THE BRITISH THREAD II

A MAJOR stand-off is looming between Westminster and the Scottish Parliament over controversial Tory plans to scrap human rights legislation.

The Scottish Government last night joined condemnation of Conservative proposals to repeal the Human Rights Act – which enshrines the European Convention on Human Rights in domestic law – should the party win next year’s general election. The move would require the consent of the Scottish Parliament and MSPs will be called on to block the move, the Scottish Government said.

If Westminster still wanted to proceed, it would then have to rewrite the Scotland Act, the legal foundations of the Scottish Parliament.

I see the Royal Air Force up to yesterday had flown six sorties over Iraq and had taken out a pickup truck.

Field Marshall Montgomery, thou shouldest be living at this hour.

Indeed, the most exciting drama to hit Frinton since the opening of the much-disputed fish and chip shop at the end of Connaught Avenue (called, with admirable irony, Nice Fish and Chips) is the row about the town's first pub. Old AA guidebooks used to dismiss the town with a single line: "Frinton-on-Sea has no pub." Local outrage at plans to open one and the many meetings that followed have been rumbling on since donkeys wore high hats.

The anti-pub lobby has always insisted that pubs are against the original Frinton spirit and that there are plenty of clubs and hotels in the town where locals and visitors may take a drink (if they must) without Frinton going the whole hogshead and opening a public bar. But at the beginning of August the Kent brewer Shepherd Neame is to cut the ribbon on a pub-with-food on the site of the former Blowers and Coopers ironmonger store slap in the heart of Connaught Avenue.

Have you ever been to Frinton On Sea?