Shropshire Star

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

Always grateful for a little snippet to kick off the column, so my thanks to the BBC sports reporter on Today (Radio 4) who looked up “paranoia” in the dictionary and found: “Why do you want to know?”

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Funny sort of warming

I have an NHS dental appointment booked for today. There I go again, showing off.

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?