Cromwell - hero or villain?

IT rained again and my BT landline went duff again, for the second time in 10 days. This time, the BT treatment changed from the casually indifferent to the threatening. According to their line test, said the BT person sternly, the fault was inside my property. If that were so and I requested an engineer, I would have to pay £120. I bet this sort of treatment reduces little old ladies to tears.

THE fault was, of course, on BT's line. It always is. Maybe I should start charging them £120 a time.

I HAVE no idea why I make notes of such things but, in case you need to know, the list of visitor hazards on a board at Rutland Water I spotted on a recent trip includes: Deep water, soft mud, thin ice, uneven surfaces, eroded / steep banks, blue-green algae, back casting, 10mph speed limit and overhead power cables. Probably safest to stay in the car park, eh?

A READER challenged me to name the person to whom Jesus said: "Get thee behind me, Satan" - without looking it up on Google. You've chosen the wrong hack, buddy. I was a Sunday School teacher with a shedload of prizes for scripture knowledge. Trickier by far was the challenge from another reader to name - again without using Google - the person who said: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Bill Shankly?

THE United States is going through one of its disunited spasms, apparently re-fighting the Civil War of 1861-65. But are we Brits in any position to criticise them? We may have stopped fighting (with the exception of the Sealed Knot) but we've never reached a national consensus on the rights and wrongs of our own Civil War. A political map of England today looks suspiciously like the Roundhead / Cavalier divide of 1640 and we still can't agree on the basics. Oliver Cromwell - hero or villain? Pass me my musket.

AS the number of "community groups" grows and the definition of "victims" gets wider, those of us who donated money to the Grenfell Tower appeals must wonder how it will ever be used. Meanwhile, consider the no-nonsense approach of the We Love Manchester fund, set up after the slaughter at the city's Ariana Grande concert on May 22. Over the next few weeks the next-of-kin of the 22 people killed will each receive £250,000. Those in hospital long-term have already been given £60,000 each. This is the wisest way to run such an appeal. Get the money in, decide who it is intended for and distribute as much of it as quickly as possible. Well done, Manchester. London, look and learn.

NICOLA Sturgeon was allegedly furious when Clark's launched a shoe range for girls called Dolly Babe. "Almost beyond belief," tweeted Scotland's First Minister. So it is almost beyond belief to report, as a reader points out, that one of Sturgeon's favourite dressmakers is an Edinburgh boutique called Totty Rocks.