The sun is doing what?

OUR changing language. I suggested recently that I might one day change my mind on NHS treatment for the elderly. What I meant, in the words of Pfizer chief executive Ian Read referring to the AstraZeneca deal, was that "I will conserve that optionality." My optionality is conserved, going forward.

SO FAREWELL, Leslie Thomas who died a few days ago. I interviewed him once in Birmingham and he was great fun, like a little boy who had found a fortune and couldn't believe his luck. He told me how, as a young author staying in a posh hotel, he was thrilled to see a woman guest picking up a copy of The Virgin Soldiers in the hotel lounge. "That's my book," Thomas told her proudly. The woman exclaimed: "Oh, I'm so sorry, I thought it was the hotel's. Isn't it rubbish?" A funny story but, over the intervening years, I have heard at least two other authors tell exactly the same tale.

I WROTE last week about bewildering motorway-gantry messages created by assembling a few random words: NO PHONES AWAIT POLICE and DRIVE TO CONDITIONS, for example. Now the Labour Party unveils its latest poster slogan: LABOUR HARDWORKING BRITAIN BETTER OFF. I wonder how many fevered and grossly overpaid brains have gone into creating this useless, meaningless jumble of words and how many of Ed Miliband's team think it's really great. Would you trust these people with your child's education?

THERE is a memorable moment in that wonderful series Peep Show (C4) when Johnson (Paterson Joseph), the hyper-confident, smooth-talking manager, is sacked and promptly

sets himself up as a management consultant. He explains to Mark (David Mitchell) what the job entails: "In. Fire 30 per cent of the workforce. New logo. Out. You are now a fully trained management consultant." I was reminded of Johnson when Barclays announced it was sacking 17,000 staff. Watch out for a new logo.

IN AN inspired piece of casting, Paterson Joseph also pops up as the doomed Duke of York in the BBC's epic Shakespearean series The Hollow Crown which ends with the battle of Agincourt. In the middle ages management technique was much the same. Into France, slaughter all the French knights. Grab the silver. Seduce the princess. Out.

THERE but for the grace of God, etc . . . I wonder how many disc jockeys over the past 80 years have slipped that cheery old favourite, The Sun Has Got His Hat On on to the turntable without knowing what lurked in the second verse. As we all know by now,that verse includes the most toxic word in the English language, the N-word. David Lowe of BBC Radio Devon was unaware of the lyrics and left the song playing on his show. It attracted precisely one complaint, which may tell us something about Devonians, or possibly about Radio Devon's audience figures. Anyway, Lowe has been sacked and some folk are a wee bit puzzled about the BBC's judgment. Jeremy Clarkson gets away with a succession of accusations of racism but David Lowe is booted out for not knowing every word of an old song and Carol Thatcher is sacked for uttering the word golliwog. There must be a sane, simple, sensible explanation. Could it possibly involve money?

SCIENTISTS have discovered a red-hot volcano beneath the Antarctic ice cap which could release billions of gallons of melted water. The trouble with volcanoes is that they have absolutely no interest in saving the planet. Haven't they heard of rising sea levels? It makes all that sorting of yoghurt pots into blue bins and cardboard into grey bins seem rather pointless, doesn't it?