Peter Rhodes: Terrible news

AS excuses for not paying your tax go, I was impressed by Sir Ken Dodd's, revealed as he accepted his knighthood this week. He took the view that, as he lives close to the sea, he could not owe money to anything called the Inland Revenue. Nice try, Doddy.

JUST when you thought nothing has happened in the six months since Brexit, the authorities suddenly turn the clock back to our pre-EU glory days, to the era of Ford Prefects, Mr Pastry and the Titfield Thunderbolt. They are relaunching the threepenny bit.

HANG on. My apologies. On closer inspection the relaunched threepenny bit turns out to be the new 12-sided £1 coin. The old brass 3d coin of blessed memory was withdrawn in 1971 on the grounds that a coin worth a quarter of a shilling had absolutely no place in a decimal system. It does, however, have a certain place in our race-memory, as a barometer of inflation. One hundred years ago 3d (about 1.5p) bought half a pint of best bitter. The new £1 coin may have a face value 80 times higher than the old threepenny bit but will buy only about a third of a pint, if you're lucky.

DESPITE all the hype, all the gunfire and all the clever plot shifts, I managed to fall asleep during Sherlock (BBC1). That's what you get for scheduling a drama at the end of our annual festival of eating, drinking and flumping on the sofa. Enervating, my dear Watson.

AND now, some truly terrible news. At least it is terrible news if you happen to be part of that big but informal organisation, the National League of Pessimists. The NLP is convinced that everything is terrible, the world is going to hell in a handcart and 2017 will be worse than 2016 but better than 2018. The reality, from a rash of global statistics disclosed over the past few days, is far more cheerful. And if you suspect the post-truth, fake-news purveyors of the Trumpish Right have been at work, think again. The good news has been analysed and highlighted by those bastions of caring liberalism, the Guardian and The Big Issue. In recent editions they tell us that deaths from disease and warfare are falling, poverty is in sharp decline, global warming has stalled and greenhouse-gas emissions have stabilised. Reported crime in the UK has halved since the 1980s. We are healthier, longer-lived and safer than at any time in history. There are even signs that the world's rising population is levelling off. Not everything in the global village is lovely but in the great, bloody sweep of modern history, we are fortunate enough to be living in the best of times. Or, if you seriously enjoy your pessimism, the worst of times.

STARTING this year every newborn child in Scotland will receive a free baby-box containing about 40 different items including a play mat, a changing mat, a digital thermometer, a fleece jacket and so on. The £6 million project is, in the words of first minister Nicola Sturgeon: "A strong signal of our determination that every child, regardless of their circumstances, should get the best start in life." It is also a strong signal that politicians simply love spreading money around. Other people's money.