Peter Rhodes on Left, Right, ice cream and the future of Britain's navy
Scientists at Poland's West Pomeranian University of Technology have created horse milk ice cream which is said to be healthy and delicious.
The health claim may be true but surely taste is a matter of, er, taste.
First, there is the cultural obstacle of horse-based products. When the horse-meat burgers scandal erupted in 2012, Brits were horrified. Since then, several attempts to promote horse steaks have come to nothing.
Even if we overcome that psychological snag, who defines “delicious”? Some folk swear by ice-cream made from goat milk. In my experience while you can get the milk out of the goat, you can never quite get the goat out of the milk. Will it be the same with horse milk?
In the meantime, the Polish researchers could produce some intriguing headlines. “Horses milked by Pomeranians.”
While the Ukrainian army has been invading Russia in a small way, its navy has been wreaking so much destruction in the Black Sea, pitting unmanned drones against Putin's warships, that some experts are asking whether a modern navy needs conventional ships at all.
This will surely lead to much harrumphing among the Royal Navy's officer class. According to maritime myth, the RN has more admirals than warships. It's not quite that bad.
If you count every single ship, including tiny patrol boats, submarines and that historic treasure HMS Victory, the Navy has about 66 vessels. It employs about 40 admirals.
The rise of the drone could mean the demise of dozens of warships and hundreds of senior ranks. Which is why it probably won't happen. The navy may be smaller than ever but it has some Dreadnought-class lobbyists.
The strangest thing about the riots was how quickly they transformed politics.
The Left, usually so eager to understand and sympathise with criminals as victims of an unfair society, are reducing it all to “far right thuggery” by hooligans which should be dealt with by locking 'em up and throwing away the keys.
The Right, usually keen on locking 'em up and throwing away the keys, are now suggesting, in a leftie sort of way, that there may be deeper issues at stake which, while not excusing the mayhem, may begin to explain it: deprivation, exclusion, poor education and so on. A world turned upside-down.