ONE reason the Northern Ireland peace process is supposed to have gone pear-shaped is because the Army would not agree to decommissioning its arms at the same time as the IRA gave up its weapons. But, hang on, our boys' guns ARE out of action. What else can you call issuing the Army with 300,000 rifles that won't work?

OUR nannying government aims to issue medical encyclopaedias to every home in the country. It's part of a heal-thyself plan to take the strain off the hard-pressed NHS. Don't they know that giving every hypochondriac a book full of illness ideas will only choke every surgery and hospital like never before?

WE may have got rid of the hereditary peers from the House of Lords, but their Labour-appointed replacements have lost no time in supposing themselves to be mighty grand. A record number of them have applied to have coats of arms at nearly £3,000 a go. I suggest each saves a bob or two by having a common motto: I Let It Go Straight To My Head.

MILLIONS of swings in playgrounds across the country may have to be re-sited because an EU regulation says the sun must not get in the eyes of kiddies playing on them. Heaven knows what the bill for this will be. But can't someone spend just a few pence on a stamp and write telling these silly beggars in Brussels that for no upheaval or expense, their interfering injunction can be met with . . . simply by sitting the kids the other way round?

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.