FORGET WORLD PEACE, saving whales and supplying tents to displaced Hottentots. If the United Nations really wants to make itself useful, it would devise an electric plug that everyone could use, whatever time zone they call home.

While they are about it, those worthies could justify their tax-free salaries by devising a TV set that doesn't get homesick, a waffle iron that works in London as well as in Lima (Ohio or Peru) and a hair dryer that can span continents and oceans without blowing every fuse in the building.

It's not that I'm suddenly stricken by some sort of attack of altruism on behalf of my fellow man, or woman. That would be too much for my wife Elizabeth's nervous system, accustomed as she is to my railing about everything from tax-paid buses for lesbian mothers to those annoying little labels that grocers stick on avocados.

It's just that, in the process of the clear-out that inevitably accompanies the agonies of moving house, I've struck a mother lode of electric plugs that bear mute testimony to 45 years of the human race's total inability to settle on a single connection for getting power to its radios/TVs/toasters/lawn mowers/blankets/chainsaws/dildos.

The problem is that along with its own flag, its own bird and plant and its own, generally unsingable and unspeakable national anthem, every country on the planet exercises a God-given right to its own electric plug, useable only in its own sockets and useless once it crosses the border on a visit to or invasion of neighboring nations.

The good old standard, two-pronged American jobbie is perhaps the only one that is fit for human consumption. It is simple and straightforward and so easy to attach that even your great-granny on her seventh gin martini could manage it.

By contrast, there is the British electric plug, a three-pronged gadget that requires an advanced degree in electrical engineering and the manual skills of a brain surgeon to fit it to a hair dryer or electric train. And it is heavy enough to brain any bystander who dares ask why it is taking so long.

In travels that have taken me four times around the globe in the past four decades-plus, I've found that every time I've landed and taken up residence in a new country, I have had to give up many a happy hour at the bar to devote time instead to replacing every electrical appliance the company has allowed me to drag along on the expense account.

The result is two drawers and several plastic bags filled with electric plugs of every size, shape and description - some two-pronged, others with three prongs, round or square or triangular, some earthen, others not and nearly all lacking sensible instructions as to which colored wire goes where.

When I first moved to London, my apartment - they call them "flats" here - had three different varieties of electric sockets, which meant three different sets of plugs. It also meant that if I wanted to move the bedroom radio into the living room, I had to cut off and replace the plug.

(It was often easier just to buy another radio. Which is why, to my wife's consternation, we have just about enough radio sets to open a convention-sized hotel, but that's another story....)

Elizabeth, already fairly well fed up with having to get rid of the19 Monopoly sets, 1,627 books and 123 vinyl records (only to hear a radio broadcast two days ago announcing that vinyl records are "now collector's items"), she inquired as to what I planned to do with all those plugs.

"Maybe you can use them for sinkers on fishing lines," she suggested. I detected a note of sarcasm here. Silly girl. Fish know nothing about electricity.

Whatever, I carted them off to the local dump. I felt as if I were losing a bunch of old and cherished friends. I also wondered what the dump workers would make of them - and I'm willing to bet a few shekels that they show up in a rummage sale not too long from now. Probably advertised as sinkers.

Meanwhile, about the only worthwhile accomplishment the United Nations has managed in 55 years is a pretty decent bar at the Delegates' Lounge in New York. Certainly its efforts at global peace are about as useful as a chocolate teapot, and it would seem in dire need of something practical to contribute.

A global unified electric plug (GUEP) would be a splendid start. Imagine flying from Paducah, Kentucky, to Paris, France, and finding you can use your hair dryer in the hotel without having to headhunt Cape Canaveral for an engineer.

For that matter, it should also be within the remit of the U.N. to eliminate the annoyance that comes when you blow up your U.S.-built radio by plugging it into a British socket. Surely it should be easy enough to settle on a single global voltage (SGV).

As it now stands, voltage ranges from 110 in the United States to 220 (or it may be 230, or 235) in Europe. At one time, half the power outlets at my apartment in Brussels operated on 220 volts and the other half on 110, which made for an interesting form of Russian roulette anytime a new appliance was added.

In Saigon during the Vietnam War, voltage could be anywhere between 90 and 265, depending on how many bombs the power plant had taken and how many formaldehyde-laced ba mui ba beers the munchkins on duty had consumed.

Once plugs and power have been unified, the U.N. could feel confident enough to take that final leap - make it possible for a television set to operate anywhere in the world. As it stands now, an American tube won't work in Britain, and a British one won't work in Germany or Italy or even Botswana.

A global unified TV (GUTV) would mean a viewer in Australia or Chile or Afghanistan would be able to see "60 Minutes" and "Frasier" and the excellent output of WGBH in Boston. And "Friends" and "The Jerry Springer Show" and...

Then again, maybe the United Nations should leave well enough alone and go back to digging for world peace, or something.

Thought for the Week: When all else fails, try panic.

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