Odd lumps in Broadchurch

THERE are many ways of recognising a cultured man. Left alone with a tea cosy, the cultured man will not use it as a hat. The cultured man can hold a sink plunger without feeling obliged to do Dalek impressions. He can hear the William Tell overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger. And as this week's storms descended, a truly cultured man can hear the phrase "yellow snow warning" without sniggering. Yet again, I fail the test.

IT is hard to decide in Broadchurch (ITV) which is the less believable. Is it the made-up legal process where the family gets involved in choosing the prosecution barrister? Or is it Beth's stupendous pregnancy bump which leads us to suspect the Dorset coast is a hotbed of medicine-ball smuggling?

AM I missing something? Ed Miliband is castigated for "weaponising" the NHS to use it to batter the Tories, and seems determined to refute the allegation. But can anyone remember an election campaign when the NHS was not a weapon in the armoury? The important thing, as Tony Blair discovered during that memorable slagging-off by no-nonsense Brummie Sharron Storer in a 2001 hospital visit ("All you do is walk around and make yourself known but you don't do anything to help anybody.") is to remember the NHS is double-edged and can cut both ways. It is a high-risk weapon for any politician to wield, especially one who can't even cope with a bacon sandwich.

NINE-year-old Alex Rukin addresses the Commons committee scrutinising the legislation on HS2 and declares the the sums do not add up. Well done, lad. And what a pity that one so young has been caught up in Whitehall's deeply cynical exercise in pretending that a) HS2 is in any way democratic and b) is still up for discussion. It ain't. It's settled. It's over.

THE Charlie Hebdo saga raises fundamental questions of what constitutes liberty and we should never assume the West is one united body on this issue. There are profound differences between nations. For example, every single one of the four million French people who took to the streets in defence of freedom is obliged to carry an identity card at all times. I had a French colleague who cherished her ID card as a symbol of liberty, freedom and equality. We Brits see ID cards as a sinister step towards Orwellian state control. Vive la difference, innit?

THE right to publish anything, no matter how offensive, is like the right to enter places of worship. If we go into a church, men remove their hats. If we enter a synagogue we wear the Jewish skull cap, the kippah. If we enter a mosque we take off our shoes. There is no law demanding such behaviour. We are free, if we wish, to keep out hats on in church, refuse the kippah in synagogues and march into mosques wearing wellies. But if someone insisted on doing such things, would you honestly regard him as a champion of liberty? Today, the issue of publishing cartoons of Mohammed is muddied by the threat of revenge. But even if there were no threat, most UK editors would decline to use such material because it is unfunny, insensitive, un-British and, to use an old-fashioned word, unsporting. In this country we mock the rich and powerful, not the Khans next door.

MEANWHILE, Fiona Bruce breathlessly assures us on BBC News that France's decision to put 15,000 squaddies on the streets is "the biggest ever deployment of troops in France." Does nobody do history any more?