INTERVIEWED when Songs of Praise was broadcast from Wensleydale recently, William Hague, the Tory leader, confessed to not being a regular churchgoer. He said that he and Ffion found God by walking in that great open-air cathedral, the glorious Dales' landscape. Those weren't his precise words but that was the spirit.

Since Mr Hague wouldn't wish to desecrate a holy place, one must assume he regards the North York Moors as a temple of an inferior faith to the one he sees mirrored in the neighbouring Dales. Otherwise, why would he have rushed to urge Britain to "unhesitatingly'' back the Star Wars' plans of incoming US president George Bush - a missile-defence shield requiring an "upgrade" of the Fylingdales' warning station, probably with a massive new structure disfiguring the moors.

It's intriguing to speculate on what Mr Hague's attitude might be if the Americans suddenly discover that, say Shunner Fell, overlooking the Buttertubs between Swaledale and Wensleydale, was more suited than Fylingdales for its missile-detecting radar system. Of course, this would mean violating a pristine national park landscape rather than making worse an existing intrusion.

On a different tack, one wonders, too, if Mr Hague, when contemplating God's glory in the Dales, reflects on mankind's mistreatment of space. There it was, empty, virginal. Now it's filled with our junk so we can receive junk via satellite TV. That seems to be about the best of it.

And the worst? The very militarisation of space to which William Hague now gives his "unhesitating"' support.

A GRIM topic, admittedly, but war weaponry nevertheless commands more of this column today. Depleted uranium: does it, or does it not, cause cancer?

I'm inclined to believe it does. But surely the main point is that depleted uranium warheads are nuclear weapons? Our Government's refusal to ban them means it is contributing to the arrival of nuclear war by stealth.

This accords with its failure, along with the other nuclear powers, to move a muscle to open a debate within the United Nations on a draft treaty lodged five years ago by the International Court of Justice, which would require nuclear powers to negotiate the elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide. Instead - and behind high-profile events like the destruction of ballistic missiles a few years ago - their use is becoming routine. A final paradox is that while Britain shares the international concern about landmines, it is prepared to impose the far greater menace of radiation - which threatens death and disease down many generations.

DESPITE rows over the closure of local offices, the Post Office, almost alone among our public, now mainly privatised services, still enjoys relatively high public esteem. Some has been squandered, rightly, with the widely-ridiculed adoption of the new name, Consignia.

Defending the change, the PO says that its existing name is a handicap to expansion abroad. But the fundamental question is: why does the PO need to operate abroad? With "globalisation'' the key word of our time, the belief seems to have taken root that no major business can exist without an international dimension.

Meanwhile, what of the PO's new name. Though the PO says it was chosen because consign means "to entrust to the care of", the truth is that the most frequent use of consign is in terms of consigning some item to the dustbin or wastepaper basket. Isn't it amazing that, in the doubtless long deliberations over the name, whose introduction will cost £2m, no one apparently made this point?

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