When the BBC started mispronouncing the surname of Morgan Tsvangirai as Changirai, I didn't pipe up because I thought the poor man would soon be snuffed out anyway. But the leader of the opposition party in Zimbabwe is now going to matter, so let's get his name right. I was raised there, and though at school I struggled with the grammar of the Bantu languages of Southern Africa, they are not (except those with clicks) especially hard to pronounce. The missionaries who first transcribed them simply chose the Roman letters closest to the actual sound.

The “Tsvang-” of Tsvangirai is most assuredly not pronounced “chang”. Just try saying “its vanguard” and (subtracting the initial “i”) and you will handle the letters tsvang fine. But when one person mispronounces confidently, others follow. Thus we were led astray for years by broadcasters who rhymed “cervical” with “Michael”, but at last the error seems to have been corrected. So I'm hopeful the BBC's pronunciation unit will reconsider “changirai” too. A nice lady there promises to report my view.

Reporting the arrival of a Conservative Way Forward circular personally signed by the Baroness Thatcher, I speculated last week that the former Prime Minister was - as ever - insisting on “doing something useful”. The Mrs T we used to know (I added) would have nothing to do with automated signing machines.

A response from her camp has reached me. This diary was right. Lady Thatcher signed more than a thousand letters for CWF. Now she's doing the same for the Royal Hospital Appeal. Nor has her attitude to signing-machines changed from the day her aides suggested getting a machine to sign her Christmas cards. “I told them,” (she remarked) “that would invalidate all the ones we had done in previous years. That was the end of that.”

My friend Kim can be a little absent-minded. Driven to the shops by her husband last week, she popped in to buy something, leaving him at the wheel. Then out she bustled and leapt into the passenger seat of the waiting car. It did not move. “What's all that hooting from behind us?” she asked, as the car behind flashed its lights and sounded its horn.

“Maybe it's your husband,” said the driver. “I'm not your husband. This is not your car.”

I wrote recently for The Times bewailing modern ministers' habit of passing laws just to “send out a message” about this or that - careless of whether the measures were enforced or enforceable. I mentioned proposals for a new crime of hate speech against gays. Readers afterwards reminded me I forgot to mention the “ban” on hunting.

But ministers carry on regardless. Last week came a half-baked proposal to force registered sex offenders to provide their e-mail addresses so the Government could stop them accessing internet porn sites. This got prominent billing, but it took no more than the intelligence of a gnat to respond: “How? Won't sex offenders use another address?” Questioned, ministers floundered. The point (said one) was that the new law would “send out a message”.

And now politicians queue to insist that, however little impact making cannabis a Class B drug may have on Brixton streetlife, reclassification will “send out a message” that the drug can be dangerous.

Why don't ministers give up the unequal struggle to frame workable law, and simply erect a giant noticeboard next to Big Ben, assisted by laser? Here they can send out all the messages they like.

Twice a week for the past 30-odd years I have sped by train through Long Eaton station. Millions have. You would hardly notice that the line is raised above the small Derbyshire town because in a previous century somebody planted a winter garden to each side of the viaduct that carries the track. Now walls of yew trees, tall hollies and other evergreen plants form a dense and beautiful backdrop to the platforms on each side of the line.

Even in the depths of winter (especially in the depths of winter) these sudden curtains of greenery, from the near-black of the yews to the lighter shades of holly, surprise passengers whizzing by. They must make the platform wait a little more pleasant. They never fail to lift my heart.

Whoever had the idea of shrouding an unexceptional station in an exceptional winter garden will be long dead and forgotten; but the planning, planting and tending must once have been considerable. I wish they knew the large sum of small pleasures that is the harvest of their goodwill and labour.

Times Recommends

• We have kit and leadership. Let’s go
• Behind the scenes at the biggest deal
• Conferences — what a waste of money