Oh, what a beautiful morning?

HERE'S a puzzle. The author and anthropologist Sheila Kitzinger, who has died aged 86, managed to write more than 25 books on the single subject of childbirth while Haynes Workshop Manuals covers the entire VW Golf range from 2009-2012 in a single volume. Strange but true.

"YOU have to remember, this is Oklahoma," says a spokesman for Tulsa police, as if that explains everything about the curious case of Bob Bates. Mr Bates is a millionaire who donates to police funds and supported the local sheriff's election campaign. In return, the 73-year-old is one of 100 "volunteer reservists" allowed to go on police operations and carry their own weapons. A few days ago police arrested and were subduing Eric Harris, a suspected drug dealer when Mr Bates allegedly fired a single shot, killing him. The dying man, captured on video, gasped: "I'm losing my breath" to which a police officer is heard replying: "---- your breath." Not exactly Dixon of Dock Green, is it?

THE Tulsa incident was at first classed as "excusable homicide" but Mr Bates has now been charged with second-degree manslaughter. You will not be surprised to learn that Mr Bates is white and Mr Harris was black. You have to remember, this is Oklahoma. It's not all Oh, What a Beautiful Morning.

IF people were allowed to ask proper questions and get proper answers during this election campaign, here's a cracking question to put to any candidate: How many people do you know? Politicians of all shades bang on endlessly about "the people." But which people? What sort of people do politicians actually mix with? I'm not talking about party agents, civil servants, special advisers or focus groups but real people who get up in the morning and go to real jobs and earn real money to pay real bills. Most real people mix in all sorts of circles. You have work friends, pub friends, PTA friends and neighbours, and from all of them you pick up new thoughts and beliefs. So I repeat. How many real people, as opposed to "the people," do Messrs Cameron, Miliband, Clegg and the rest of the Whitehall bubble actually know? PS: Politicians knowing each other does not count.

SO farewell, Percy Sledge. The soul singer who has died aged 73 leaves just one great hit, When a Man Loves a Woman: "If she is bad, he can't see it, She can do no wrong / Turn his back on his best friend, If he puts her down ." In a few simple lines it says everything that needs to be said about the power and pure folly of love.

TED Loveday hit the headlines for "leading his team to victory" in this week's final of University Challenge. True, he got a lot of questions right. But the Gonville and Caius team was captained not by Loveday but by the medical student Anthony Martinelli who gave a master class in captaincy. Throughout the series he held his team together, sifted their opinions, decided who should answer, kept his nerve and applied some spectacular logic-crunching to some fiendishly hard questions. By all means applaud the star, but never underestimate the value of leadership.

SOME forecasters are predicting a long, hot summer. In all probability we will enter it with an unpopular government and independence fever on the rise in Scotland. Are the water cannon ready?