Peter Rhodes: Drug driving law - the law of unintended consequences

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MOST cheering sight of the week so far was the CCTV footage of the thief in Drogheda, Ireland, who tried to smash the window of a Mercedes with a brick. It bounced back, hit him in the face and knocked him out until the cops arrived. Perfect.

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DAVID Blunkett now admits his blindness made him unaware of how much he upset some colleagues. Actually, the issue goes deeper than that but at the time when he was Home Secretary, 2001-2004, we were all far too polite to raise the subject. How could a totally blind Home Secretary fully comprehend the effects of immigration, the scale of a riot or CCTV footage showing police brutality? Equal opportunities is a fine principle but when the final arbiter on law and order cannot see the effects of disorder, all is not well.

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WHILE the Government's plan to build 200,000 starter homes is a fine idea, it's tackling the wrong end of the crisis. Millions of middle-aged and elderly homeowners would gladly downsize, releasing big family homes, if only there were enough suitable, single-storey properties being built. Britain needs a bungalow revolution.

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I MAKE the confident prediction that a full and transparent inquiry will conclude, without a shred of doubt, that the Kremlin was in no way responsible for the murder of the anti-Putin campaigner Boris Nemtsov. If we can't solve Russian political murders in London, what chance of them being solved within the shadow of the Kremlin itself? And for those who think the Kremlin would never do something as crass as killing a critic on its own doorstep, think again. Although Moscow's spooks carry out the occasional sneaky-beaky poisoning, as a general rule the Kremlin doesn't do subtle. It has always been happiest sending in columns of tanks, machine-gunning proles and shooting down civilian airliners. The mentality that accepts the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine is not going to worry about a bit of blood in Red Square.

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WHEN people defend the BBC they usually refer to the quality of its programmes. So think back to Sunday which saw Pompidou (BBC2) and The Casual Vacancy (BBC1), two irredeemable piles of piffle. We pay our licence fee for this?

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BUT if the TV licence is abolished, brace yourself for something even nastier. One proposal (eagerly supported by the Beeb, naturally) is a broadcasting levy to be imposed on every household – whether or not you have a telly. This is worse than the existing licence, worse even than the poll tax and I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be illegal. If we really must have a national broadcasting corporation, the only fair way to fund it is from central taxation, just as we pay for the NHS. So the rich pay more, the poor pay less, no-one goes to jail for evasion or non-payment and the entire TV Licensing empire can be scrapped. Seemples.