A degree too far?

WE hacks all love a great New Year scoop but I'm blowed if I can see much difference between the new claim by American researchers that two-thirds of cancer types are caused by chance mutations rather than lifestyle, and the old claim by Cancer Research UK that smoking, alcohol, diet and obesity account for about one-third of cancers. They all seem to be singing from the same hymn sheet.

BY any rational interpretation, Tony Blair's interview with The Economist implied that a) Labour under Ed Miliband was too Left-wing and b) in an election with the Tories, the Tories would probably win. But within 24 hours Teflon Tone had insisted his words had been misinterpreted and he believes Labour will win in May. Coming tomorrow: Blair explains why black is actually white. And on Wednesday: why white is actually black.

LENNY Henry made a powerful case as guest editor of Today (Radio 4) for more ethnic-minority employees in broadcasting. But I doubt if there is any deliberate conspiracy to keep black and brown faces at the margins of the media. A report a few years ago by the National Skills Forum found that 32 per cent of Pakistani and 44 per cent of Bangladeshi adults in the UK had no qualifications at all, and only 16 per cent of young black Caribbean males went to university. Like so many problems, the answer lies in our schools.

AND it hardly helps that these days even a junior job in the media requires a university degree. There was a time when the chief requirement to get into journalism, as the reporter Nicholas Tomalin famously put it, was "ratlike cunning, a plausible manner and a little literary ability."

IT is the 30th anniversary of the first mobile phone call. I remember mine. It came in 1988 when I was given a handset attached to something the size of a breeze block and sent to the US base at Greenham Common. There, in the base lecture theatre, the commander announced details for the removal of cruise missiles. It was a defining moment in modern history, signalling the end of the Cold War and the policy of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). I recall being overwhelmed not by the drama of the occasion but at being able to talk by cellphone to a newsdesk 100 miles away. Magic.

WHITEHALL'S reform of domestic law, designed to protect people from the controlling behaviour of partners, goes way beyond threats and violence. It could be used against those who ban their partners from having friends, access to money and even hobbies. But at what point does a hobby cross the line from reasonable to unreasonable? I am reminded of the works engineer Stan (Duncan Preston) in Dinnerladies (BBC) referring to his house: "You know my lounge? Well, the lathe takes up quite a bit of room."

A READER, cheerfully ignoring the stern advice of the finance and computer industries, tells me he's spent the weekend transferring information about his various passwords into a diary which he has secreted "in my special hiding place." I sympathise, having followed the correspondence in the Daily Telegraph from a woman whose husband died leaving cryptic clues to his bank-account passwords including "my first car." She hasn't a clue what it was.

BEWARE, however, of putting anything in your "special hiding place." Five years from now you won't remember where it is. Unless, of course, you hide details of its location in an even more special hiding place. This could go on for ever.