Hot planet, cold summers

SCIENTISTS say that, after a bit of a pause, global warming will resume over the next ten years. They have therefore advised us to be prepared for cooler summers. No, I don't get it either.

THE Care Quality Commission has criticised carers at a residential home in Harrogate for calling the old folk "love" and "darling," terms which they allege could be construed as "demeaning and patronising." Surely, as a general rule, people should be called what they want to be called. But I bet in Harrogate most residents see nowt wrong in being called love, darling, chuck, sweetheart or anything else, so long as the term, and the treatment, is delivered with affection and care. When official bodies try to impose their middle-class language and culture on their employees, it is a reminder of the scorn that the authorities have always had for the English working class.

THE Government is said to be considering restrictions to persuade diesel-car drivers, such as me, to stay away from cities including London, Birmingham, Leeds, Nottingham, Southampton and Derby. Believe me, I need absolutely no persuading.

WHAT could be more normal than BT informing you your latest bill is online for you to see? But something about the email, inviting me to log in with my BT password and account number, didn't look right. Sure enough, the sender's address "Bt webmail" concealed another email address, apparently filched from the website of a Methodist church in California. Here is the official advice from the real BT: "BT will never send you an email with an attachment or ask you for any personal information such as your account number, password or bank details." I cannot recall a single day in recent years when somebody has not tried to phish or scam me either online or by phone. When smiling police chiefs and self-satisfied politicians try to tell us that crime is falling it's only because a global tidal wave of crime has moved from the back streets into cyberspace and never gets reported or taken seriously.

WHEN Monday's torrential storms struck, I was on the A14 at the head of a long line of traffic. As the sheets of rain reduced visibility to zero, I slowed from 70 to below 30mph. Everyone in the queue slowed down behind me, with the exception of a huge petrol tanker which hurtled past into the impenetrable grey, the driver sightless, brainless and conscienceless. I know truckers have schedules to meet and oil companies are having a grim time but don't you get furious when your life is put on the line for the sake of somebody else's profits?

DEPRESSING, isn't it, to see the Labour Party trying to turn its new leader Jeremy Corbyn into something he isn't? Their chief horror seems to be that Corbyn might turn up at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday wearing the pacifist white poppy of the Peace Pledge Union. Well, why not? Who would you prefer as a leader, somebody who displays his beliefs openly or somebody who wears false colours for fear of rocking the boat?

SAY what you like about the Yanks but they have some great laws. An Oregon man faces court for allegedly urinating on fellow passengers on a flight from Anchorage to Portland. He has been charged with "criminal mischief." Why don't we have charges like that?