FROM the inflexions in the voices of TV news readers it is clear that we are meant to be wildly thrilled by the pictures from Mars. Those "proving" the already-known presence of water are assumed to have sent us into a delirium of delight.

The pictures confirm Mars as an arid, barren planet. But let's suppose it was our home. Beamed back from our Earth Rover would be pictures of the Holy Grail - the verdant paradise of our dreams. Thrilled? Delighted? We would be ecstatic.

The greatest potential benefit of probing Mars lies not in bringing closer the possibility of colonising what will always be an adverse environment. Nor is it that we might one day plunder Mars' mineral wealth.

The potential value lies in making us determined to take much better care of the wonderful planet that God - or perhaps just a lucky throw of the inter-stellar dice - has given us.

Fat chance at present, though, when the nation leading the Mars push is Earth's biggest polluter and despoiler. On a quite separate issue, one of Alistair Cooke's recent BBC Letters from America revealed that to run a New York patient two blocks to hospital by ambulance costs $500 - borne by the patient.

Wouldn't you say one ambulance freely taking sick people to hospital is worth a whole fleet - indeed a whole galaxy - of Mars Rovers?

THE turbulent wake of the Kelly affair leaves behind not only a bewildered BBC but the primary question of whether Tony Blair took us into war on the false premise of getting rid of Weapons of Mass Destruction? Of course he didn't.

WMDs were never the reason we went to war. We went because America was going anyway and Tony Blair didn't want to upset his friend George Bush. In turn, America went to war neither to remove the threat of WMDs or get rid of an odious dictator. It went because it had failed to find Osama bin Laden and needed to "do something" to satisfy outraged America.

Of course we all know this. However, cast as cretins, we remain subjected to a dreary protracted drama about the truth or otherwise of the Prime Minister's stated reason for invading Iraq, knowing that, true or false, it wasn't the reason anyway.

SHOCK! Horror! More motorists are being imprisoned than burglars. Could that be because 1) fewer burglars are caught, and 2) many motoring offences that lead to gaol are not "quite petty",' as the head of the prison service implies? Indeed, the frequency with which relatives of people killed or seriously maimed by irresponsible drivers appear outside courts expressing justified dismay at mild sentences, demonstrates that we are not yet tough enough on the worst driving offenders.

FOR the first time since it was opened about 20 years ago, my wife and I visited the main offices of our district council, Northallerton-based Hambleton, the other day. Not only was our business (obtaining bus passes if you must know) transacted with friendly efficiency, but we commented favourably on the comfortable ambience of the foyer.

Next day we read that this is to be revamped at a cost of £38,000. Ah well, anything that pleases a couple of old fogeys like us must be hopelessly out of date.