WASHED AND READY TO EAT

The desperate ploys of estate agents always amuse me.   One has stuck a letter through the door at Woodford Towers with the message that they are valuing in my street this week. My God! They're actually in MY road. This week! I'd better act while the iron's hot.  You know how it is with estate agents. They're a bit like Google Street View. Once they've done your area, they won't come back for two or three years. 'I was hoping you might be able to value my house.' 'Nah, sorry, mate. We did your street three weeks ago. Didn't you get our letter?' I think they need to be more precise. When exactly are they in the street? During office hours? 24/7 for the duration of the week? Or are they like Mr Softee, playing a tune and parking up for a couple of minutes at the end of the road?

Here are two great ideas I can guarantee won't be taken up by the authorities any time soon. First, a solution to the labelling of unhealthy foods, which we know to contribute to premature deaths from heart disease and cancer. Forget traffic lights. Why not show the number of cigarettes a food product is equivalent to? I don't know the facts, obviously. Leave that to a boffin in a research institute. But a cheap, own-brand lasagne, packed full of salt, saturated fat and horse, would be, say, 10 ciggies. A couple of deep-fried Mars bars would be 20. Instantly, we'd see what we were doing to ourselves at a glance. Here's my other idea, drawing from innovations we've seen online. You know how when you go on Google Street View now, they show the names of the roads as if they've been painted in large letters by a gang of virtual municipal workers? Why not ACTUALLY paint the names on roads in real life? Then we'd always know where we were.