Is there any way to force the start menu list of user programs into alphabetic order?

They seem to fall into a number of groups presently (eg "all users", "my account only", "recent installs", "mystery lucky dip").

   It is alphabetical but then as you add items, they are put at the end in the order that you added them.  So you need to right click on that area and select Sort by Name from the popup menu.  This will put the added items in the alphabetical list.
   Do this periodically to add in the newer items.

that does not always work, Ray. If you have more than a dozen or so, it often only sorts part of the list:

what you need to do in that case is simply drag the individual items into alphabetical order - they will stay there !