Peter Rhodes: A big blunder with Big Ben?

AN industry expert was explaining on the radio how, in order to be successful, the British steel industry must deliver "high vadded alue."

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TAKE a number of lovely, floppy labradors. Add lovely, floppy TV presenter Ben Fogle. What have you got? You've got Labrador: The Story of the World's Favourite Dog by Ben Fogle, which must be the ooky-snookumsy cutest title so far in the Christmas book market. Your suggestions for sugary seasonal book titles are welcome. Best I can think of is Prince George's Xmas Book of Fluffy Baby Hamsters. An instant best-seller.

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UNLESS we spend £40 million of public money, Big Ben is doomed. That colossal sum is being spun around Westminster as dire tales are told of failing chimes, worn bearings and sticking clock-hands which must be fixed. Chimes? Bearings? Clock-hands? What madness is this? Are we seriously expected to believe the only way to preserve Big Ben's clock is by rebuilding it as it was constructed in 1853?

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THE Victorians used the latest and most reliable technology of their age. So should we. Remove the 19th century mechanism and put it on show in a museum where it belongs. Install a modern, digital clock display and sound system in the tower. It would be much more accurate, the chimes would be clearer, the volume could be turned down at night and it could even play musical chimes on special occasions (Happy Birthday, Your Majesty). A digital Big Ben would cost a sight less than £40 million. We would never dream of improving the railways by rebuilding Stevenson's Rocket, so why faff around restoring a 19th century clock and bells when we could do so much better?

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MOST of the troubles in the Middle East are caused by "holy men" who are unelected, unaccountable and think God talks to them. Which is much the view you may take of the 84 Church of England bishops who wrote to the Government complaining about its migrant policy - and then complained when they didn't get the "substantive reply" they expected. The days when cardinals and bishops wielded much influence have, thankfully, long gone. Today they are just a collection of amiable old chaps representing a collapsing institution. Their only claim to authority is based on the ancient doctrine that they are chosen by God. And as hardly anyone, including bishops, believes that any more, the polite brush-off from Whitehall was exactly the correct response that 84 random elderly blokes should have expected. I hear humility is a useful quality.

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THE phrase you hear time and again in the grammar-school debate is that kids were doomed for life at the tender age of 11. In fact, the old grammar-school system was not based solely on the 11-plus. Brighter kids at secondary-modern schools could sit the 13-plus. There were opportunities, too, to transfer to grammar schools at 16 and in the sixth form. The idea that a permanent gate was slammed in kids' faces at 11 may suit the propagandists but it simply wasn't true.

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EMBARRASSING initials department. A reader who once worked at the Royal Radar Establishment (RRE) in Great Malvern recalls how it merged with the Royal Signals Establishment (RSE) to become the Radar and Signals Establishment (RSE). In time it absorbed the Advanced Signals establishment, becoming the Advanced Radar and Signals Establishment. He says no-one noticed a problem until their headed notepaper arrived. (If this is not entirely true, it ought to be).