HOW do you know when driving conditions are truly dreadful? Answer: when all the drivers within sight are behaving sensibly. This was certainly the case on Sunday morning when Spectator was caught in torrential rainfall while driving on the Leeming-Catterick stretch of the A1.

With visibility significantly reduced and the road becoming awash with running water, all vehicles slowed without any fuss and got a wide berth between themselves and fellow travellers. Most put on lights, but there's always an exception in that department.

North-bound traffic was behaving in the same temperate way; interesting, and good to see that sense can still prevail. And a far cry from two days earlier when the same journey, as part of a traffic jam moving at 50-60mph, had drivers zipping between lanes and overtaking on the nearside to gain one whole car position.

It was a considerable relief to see that elegant and very English sight of the spire of St James' at Baldersby St James, pointing the way off to the Ripon junction and the end of the A1 section of the journey.

Poetry in motions

THE straight-faced official terminology brought a smile to Spectator's harassed face. "Motions - disposable nappies", it said on the agenda of the North Yorkshire County Council executive this week.

It reminded him of the cheerful autobiography of the late Jack de Manio, once a daily stalwart of the Today programme on Radio 4, who recalled the words of some evasive, waffling and constipated politician faced with questions on a difficult international subject: "Well, the motion was not actually passed, but ..."

That's enough lavatorial humour for now.

United - when?

"EUROPE is now almost re-united," wrote Joe Keenan, regional director of Britain in Europe, in a letter to the editor last week, arguing the case for the new EU constitution.

For something to be "re-united" it must have, at some time in the past, been a coherent whole.

Perhaps Mr Keenan could tell us when in history, or even in pre-history before the Channel appeared and sundered us from the mainland, the peoples of the European continent were as one.

Germany and Italy, to name but two, were a flurry of small realms and far from united within their present borders.

Even Neanderthal man defended his territory from the lot over the hill and tribes in these islands fought each other across most of them at one time or other.

If a good argument is to be made for any cause, it's always best to start one's case with an unarguably accurate point.