Thoroughly Baked Off yet?

BAKED Alaska thaws. Grown man blubs. Elderly lady walks out. Headlines aren't what they used to be, are they? (More of the same tomorrow night, if you can stand the excitement)

"MULTI-car insurance – what a scam!" begins a letter from a reader who put all her family's cars on one policy. The first year was a bargain but the renewal premium 12 months later was steep. She went to a price-comparison website and discovered she could insure all three cars separately for £600 less, a saving of almost 50 per cent – with the same company. She rang the company to point this out. She says: "A lady told me that as I'd done my homework and done some good shopping, she could match the internet prices. How daft is that?" Some might say daft, others would say dishonest. Here, it seems, is an insurance company cynically prepared to rip off a loyal customer for £600. In the old days insurance was governed by the principle of "utmost good faith." Times have changed and this is yet another horror story, another good reason why the entire motor- insurance industry should be nationalised. You pay your car tax to the state, why not your insurance, too?

AFTER a posse of Russian soldiers "got lost" and were discovered in Ukraine, the Canadian delegation at Nato tweeted a message "Geography can be tough" with a map of Europe for dummies with big captions marked "Russia" and "Not Russia." Undiplomatic diplomacy.

DURING the Second World War, Britain created the Sixth Airborne Division. We only had two airborne divisions; the name was designed to make the Germans think we had more. Let's hope the Russians are playing the same game. The paras allegedly lost in Ukraine come from the 331st Parachute Regiment. That's an awful lot of paras.

MEANTIME, why is the United States, the world's only superpower, doing so little to help Ukraine defend itself from what looks like a Russian invasion? Let us be deeply cynical. Let us recall Russia's bloody war in Chechnya in 1994-96 which drained Russia's economy and turned Moscow into the world's biggest target for Islamic terrorists. I bet there are generals in the Pentagon today who are rubbing their hands with glee as Russia teeters on the edge of yet another conflict.

SO farewell, Matthew Amroliwala who is leaving BBC News for BBC World News. He first appeared on our screens in 1997 and his chief qualification seemed to be that he had the chiselled, impossibly handsome good looks of a tailor's dummy. Over the years he has shown a brilliant grasp on current affairs and a dry, spontaneous wit. I cannot recall a breath of scandal about a man who has never tried to become a celebrity and whose private life has remained private. According to Wikipedia he was born in Yorkshire the son of an RAF officer and is is 52, married with four children. He is a Parsi Zoroastrian, born into an ancient religion and philosophy. When Amroliwala quit BBC News his sorrowful co-presenter Jane Hill said he ought to be running the world, and she seemed to mean it. As far as one can tell, he is one of the good guys and we'll miss him.

I AM ploughing my way through Catastrophe, Max Hastings' excellent study of 1914, the first year of the First World War. It is rich in tiny details. For example, this happened almost exactly 100 years ago: "In London, Madame Tussaud's waxwork museum transferred the Kaiser from its Royal Gallery to the Chamber of Horrors." Total war, eh?