If badgers were innocent, they wouldn't wear masks.

A NEW app promises "peace at mealtimes" by locking the kids' mobile phones and other devices. Depends how you define peace. The moment the kids realise what you've done, stand by for a meal of crashing cutlery, heavy sighs, occasional hysterical blubbing and endless choruses of: "Oh, you're just so unreasonable."

THE more time passes, the more it becomes clear that the experts have absolutely no idea where to look for the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370. Radar records and "digital handshakes" from the doomed plane turn out to be not so much a proven science as a dark art, open to all sorts of interpretation. The consensus is still that this airline went down in the sea, which would surely scatter debris and a vast slick of aviation fuel. But three months of searching the oceans has produced not a single identifiable scrap of wreckage, not a smear of kerosene. I would not be at all surprised if some months or years from now, the wreckage of MH370 is found in the depths of a jungle, hundreds of miles away from the search sites.

OH, wicked Brock. All that anti-cull lobbying which made badgers out to be sweet, harmless little chaps vanished in a few seconds on Springwatch (BBC) when the night-vision camera caught a badger gorging on the eggs and chicks in 20 gull and avocet nests as the anguished parents flapped in panic. How long before a camera catches Brock tucking into dear old Mrs Tiggywinkle and her baby hedgehogs for breakfast? As I may have observed before, if badgers were innocent they wouldn't wear masks.

RACHEL Reeves has been a Labour MP for barely four years but is already the shadow work and pensions secretary. Can nothing stop her upward flight? Possibly. It is hard to find references to her which don't include the term "tipped as a future leader of the party." This has been the kiss of death for a succession of politicians who mysteriously went from "tipped as a future leader" to "the best prime minister we never had," and into oblivion. At least half a dozen current Labour MPs have been "tipped as a future leader," including Yvette Cooper who was tipped so often that she seemed a racing certainty, before slipping out of the running and into a quieter life as Mrs Ed Balls.

I REFERRED earlier this week to the astonishing (some would say suspicious) high rate of terrorists plots foiled by the security services. One of these alleged plotters had been plotting for 14 years before the cops nicked him. So that's plot, plot, plot – Plod.

"IT'S genetics. You can be genetically fat," says the mother whose 11-year-old son has been taken into council care after his weight hit 15 stone. Possibly. But you're a lot more likely to be genetically self-deluding. Use the evidence of your own eyes. Doesn't the so-called obesity epidemic have a curious habit of infecting people who eat lots of chips?

IF THERE is a genetic aspect to fatness, it's probably the ancient caveman thing about living in constant dread of starvation. When you bathe a baby and feel the fat forming on its little body, there is a great sense of reassurance and achievement. The smart part, in a world awash with dietary fat, is knowing when to turn down the calories.

HOME valuation for beginners. A friend in property developing says £200,000 should buy you a place with at least one hedge where you can have a quiet pee without being seen. Every additional £200,000 should buy you another similar hedge. Simple.