WASHED AND READY TO EAT

I try very hard to think myself into the heads of UKIP supporters and understand what makes them tick. I really do. After all, about a quarter of the population now seems prepared to vote for this barmy army. At a political level, all the stuff about disenfranchised protest voters is probably true. Some of the supporters are alienated from all the mainstream parties. Many are natural Tories and just feel that David Cameron is too wishy-washy. But plenty of the Tories who think Cameron's a sell-out still end up voting Conservative. The UKIP voter is a particular breed. These are folks who like moaning and griping and feeling hard-done-by. There's nothing they enjoy more than being stuck in traffic queues, worrying about which station is going to give them the best-value petrol and which one is going to rip them off. Almost certainly they'd use a pound's worth of fuel to get to a particular Nigel Farage where unleaded was a penny cheaper per litre. They'd moan all...

The news this week that the town of St Asaph has been granted city status in celebration of Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee celebrations left many Brits bemused. Err.. St Where? The consensus seems to be that there had to be a Welsh place on the list. Maybe they were the only ones bidding? In which case, you have to hand it to the burghers of the sleepy hamlet (population 3,600) for having the chutzpah to claim the crown. As a lifelong Londoner, I tend to believe that the capital is the only place worthy of city status in the UK. Alright, maybe Birmingham at a pinch. But I think it's time we had a clearer set of criteria for deciding on these things. Here's my suggested checklist. If you can meet all the requirements, you're in. 1. Do you have a population of five million or more? 2. Are you always within a two-minute walk of Starbucks or Pret? 3. Have you ever had a riot which spiralled out of control? 4. Are your buses red double-deckers? 5. Are you hosting the ...

A week ago, while in north London for an aikido seminar, I went at lunchtime to grab a coffee with friends from my local club. It was busy and we couldn't find ourselves a table in a café, so opted for a takeaway from Starbucks and headed into the street. The bench we found could only have been designed with serious winos in mind. It was facing a roundabout and the only thing that stopped us eyeballing the drivers was some well positioned foliage. Glancing upwards, we could see the towering spire of a local church. How many people had sat on this very bench and experienced a moment of epiphany? Photographic evidence below.