Sparkplug

Wow – some party trick – we’ll have to blank off your speedo some time so only the passenger can see it and go out for a drive – first time you’re out by more than 1mph, you pay up. Back to reasonable claims. I didn’t say people should stare ahead, I said remain aware of dangers – and that strangely enough means that we need to be more aware of what’s ahead of us than what’s inside our vehicle – unless you care to disagree with that as well? As it happens I’ve been driving for 25 years, have a clean licence, had a race licence for some years, and cover 30,000 miles a year safely. I, like you, can judge my speed relatively closely (though I’m not silly enough to claim within 1mph) from inputs like engine tone and road noise, but there are millions of less experienced drivers out there who cannot, and a whole lot of them struggle with the basics.

What rubbish. The nation is paid for by the taxpayer. We pay for it, and the government is duty bound to serve the voters (who should only be the taxpayers in my view) by making best use of our taxes. The taxpayer should be entitled to know how taxes are used – on the whole, such information is available from central and local government. I find it interesting that a benefit claimant (I assume???) sees other people’s hard-earned taxes as everybody’s money. He might see it differently if he were a giver rather than a taker.

The Conservative Party, the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, and a professional chartered institution.

Are you allowed to openly state your forces membership if you are serving?

The problem is so vast that the under funded investigators aren’t even scratching at the surface. The welfare state is the government's biggest single expense out of our gross domestic product - it bleeds us all dry, and the taxpayer's money should be better guarded than letting wastrels steal it. Yes, benefits payments should be available for public scrutiny. It's the taxpayer's money, so the taxpayer should have the right to know who's taking it. If a neighbour is suspected of cheating, people can check up and confirm that he or she is a claimant despite coming home every night and being dropped off from a decorator's van. I'd go a stage further - all claimants should have to carry signs on their front doors saying that they don't work, so that those of us who pay for their existence can see which people contribute nothing to our society.

If you don’t like flying, think on the following: When a car is designed, its components are made to be about twice as strong as they need to be – the designed safety factor is 100%. So you can abuse it a bit and it won’t break. For heavy vehicles, plant and the like, the safety factor can be around 700%, so they will take a lot of hammer above what they are expected to do before they break. That’s why they’re so heavy. For aircraft, weight is critical, so everything has to be designed to be as light as reasonably practicable. To that end, the safety factor is about 20% - the bits are just 1.2 times stronger than they need to be for it to stay up in the air within its normal operating parameters. Pull back 20% too hard on the stick, and the wings drop off (well, not quite but you get my drift). Now, on top of all that, just remember that every component, every rivet and screw, by law has to be bought from the contractor who put in the cheapest tender for the contract. Reassured?