Peter Rhodes: The helpfulness of bullies

ONE of the outstanding moments of the Commons debate on whether to bomb Syria was the short, straightforward speech by Dan Jarvis, reminding us that this plain-speaking 43-year-old ex-soldier would make a formidable Labour Party leader. There is still time.

WHEN I first heard of activists handing out "fat cards" to portly people using public transport, I was horrified. How grotesquely unkind to pick on a total stranger and cause distress and humiliation by handing them a card beginning: "It's really not glandular, it's your gluttony." And then I thought of all those "How I lost 10 stone in a year" adverts when super-slimmers reveal the secret of their success. Time after time, they confess that the spur to losing weight and living a longer, healthier life was a shaming wake-up call, such as a child's first drawing in primary school showing a woman the size of a house with the caption "Mum."

SOMETIMES, shock and shame are a great spur. I wonder how many people, having ballooned in size while their friends were too polite to say anything, are finally turned on to a life-saving diet by being handed a fat card by a bully. As the old story goes, sometimes it's your friends who land you in the **** and your enemies who pull you out.

LOCH Lomond: A Year in the Wild (C5) is a tale of animals locked in a life-and-death struggle, but with all the death bits taken out for the benefit of a soft-hearted audience. Scotland's national park is hardly the Serengeti; kindly humans are always on hand. Thus, we are told solemnly that the sweetie-cuddly little baby red squirrels could perish in the hard winter – so the rangers fill boxes with peanuts to keep them plump and healthy. The beautiful red kites would also starve, were it not for the mountains of fresh meat put out for them every day. And did anyone seriously think that adorable little red deer, separated from his herd, would be allowed to expire in the bleak glens? Of course not. I bet the crew were standing by with blankets and a nice warm flask of mummy-deer milk. This is nature not so much red in tooth and claw, as pale pink with fluffy bits, a place where Bambi always survives. I bet the viewers loved it.

WHY, in the space of a single week, did opinion-poll support for bombing Syria fall from 59 to 48 per cent? Maybe one, or both, YouGov polls were wrong. Maybe there was a sudden national outbreak of caution, common sense or cowardice. But I bet the biggest factor was simply time. The first poll, showing a clear majority for unleashing the RAF, came just three days after the horror of Paris. The second was a couple of weeks later and this increasingly-busy world of ours had moved on. Single-issue terrorist groups like IS focus entirely on their cause and think in terms of centuries; that is why they refer to the West as "crusaders." We in the West, bombarded with information and entertainment 24/7, have developed the attention-span of a gnat. It may yet be the death of us.

A FRIEND is hobbling around and popping Ibuprofen. Why is it that all the conditions we used to laugh about in Les Dawson's comedy routines – gout, bunions, lumbago and sciatica - are so damn painful in real life?