ANOTHER row has broken out over the council-backed provision of superfast broadband.

Labour is calling for the roll out of the project, which the administration sank £3m of our money into, to be suspended following BT’s introduction of Openreach in North Swindon.

Residents had long campaigned for fibre-optic broadband rather than what was offered by the council-backed project.

The whole question of whether the council-backed project is worthwhile could, of course, be easily answered by releasing precise details of current uptake and revenue generation.

I’m sure the information will be made available soon.

Spinning us another cock and bull story

LIKE many people, I’ve been contemplating how we might improve our security against the terrorist threat.

There clearly needs to be some improvement, as the upper echelons among those tasked with protecting us seem to have missed the odd little clue lately.

They don’t seem, for example, to have realised it might be a good idea to keep fairly close tabs on somebody if they appear on TV with an Isis flag and proclaim that terrorism is fine and dandy.

Or visit a country where people often go to fight alongside actual terrorists, or be trained by actual terrorists in actual terrorist training camps, and then come back here and say terrorism is fine and dandy.

Or so alarm a community that members of it get in touch with the police or security services and say: “I’m really worried that this person I’m telling you about thinks terrorism is fine and dandy.” Or announce loudly and clearly to police officers of a nation allied with ours not only that terrorism is fine and dandy, but that their greatest ambition is to be a terrorist.

Insignificant, easy-to-overlook stuff like that.

Anyway, I’ve come up with what just might be a solution.

First we need to assemble a list of every dairy and beef farm in the country and send observant vets to them. Their mission will be to find some bovine quadrupeds with an unusual genetic mutation. Perhaps dairy farms known to rely heavily on chemical-based feeds should be targeted first.

What our vets will be looking for is bulls with bosoms.

We need at least two such bulls, but the more the better.

All animals found should be taken to London in secure crates at once. They must be kept healthy. It’s the bosoms we’re going to need, but as they’ll be attached to the bulls, the creatures’ welfare will be of paramount importance.

Once the journey to London is complete, one set of bull’s bosoms must be given a senior role in MI5. Another set of bull’s bosoms must be given a similar role in MI6.

If more than two bulls with bosoms have been found, another set of bull’s bosoms should be sent to GCHQ, another given a cabinet post, another given a shadow cabinet post and any remaining sets of bull’s bosoms scattered randomly throughout the corridors of power.

I’m not suggesting, of course, that bosoms on a bull would be any more use at protecting us than our current supposed protectors, but I doubt they’d be any less.

And at least we’d have something to chuckle about while waiting to discover whether our number or that of a dear loved one was up next.

Incidentally, if anybody reading this is tempted to accuse me of turning national security and public safety into a distasteful joke, all I can say is that I didn’t start it.

Out of tune with our legal system

A FORMER music teacher called Nathan Jones has been banned for life from the profession.

The 34-year-old was lead teacher for music at Swindon’s Isambard Community School between 2008 and 2015.

It was in 2015 that he had a Skype conversation with one of his pupils, a 13-year-old girl, during which he asked the child to send images of herself in a towel and a more explicit image.

He also asked the child if she had a webcam, with a view to engaging in sexual activity.

He admitted to having had a sexual motivation.

He was summarily slung out of the school and a professional conduct panel has quite rightly ruled that he should never set foot in a classroom in this country again.

As I began reading the horrifying story, I was a little puzzled that I didn’t recall his name. Perhaps, I reasoned, I’d been on holiday when his case came up in court.

As I read on, I learned there had been no court case for Jones, who incidentally has his own jazz band, the Nathan Jones All Stars. Mr Jones was interviewed under caution by the police on suspicion of attempting to cause/incite a child aged 13 to 17 years to become involved in pornography.

However, he was then notified that no further action would be taken.

The reason?

Drum roll, please… It’s that old CPS favourite, insufficient evidence for a prosecution.

Our taxes at work, folks, keeping our children safe.