World view

Any worries that Sarah Sands, incoming editor of the Today Programme on Radio 4, might increase the show's metro-centricity should be dispelled.

Whilst a good part of her recent life has been travelling the half-mile between her home (off Kensington High Street) and the Evening Standard's offices (on Kensington High Street), returning to domestic discourse with husband Kim (whose company provides media relations services for the Daily Mail, off Kensington High Street, amongst others) she does, as many recent columns remind us, encounter ordinary people in Norfolk, where she has a second home.

And she's learning - her first dinner party had problems. "Without rugs or curtains (the London way) the acoustics were challenging. My lessons: serving salad with cheese is a little continental for the English country; hiring waitresses is not considered pretentious but an honourable contribution to local employment; place names must be written on torn pieces of scrap paper."

And instead of stories about the editor's haircut, we might build on Sarah's agricultural insights. "A market stallholder in Swaffham complained to me the other day that thousands of pounds worth of potatoes were being dumped because they were too various in size for supermarkets. Cabbages were thrown out for being too large. Punnets of fruit were given away because one store changed the height of its shelves."   Something must be done.