The scandal of our children's teeth

AS the Greek tragedy drags on a reader writes: "Have you noticed, when spoken quickly, how "euros" sounds just like like "IOUs"?

THE great and good who run our land can never do anything simply, can they? Among the alternatives suggested to replace the TV licence in this week's Green Paper are subscriptions, a new household tax or a "means-tested licence fee." Ye gods. Why not simply pay for Auntie out of central taxation, in the same way that we fund schools and the NHS? Thus, the rich would pay more, the poor would pay less and no-one would go to prison for not paying.

I HAVE no idea how parents can allow their children's teeth to get so rotten that the poor kids need a general anaesthetic to remove them. According to Nigel Hunt, dean of the Royal College of Surgeons' dental faculty, the problem has reached crisis level. Maybe it stems from the old British attitude to teeth, that they're nothing but trouble and the sooner they're all out and replaced with a nice set of NHS dentures, the better. Yet this crisis goes much deeper. Tooth decay is not a cosmetic issue but a killer. The more we learn about the bodily ailments and organ failure caused by tooth decay, the more alarming it gets. The anti-decay campaign needs some powerful, and probably scary, new slogans. "Rotten teeth make a rotten heart" for a start.

IT is alleged that a "terrorist recruiter" linked to the mastermind behind the Tunisian beach massacre has been living in Britain for 20 years using human-rights laws to avoid deportation. Why does none of this surprise us?

The NHS guidelines for safe drinking, drawn up 30 years ago ( 21 units per week for men, 14 units for women) are soon to be drastically cut. Chief Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies will announce new recommendations later this year. Behind this may be one of the greatest cock-ups in modern medicine. For what if it emerges, as some experts are already suggesting, that there is no safe limit for alcohol? As a Radio 4 documentary revealed in December 2013, the units of alcohol used in health promotion have no basis in fact or research. They were simply plucked out of the air years ago. How many millions of British men and women may have contracted cancer and other serious diseases by sticking within the NHS-approved levels? Watch this one. It could turn into a scandal bigger than the smoking and asbestos scandals.

THE Maunder Minimum. Remember this term for you may be hearing a lot about it soon. It refers to the mini Ice Age which struck Britain from1645-1715, bringing the famous Frost Fairs to the River Thames. According to some reports, a decline in solar activity means the Maunder Minimum could return about 15 years from now and last up to 20 years. Which is bad luck for those who believed all that stuff about global warming and chucked out all their woolly socks.

A NEIGHBOUR told me she was expecting a bumper crop of gooseberries this year and seemed surprised when I grimaced. Seriously, does anyone really enjoy gooseberries? My stomach turns at the very thought of the texture, the taste and those obscene little prickles. It's like biting into a hairy eyeball with the aftertaste of earwax. The neighbour says a pot of her gooseberry jam will change my mind. Wanna bet?

AND do not get me started on guacamole.