Peter Rhodes on cameras in court, anti-semitism at the Beeb and a huge bill for smashing atoms

A senior BBC employee has been sacked after sharing obnoxious anti-semitic messages on Facebook. Just the one?

I was never a great fan of having TV cameras in courts but, now it has happened, can we at least improve the coverage? Does anyone really want to see a judge speaking for ages as they sum up and pass sentence, as we saw at the closing stages of the trial of the two teenagers convicted of murdering Brianna Ghey? Of course not.

While preserving the anonymity of the jurors, let us see inside the courtroom, the reaction of the accused, the response of the lawyers. This is not voyeurism but the truth, the whole truth. Let us see the full story and let the broadcasters do a proper job.

It is nine years since the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva was fired up for a burst of sub-atomic particle smashing. As I noted at the time, this £10 billion device “seems to be answering questions that only a few hundred people understand, let alone want answering”.

Now the scientists claim that the 17-mile long Large Hadron Collider is simply not large enough and they need a “supercollider” which would cost us taxpayers a further £17 billion. After much searching through the intergalactic lexicon of particle-physics putdowns, I have discovered the perfect response to the boffins: dream on.

These scientists “need” a supercollider in much the way that I need a Bentley. It's not a necessity but a wish list, with the bill being picked up by millions of citizens who still don't understand the questions and couldn't care tuppence for the answers. Especially those of us who know already, thanks to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, that the answer to The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything is 42.

That's as much as we need to know.