Genetically modified cynicism

ANYONE else surprised at the reports describing this week's bus-v-tree incident in London as a "freak accident?" If the bus is too high and the tree branch is too low, that's not freakery. It's maths.

A REPORT in Wales proposes "breaking up the old-boy network" by setting limits on how long local councillors can serve. This is bracing, revolutionary stuff. At present, councillors can be in power from puberty to the grave, so long as they represent one of those seats where a three-toed sloth would get elected if it wore the right-coloured rosette. Council chambers are full of the municipal equivalent of bed-blockers. They are old duffers (and dufferettes) who soldier on long after they have served their purpose, dunking their free biscuits in their free tea as the world rolls by. So what maximum length of term does the Welsh report suggest for a councillor? Five years? Ten years, perhaps? Nope. The proposed limit is 25 years. Small revolution in Wales; not many affected. Back to your biscuits, grandad.

NATIONAL treasure Matt Baker tells us he's not so nice, after all. The Countryfile (BBC1) presenter says he has high stress levels and a bad temper and declares: "I'm a real perfectionist. I don't like slacking." This is presumably the same Matt Baker who made such a hash of the 2012 Thames Pageant that for some time afterwards he had, as I noted, "a face like a slapped puppy."

I HAVE a genetic problem. My ancestors' deep-rooted cynicism echoes down the Rhodes generations like albatrosses tumbling down a chimney. Thus, when I learn that mitochondrial transfer, creating babies from three people, will benefit only a few hundred British families I find myself asking, where's the money in that? Modern medical research tends to be driven by money, in the expectation of making more money. As you will recall, there was no vaccine against Ebola until it started killing rich Western people and then, suddenly, money was no object. Mitochondrial transfer may be useful in relatively few British cases but there is clearly a global market for the country which is first to approve the procedures. That's what our Parliament voted for this week. While other countries hold back, Britain has suddenly become the world centre for three-donor baby technology. Business will be brisk at British clinics until either a) the rest of the world catches up or b) some grisly, unforeseen problem develops. Damn this cynicism. Is there no cure for it?

I PREDICT last night's viewing figures for Wolf Hall (BBC2) will be well up on last week's when sneering critics hooted with glee about a drop of one million viewers. I bet the missing million were precisely the sort of viewers who were watching Jeremy Paxman's documentary Churchill: A Nation's Farewell (BBC1) which Auntie, for reasons best known to herself, screened at exactly the same time.

AMID all the celebrating and re-examination of Churchill's life, one fact tends to be overlooked. It is that, even if he had never entered politics, Churchill might still have been famous. He was one of the great literary figures of the 20th century. The man's writing energy was unbelievable. Over 60 years Churchill completed nearly 40 books on subjects including history and art, and one novel. In 1992 the Wolverhampton author Keith Alldritt produced the first literary assessment of the great man, Churchill the Writer. Alldritt, a left-leaning academic, generously praised Churchill's rare gift for sentence-construction, his unorthodox use of words, his profound knowledge of the classics and his gentle, self-mocking irony. "A very canny man," was Alldritt's verdict.