Downside of delivery drones

I NEVER had a catapult when I was a boy. I wanted one, naturally, because all the characters in the comics I read had one.

And they used them to great effect – knocking policemen’s helmets off, surprising pompous gents with a chuckie-stane to their rear end as they bent down to pick up a sixpence glued to the pavement.

All harmless fun, I thought. But in real life my mother decided they were only for bad boys, so I made do with a stick and some “A-a-a-a-a-a” machine-gun noises.

Until I was 12, when I made a crossbow.

It was a simple affair – two bits of wood nailed together in a cross, a nail hammered in either end of the horizontal bit and a rubber band stretched between them.

But it could fire a wooden clothes peg clear to the other side of the street.

In more malign hands it could probably have launched a small rock at a neighbour’s window, so I was persuaded that the local bobbies might not take kindly to it and it was dismantled after one weekend of unfulfilled bad-boyhood.

It’s expected our skies will be filled with delivery drones

I was reminded of my William Tell moment last week, when I heard that Amazon are to try delivering parcels by drone.

It strikes me that the bad boys of today will have access to much more sophisticated technology than wood, nails and bungee.

For all I know the average teenager with a 3D printer is capable of creating a ground-toair missile in his bedroom.

So if, as expected, our skies will soon be filled with delivery drones, is it too cynical to suspect that our streets will just as soon be filled with young ne’er-do-wells lobbing pointy things at them, bringing them down and nicking the parcels?

The main concerns so far have been about drones filming us in our patios as they pass overhead, and terrorists being able to hack into them.

What about some ned making off with the comfy shoes I ordered in the Clarks sale?

So the drones will obviously need defensive weaponry and it will all escalate to suburban Armageddon.

A high price for some cushioned soles, I feel.