Peter Rhodes: A very good day to bury bad news

FROM the Daily Telegraph shopping magazine: "Handmade leather shoes. Only £39.99. Buy one get one free."

DO you find yourself asking these questions: am I the only one missing the point? Does the rest of the UK population see something relevant in David Cameron banging on about benefits levels and "emergency brakes" in his never-ending EU negotiations? No, it turns out that you (and I, for that matter) are not alone in viewing Cameron's Grand European Tour as an exercise in rearranging the lifeboats on the Titanic. During the latest Any Questions (Radio 4) Jonathan Dimbleby asked the audience whether the benefits issue would in any way affect their vote in the EU in/out referendum. In a room of 300 people, one solitary hand was raised.

DAVID Cameron must have gone to bed on Saturday expecting the next day to be a double-whammy of media attacks for his failure to get anywhere with his EU haggling, and reports that he is thinking of sending his nine-year-old son to an £18,000-a-year prep school. And then came news that one of our greatest national treasures had died. Every newspaper, TV and radio station cleared its schedules for tributes to the magnificent Terry Wogan. It was the very best of days to bury bad news.

THE small screen can hardly capture the massive scale of the slaughter at the Battle of Borodino, as depicted in War & Peace (BBC1). About 80,000 fine young men were killed or wounded as the Russians fought to keep Napoleon's army from Moscow. One historian has estimated the death toll as equivalent to a fully-loaded jumbo jet crashing every five minutes for eight hours, with no survivors. And all for the vanity of one short French psychopath.

OWN up. How many of us are glued to the telly for the re-run of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads (Drama channel)? This is not just great comedy but a priceless slice of social history from the 1970s. In a recent episode Bob (Rodney Bewes) found himself chatting with a lady who was proud to have reached a great age, and still had all her own teeth. She was 68. Not long ago, women of 68 were considered ancient. Today, they're skipping off to Zumba.

AT last, the greatest education mystery of our age is solved. Why are hundreds of thousands of kids so keen to pay a fortune, and spend their life in debt, for the sake of a university degree? The think-tank OECD reports that English teenagers are among the least literate and numerate in the developed world. Many of them spend 14 years in school and come out knowing nothing about anything and should never be allowed anywhere near a university. However, the system encourages millions to apply. So when it comes to university fees of £9,000 per year for three years, I wonder how many of them scratch their head, have a couple of stabs at multiplying £9,000 by three and reckon it's about fifty quid.

INTERESTINGLY, the same survey reveals that British pensioners are among the most literate and numerate in the world. It seems that 50 years ago we knew how to educate children but today we do not.

SO how many of today's 21-year-old graduates could pass the 11-plus?