Peter Rhodes on a cold heatwave, legal small print and putting your faith in complementary medicine

Makes you proud to be British, doesn't it? Our Universal Credit system may fail and let down millions of honest claimants but it is so generous to the ungodly that it will pay £360 a month to Valdo Calocane, the Nottingham triple murderer, on the technicality that he is locked up in a secure hospital, not a prison. Who dreams up such rules? Do you ever suspect that British laws, with all their clauses, sub-sections and small print, are chiefly designed to keep lawyers in business while infuriating ordinary citizens and causing untold anguish for the bereaved?

Scientists working on Britain's nuclear-fusion project, with its promise of limitless clean power, have told the Daily Telegraph that a commercial fusion reactor could be working by the early 2040s. We should all wish it well, while remembering, as one science website puts it: “Fusion power has been one of those things that's been 'only 20 years away' for about 50 years now.”

King Charles' lifelong belief in complementary medicine makes some folk deeply uneasy. In an age when chemo, surgery and immunotherapy are so successful at killing tumours, surely His Majesty isn't going to rely on minute dilutions of arcane chemicals or Himalayan moss poultices?

I suspect HM will get the best of both conventional and complementary treatments in which case, assuming he is cured, both camps will be able to claim the credit. I recall a few years ago reading a woman's account of how her cancer was miraculously cured by some natural flower remedy. Towards the end of the article she mentioned in passing that she had also received chemo, radiotherapy and radical surgery. We are all entitled to our own truths.

Scientists report that last month was the warmest January ever recorded and the global mean temperature for the past 12 months is 1.52C above the pre-industrial average. Then why is it so perishing cold?