and eligibility for assistance. Just when you think you have it in the bag...

Paul Smith

Which is better? The Fifties and Sixties when we sailed off to the other side of the world and only contacted our parents once a year by phone because phone calls were so expensive? Or today, when parents and their children can be in touch at any time through emails and texts?

Colin James  

We called her Betty Windsor in the 1960s, thinking to be smartly sniffy and disavow 1950s childhood awe at the imperial pageantry of the film "A Queen is Crowned". But Elizabeth II finessed us: the "bourgeois monarchy" is still in business, respected more now than for decades.

She is a relic of hereditary royalty in a democratic age. But she is less a misfit now than when we basked in empire. Her grandson and his wife are knockout hits with the media and much of the population.

That was the question put to me by three intelligent left-leaning adults in response to the objections to funding long-term contraception for beneficiaries. The objectors were   prominent left-leaning political figures.

Sadly, the term, ‘social engineering’ was dragged up to demonise the policy. As if, taxes, social welfare, public health care and compulsory education is not social engineering...