Peter Rhodes: Are we doing it right?

START boiling those beans, peas and lentils, for the United Nations has declared 2016 the International Year of Pulses. Bang go those emission targets.

A READER writes: "I am really interested in cagoules. Does this make me an anorak?"

AS the nation settles down to enjoy the sexed-up BBC version of War and Peace, pity the poor screenwriter. Andrew Davies has made a fine living for 40 years from injecting rumpy-pumpy into the classics. But when a writer turns his pen to sex he is, in effect, saying to the world: "This is how I do it, folks." As Davies told me in an interview some years ago, it is a frightening step. He roared with embarrassed laughter as he explained: "There is this great nightmare when you write about it for the first time, in any fairly serious or detailed way. You worry that people will be saying, 'Look at him, so that's how he does it, all wrong, and he's probably been doing it that way all his life'."

ONE of my brighter suggestions which, strangely, has not been taken up by the authorities is that every new law on public order should be drafted by committees of people who have consumed at least 14 pints of lager. Only at that level of inebriation can you truly understand the hooligan in the dock, and punish him appropriately. Courts would become much more exciting places. The dry, dispiriting business of handing out pathetic community-service orders would be replaced by a judge, who had also drunk 14 pints of lager, solemnly putting a traffic cone on his head and passing the approved sentence of: "You're gonna get your ****ing 'ead kicked in."

ANYWAY, I assumed my proposed 14-pint reform of the legal system (we could call it the Stella Act) had been rejected by Whitehall. But then I read the latest announcements on alcohol, based on work by a committee of MPs. The new advice is that a) there is no safe limit for drinking alcohol and b) here's our list of recommended limits anyway. See the contradiction? It's a poison, so just drink a little, okay? This committee of MPs; are we absolutely sure they were sober?

ONE recommendation is that we give our livers a rest by having two booze-free days per week. So which day is best to make your non-alcohol day? Why it's tomorrow, of course. And always will be.

HOW insurance works. A reader shows me a car-insurance renewal offer of a year's fully comprehensive cover for just £137. How can any insurer possibly offer such a deal at such a price? The answer is that it can't. Look in the small print and you discover the £137 premium is based on the assumption that you have driven for 22 years without making a single insurance claim . I dare say if you agreed not to drive the car at all, they'd drop the price even further.

I SUGGESTED yesterday that the kids are back at school. A reader points out that some private schools are still on holiday. It is a strange thing that the more you pay for education, the fewer days your kids spend at school.

THE Archbishop of Canterbury tells us: "In today's world, hospitality and love are our most formidable weapons against hatred and extremism." Really? I would have thought a laser-guided 500lb bomb was just as persuasive.