We are what we eat and we eat too much

TABLE manners of our time. It is lunchtime in our local and a diner who has been sniffing throughout his meal, finishes his food, blows his nose noisily into the serviette and drops the snot-filled tissue on the plate for the waitress to clear away. Any similar sightings?

THERE was a thought-provoking moment in yet another repeat of the 1953 classic Genevieve (Film 4) a few days ago. In a brief truce the warring parties in the veteran-car race rush for ice-creams, eagerly exclaiming "doubles!" The double portions are no bigger than a ping-pong ball. If an ice-cream vendor sold such measly amounts these days, someone would call Trading Standards. But there was a time when an ice-cream was an exquisite little treat, not a belly-busting bucketful of calories. We are what we eat, and we eat far too much.

TWO British men who were going blind have seen a "dramatic" improvement in their condition thanks to a pioneering new gene therapy. The news broke a few days ago, about a year after a pair of deaf twins in Belgium opted for euthanasia at the age of 45 when they discovered they were going blind. They were duly put to death by doctors in a process which is perfectly legal, but absolutely devoid of hope. Would the Belgian twins have chosen death if they had known of the latest research? Do their relatives and the doctors have any regrets? If you believe in euthanasia, are you having second thoughts?

NICOLAS Sarkozy, the former French president, is reported as saying his successor, the lovestruck Francois Hollande, is "in a right old pickle" with his affair with an actress. Except that he probably never mentioned pickle. The French have a useful little word which covers getting yourself into everything including pickle, jam, sticky wicket, soup, fix, mess, bind and loose ends. It is le petrin, originally a wooden trough full of sticky dough. The English have an equally useful word but you won't find it in a family newspaper.

INCIDENTALLY, watch the poodle-like French media closely as they either ignore the affair altogether or ask their president and his aides the sort of easy, deferential questions that Hollande himself might have drafted. That's the sort of mild, obedient and utterly respectful media that some British politicians would love to have here. They are the ones who say: "I believe in a free Press, but . . ."

THE high-street banks have been itching for years to impose charges on current accounts, even if those accounts are permanently in credit. The main result of Ed Miliband's half-baked plan to increase competition by setting up "challenger banks" could be a £10-a-month charge simply for letting the bank hold your hard-earned money.

ACTUALLY "half-baked" may be overly generous to Miliband. Labour wheeled out its Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Chuka Umunna, to big-up the policy on Today (Radio 4). He sounded a long way short of enthusiastic.

ANOTHER delivery at Chateau Rhodes brings another courier in the obligatory hi-viz yellow jacket. It is a puzzle of our age that lorry and van drivers, cocooned in big vehicles, wear safety jackets while motorcyclists, desperately vulnerable and 35 times more likely to die in accidents than car occupants, do not.

IT COULD be you – but it probably won't be. If you want an idea of the odds against winning on lotteries, here's a cautionary tale from Basingstoke. A teenage shop worker, "desperately" in debt with mobile-phone charges, stole £240 worth of lottery tickets and scratchcards in the hope of winning enough to pay his bills. The court heard that his £240 haul of tickets produced winnings of just £15.80. Proof once again that lotteries are a tax on people who can't do maths.