• The Blitz spirit soars among the allotment folk. Allotments are a very British idea and are a familiar sight on long car journeys to otherwise unfamiliar places. Who’d have thought they’d be a haven for good ol’ British bloody-mindedness?

    The 245 members of the New Aspley Garden Holders’ Association have been offered an average of £28,000 each for their plots by a property developer. Most have said yes, 25 have said no. I share The Telegraph’s sympathy with

    …the very small minority who want to keep their allotments simply because they enjoy growing their own vegetables, as they have done for years, and want to go on doing so more than they want a fat cheque from a property company.

    [T]here is still something admirable about a bloody-minded Briton who knows his rights, and refuses to give them up under pressure from an insistent majority.

    Too bloody right.

  • Luxembourg has ratified the EU Constitution Luxembourg - who receives more of my money EU grants than any other nation - voted 56% to 44% in favour of ‘Yes’ (or its Luxembourgish equivalent of ‘Yes’).

    You might think, so what? The game’s over. Think again:

    Luxembourg’s prime minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, said yesterday: “If Luxembourg had said No, the constitution would have been dead. As Luxembourg has said Yes, the process can go ahead.”

    Erm… Ideas above your station there, old boy. The constitution is dead.

    Isn’t it?

    Germany’s Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, said of the result: “It is an encouragement and an invitation to all Europeans to seek joint ways of quickly overcoming the current crisis.”

    What encouragement? How is it an encouragement? France said No, Holland said No and, given half a chance, the UK will say No. That encourages nobody - unless they have some secret plan B.

    They need all 25 to ratify - that’s not going to happen. The UK almost certainly won’t ratify no matter what and Holland and France have said they won’t do a second vote anyway.

    I think we need to be extremely vigilant. We may yet get the Constitution regardless of how we vote on it.

  • Working women more likely to divorce At first glance you might think, well, that’s because of pressures of work I suppose. And the fact that their relationship suffers with being away from their husbands.

    Maybe. But mostly they divorce because they can.

    I understand - although have not confirmed this - that two-thirds of divorces are initiated by women anyway. One of the several places I’ve heard this is from the hallowed lips of his royal saintliness Bob Geldof so I’m hardly going to question it, am I? From The Telegraph:

    Marilyn Stowe, a female divorce lawyer, suggested that working women had the economic freedom to consider life beyond marriage.

    Wrong. Women have the economic freedom to not commit to their relationships in the first place. For too many people marriage is fine so long as it suits their needs but once it starts getting difficult then bailing out - rather than digging in - is the order of the day.

  • Rainbow WarriorGreenpeace boat sunk with Mitterand’s permission The man in charge of the French intelligence services 20 years ago when the boat was sunk says President Mitterand sanctioned the act himself.

    A handwritten memo from 1986 by Adml Pierre Lacoste, a former head of the DGSE, provides the first official proof of the president’s involvement in the sabotage of the vessel, which was trying to hamper French nuclear tests in the Pacific.

    One of Greenpeace’s people drowned in the incident.

    Two French agents were imprisoned for blowing up the ship but were freed within three years of the attack.

    France paid compensation totalling several million pounds but has never officially apologised to the photographer’s family.

    Would it cause a diplomatic incident of I suggested this was a terrorist act?

    One can hope…