Peter Rhodes on washing machines, asteroids and the misery unleashed by Columbus

Incidentally who decided that Artificial Intelligence gets capital letters while the internet does not?

Asteroid 2024 YR4 is heading our way and may collide with Earth in the year 2032. It is said to be big enough to destroy a city which may bring some comfort to people living in villages. After all, what sort of unambitious asteroid would squander its energy obliterating Bourton on the Water when it could vaporise Rio?

Nasa says the asteroid may hit somewhere across the eastern Pacific Ocean, northern South America, the Atlantic Ocean, Africa, the Arabian Sea, or South Asia. The rest of us can go back to worrying about the climate.

I thoroughly enjoyed the new series, James May's Great Explorers (C5) which is neatly pitched somewhere between the Open University and Horrible Histories. It introduces us to the basics of sailing and baking hard-tack biscuits while educating us on the evils of slavery, torture and massacres following Christopher Columbus's “discovery” of America in 1492. The question it didn't answer is why Britain takes so much stick over the slave trade when countries such as Spain practised it earlier, longer and genocidally?

As predicted, some of the safeguards in the Assisted Dying Bill are being watered down. We were originally promised scrutiny by a High Court judge to detect any coercion. That plan has now been dropped in favour of an independent panel of expert volunteers. Independent? And who can prove that?

Coercion is the big issue and the one that may yet scupper the Bill. The fear that frail old people may be pressured to pop their clogs early will not go away. The continuing debate is a reminder that, deep down and rightly or wrongly, we really don't trust each other.