We're cynical and we're not ashamed to show it

THERE is no reason why Ed ("Politics is a Brutal Business") Balls should languish in obscurity after his general-election defeat. The system enables former shadow chancellors to be recycled, clad in ermine and brought back into power. I await the ennoblement of Lord Balls of Cobblers.

CALL me innocent and naïve but I cannot be the only person to be shocked to the core at Labour's post-election strategy. The recurring theme is this: We told the voters we believed in policies A,B and C and they didn't vote for us. So now, let's tell them that we believe in policies D, E and F. You might expect that politicians would hold such deeply cynical conversations behind closed doors. The fact that they are perfectly happy to reveal their dishonesty and opportunism in full view shows how out of touch they are with the people they want to vote for them. Just answer the straight, honest question: What do you believe in?

A READER defends the rights of "the little guy trying to live in harmony with nature" to build an eco-centre in Wales without planning permission, featured in Damned Designs (C4) . If there were no planning law to prevent such things, thousands of farmers would carve their meadows into half-acre pitches and flog them off at a massive profit to armies of "little guys" until every English town and city was surrounded with shanty towns, and there would be no nature to live in harmony with.

BENEATH the predictable crust of outrage, I detect a lot of sympathy among viewers for Cameron, the bright but disruptive lad in Benefits Street (C4). Every week seems to bring a new expulsion, a new school, a new start, a new setback. Cameron seems quite unable to behave, or even to understand his own behaviour. You can't help noticing that he eats nothing but junk food and is usually seen swigging at a bright-orange fizzy drink. If you want to accentuate the positive, try eliminating the additives.

A PREDICTION. Twenty years from now Anis Sardar will be living in luxury on the compensation awarded to him by our government (which means you and me). Sardar was convicted of murder in a London court last week for making the bomb that killed a US Army sergeant in Iraq in 2007. As I wrote a few weeks ago, this is a very strange case which has the whiff of victors' justice. Sardar was an insurgent fighting those who had invaded Iraq. The Crown Prosecution Service insists his bombing was an act of terrorism, not war. But it has yet to be firmly established that the US/UK invasion of Iraq was even legal. And if history decides that Sardar was a legitimate guerilla facing an illegal occupation, the damages will run into many millions.

IT is hard to question the accepted theory of evolution without being cast as a religious nut. But how many of us rational atheists were fascinated by the display of insect-eating plants at Chelsea Flower Show? The best-known of these has trigger-hairs on its jaws. It ignores an insect touching one of the hairs once. But at the second touch, the jaws snap close. So what we have here is a plant that knows how to count. Using Darwin's theory of natural selection and survival of the fittest, how on earth did the Venus fly trap evolve?