London under glass

YOU don't have to go back to Poldark to find a time when Cornwall and England were two very different places. The writer John Betjeman (1906-84) recalled Cornwall in the early 20th century when the locals regarded London as a distant, magical place. He wrote: "The story used to be told of one of them who thought the metropolis was all under a glass roof because he never got further than Paddington Station."

NEVER let the facts get in the way of a good headline such as: "Could wolf-whistling be a crime?" The truth is that Poppy Smart's distress at a building site in Worcester had nothing to do with mere wolf-whistling. It was about the 23-year-old being repeatedly confronted and embarrassed in the street by builders who thought they were God's gift to women. The police have had a few quiet words with them, which is precisely what the police should do in a situation like this. And it's exactly what these leering navvies would demand if it were their wives, girlfriends or sisters suffering the same intimidation. The defence "It's just banter, innit?" doesn't apply when it's your own loved ones.

THERE are, incidentally, three significant moments in a woman's life concerning wolf whistles. There is the first time it happens, when you realise men are interested in you. There is the time when it stops, when you realise men are no longer interested in you. And there is the time when the wolf whistles start again, and you realise to your horror that men are whistling at your 13-year-old daughter.

ACCORDING to figures released under a Freedom of Information request, last year nearly 1.2 million drivers were offered driver-awareness courses having been caught "speeding," a term which now includes pottering along at 34mph in a 30mph limit. The average constabulary now nicks more than 50,000 drivers a year. The number on courses has tripled over the past 10 years. If you don't suspect by now that it's all about money, you must be very dim indeed. To complicate things further, the speed at which you can be prosecuted varies between constabularies. Some forces won't even disclose what the crucial mph limit is. This is "justice" by postcode, concealment and deception. If ever an issue cried out for a full public inquiry, the driver-awareness racket is it.

MOUNT Everest, getting headline coverage after the Nepal earthquake, is a classic case of naming something after somebody and getting it all wrong. For a start, George Everest, a former Surveyor General of India and clearly a man of principle, objected to the mountain being named after him in 1865. He argued that Everest could not be written in the local language nor pronounced by local people. He was overruled. Then, to rub salt into the wound, Mount Everest came to be pronounced as we know it today, although Everest pronounced his surname Eave-rest. That's enough Himalaya trivia.

IF there's one thing more misleading than opinion polls, it's election posters. A friend tells me his town is bedecked in Labour red with hardly a Tory banner in sight. The strange part is that the town consistently returns a Conservative MP.

FIRST the nature enthusiasts introduced alien species of deer to England. Now the deer are out of hand and the plan is to introduce lynx to control them. And if the lynx get out of hand, what will it take to control them? Wolves? Bears? Tigers? Anyone else reminded of the old song? There was an old lady who swallowed a fly. . .