Express & Star

Peter Rhodes: Promising the earth

PETER RHODES on the shadow chancellor's pledge, a side-effect of tattoos and the curious case of the Taliban bomb maker.

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A READER of a certain age tells me his son and daughter-in-law are off to America, exploring Route 66. He harrumphs: "What's wrong with the A4124?"

MORE senior-citizen harrumphing, this time from another reader who wonders whether BBC headline writers have any grounding in English, especially the one who gave us the on-screen caption about an old documentary film : "Lost Footage of Bath to be Screened." If the footage is lost, he points out, how can it possibly be screened? He goes on: "Surely Rediscovered Film of Bath, etc" would be more correct?" He wonders whether pedantry is inevitable as you get older. Personally, I blame the statins.

"THE most common complication of tattooing remains regret." Consultant dermatologist Dr Sarah Walsh, writing to the Daily Telegraph. She also lists a number of side-effects which would put you off getting inked for ever.

I HAVE never understood the appeal of having ink injected into your skin. Presumably, a tattoo is intended to make some sort of statement. On parents, the statement always strikes me as "That's another fifty quid I'm not spending on the kids."

OUR changing language. An airline boss on You and Yours (Radio 4) explained how, in transforming the company, "sadly we had to part ways with a third of our workforce." I've never heard it called that before.

MORE on the language of hate. You may recall about a year ago Jeremy Corbyn appointed an adviser whose chief claim to fame was calling his Labour comrade Jack Straw "a vile git." I wrote at the time that "vile," meaning highly offensive, disgusting or repulsive, is a strong word intended to be used only in extreme circumstances. But in today's hate-filled politics, it has become the mildest starting point for insults. Moving up the scale, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has refused to withdraw his gross description of the former disability minister Esther McVey as "a stain on humanity" or apologise for repeating a joke about lynching her. He insist these were the right words to use. Some weeks ago he told a meeting of Labour activists that those opposing Corbyn were "****ing useless." John McDonnell is 65. So old and yet so angry.

INCIDENTALLY, McDonnell's promise of £10 per hour minimum age should be kept in context. When you don't think you have a cat in hell's chance of forming the next government, you can promise anything. Ask David Cameron. When he didn't expect to win last year's General Election, he promised a referendum on whether Britain should remain in the European Union or leave. Funny how things turn out.

I AM desperately trying to avoid the phrase "you couldn't make it up" but nothing else seems to cover the utterly bonkers case of an alleged Taliban bomb-maker seeking damages from the UK for being detained by British soldiers who, naturally enough, took a dim view of him spending his time attaching fuses to Semtex. Meanwhile, legal firms are re-examining earlier cases. Human-rights lawyers claim that repeated air raids by the RAF forced their client to live in a concrete bunker where he became depressed, irrational , entered into a meaningless marriage and turned suicidal. They allege that Mr A Hitler of Berlin was "a blameless victim of Allied aggression."

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