Peter Rhodes: The Lords will always be with us
Peter Rhodes on why peers are a protected species, an NHS crisis and the overworked Boris Johnson.
I'VE just found a website which calculates how long you have been alive – in my case, at the moment of writing, 2,026,425,600 seconds. Funny, it feels less.
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BORIS Johnson is Mayor of London, MP for Uxbridge, columnist for the Daily Telegraph, a regular TV and radio guest, biographer of Churchill, tireless advocate of water cannon and has just announced he is to write a biography of Shakespeare. How can one man possibly take on so many jobs and do any of them half'-well?The internet speculation is that Johnson will rely heavily on researchers and assistants for his Shakespeare epic. Assistants, eh? I am reminded of Prince Andrew's brief career as a professional photographer in the 1980s. A TV news report showed HRH turning up to photograph a castle. He waved and glad-handed the assembled public and then paused briefly to press the button on a tripod-mounted camera which a minion had set up earlier. I am sure Boris will contribute more than that but I wonder how much of the final text he will recognise.
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SEE how I slipped into referring to Johnson by his first name? Folk naturally call him Boris which is odd because his friends and family call him Al (full name: Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson).
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THE NHS is agonizing over the so-called Liverpool Care Pathway for terminal patients, in which the "care" consisted of withholding liquids until the poor souls died of dehydration. The new, improved system requires nurses and doctors to allow the patients to drink water when they wish. The snag with this, as any busy NHS manager will tell you, is that terminal patients become rather less terminal and may occupy a badly-needed bed for several more days. How long before someone comes up with the Whack 'Em with a Hammer Care Pathway?
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JOHN Humphrys inadvertently referred on Today (Radio 4) this week to "the Liverpool Car Care Pathway." There was a time when this would have been the signal for all sorts of jokes involving cars and Liverpool. But as you can barely mention the place these days without getting death-wished on Twitter, let us move diplomatically on. . . .
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THE elimination of prepositions goes on. An internet advert asks: "Is your pension enough to retire?" A pension, being an inanimate and non-working entity, cannot retire. Is my pension enough to retire on? That's a different question. And it's none of your damn business anyway.
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SOLDIERS are the least prima-donna-ish people you will ever meet. Even so, deep in the military psyche is the need to know that their nation values them and wants them. When that vanishes, so do the soldiers. No-one should be surprised that the MoD has shed 20,000 jobs sooner than expected, largely through voluntary redundancy. The easiest way to get rid of a soldier is to tell him you don't need him.
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THE Lord Sewel coke 'n' hookers scandal has inevitably brought calls for the House of Lords in all its portly, ermine-trimmed magnificence, to be reduced, reformed or possibly dynamited. It ain't going to happen. There are only two organisations that could vote the Lords out of existence. The first is the Lords themselves, which would be like turkeys voting for Christmas, but with extra stuffing. The second is the House of Commons. But Members of Parliament regard the Lords as a delightful place to spend their post-MP years, so they are hardly going to get rid of the best club in town, are they?
