Best of Peter Rhodes - Jan 15

The best of this week's Peter Rhodes column from the Express & Star.

A READER reminds us never to put an unopened tin of alphabet spaghetti in the microwave. If it explodes it could spell disaster.

MEANWHILE, in the church magazine:

* Next weekend's Fasting & Prayer Conference includes all meals

* The ladies of the Church have cast off clothing of every kind.

YOU see many stupid things in the snow and ice but nothing quite so stupid as the father in my local park who was slipping on the icy path with his toddler by his side. And then he hoisted the child on to his shoulders. An A&E case just waiting to happen.

EVEN if politics and the voting system bore you rigid, you can't deny the human drama of those late-night election counts. Once every five years we get to see a Dimbleby fluffing his lines, a Snow with a wonky swingometer and a succession of sleepless, shell-shocked losers facing up to a desolate life without MP after their name. It makes great television. Sadly, this Great British institution is in danger. Cash-strapped councils are moaning that they could save money by counting the votes the day after the election. Ye gods. How long before Father Christmas works nine to five?

"LONG prison sentences do not make safer streets," declares the Lib-Dem chairman of Parliament's justice select committee, Alan Beith. This is the pantomime season, so feel free to chant: "Oh, yes they do!" Prison works. Stick a burglar in prison for five years and you can guarantee 100 per cent that he will not do any burgling for 60 blessed months. What's more, prison is the only sentence that frightens villains. Politicians may tell us that "community punishments" are not an easy option but we all know they are. If you need proof, just stand outside the average court and see a succession of swaggering, giggling, air-punching thugs rejoicing that they got 60 hours sweeping leaves instead of a spell in clink. Alan Beith's committee has produced a report seriously suggesting that Britain's prison population should be slashed by one third, effectively turning 28,000 criminals on to the streets (although not on to the sort of streets where most MPs choose to live). There is, of course, a powerful case for reducing the size - and the cost - of the prison population. But the most obvious solution, deporting foreign criminals to serve their time in their homeland, is the one that MPs never consider.

DON'T leave it too late. A reader had a meal out a few days ago and later examined his receipt. Printed on the reverse was the timely advice: "Book now for Christmas."

A READER swears he heard a radio newsreader saying: "The council is buying up all the salt that can be mustered."

"PACKAGING - do we really need it?" is the earnest question posed by Marks & Spencer in its heroic campaign to become carbon-neutral. I bought a pair of M&S corduroy trousers this week. Attached to them were:

* Bit of card saying "flat front"

* Bit of card saying: "Cotton rich - machine washable"

* Bit of card with waist and length sizes

* Bit of card saying: "New improved quality."

* Bit of card saying: "Corduroy trousers"

* Bit of card with price

* Cloth label saying: "With comfort stretch"

* Plastic hanger

No overpackaging there, then.

WHITEHALL'S latest brainwave, to issue free laptop computers to 270,000 deprived pupils, is so stupid that it's hard to know where to begin. The problem with deprived kids is not that they don't have high-speed internet access. It's that they can't read or write, can barely speak a coherent sentence, have nowhere to do their homework and have parents / step-parents / mum's boyfriend who do not give a damn either for them or for their education. If this £300 million scheme goes ahead, thousands of laptops will be nicked or vanish into the black economy and not a single extra poor kid will make it to university. If we really want to lift deprived children out of hopelessness, here's a life-transforming idea: elocution lessons.

SOME wag observed that in this icy weather we all walk like Hercule Poirot. Quite why Poirot, as played by David Suchet, walks in that peculiar, clenched-buttock fashion is never explained. Fear of diarrhoea, peut-etre?

SCIENTISTS say the microwave radiation from mobile phones may delay the onset of dementia in mice. I suspect that, now the human market for mobiles is saturated, this is a cynical bid to persuade mice to buy them. Do not be fooled, my tiny rodent friends. Mobiles do not work in tunnels.

CURIOUSLY, there has been virtually no debate after this week's BBC2 documentary, The Conspiracy Files: Osama Bin Laden – Dead or Alive. As the title suggests, this sober and well-researched programme examined evidence that the al Qaeda chief died eight years ago during the battle for Tora Bora in Afghanistan, either from American bombs or a serious kidney disease. This would certainly explain why the world's only superpower has been unable to find Bin Laden. It also gives weight to the theory that America was never seriously interested in the guerrilla leader but had much bigger interests in the Middle East. Does Gordon Brown believe Bin Laden is alive? Why has no-one asked him? The BBC raised what is arguably the biggest security question of our age and yet no-one seems interested in discussing it. Isn't it all very odd?

GOODNESS knows what possessed a senior BBC executive, Doug Carnegie,to send colleagues an email describing that national treasure Ronnie Corbett as "a little ****."

Vanity, perhaps? Did he think all his staff were so loyal that no-one would leak the email? Did he simply not care if it was seen? Or is he one of those techno-dumbos who still don't understand that, if you're not prepared to shout it through a megaphone from the rooftops, you really shouldn't put it in an email?

IF you're slithering in the snow and wondering where all the salt went, this week's report on school pupils' nutrition explains all. The salt is in the kids' lunch boxes.