Peter Rhodes: Carry on boozing
PETER RHODES on the days when the NHS prescribed alcohol, the demonising of Muslim mums and why the election polls got it wrong.
MUCH has been written and spoken about Jeremy Corbyn's plan for nuclear submarines without nuclear missiles. I like this little analogy from a Scottish website: "I took the blades out of my kitchen knives to see how they'd work. I could still squish tomatoes with the handle but my neighbours called me a ***** and are now parking on my driveway."
MEANWHILE, it emerges that Jeremy Corbyn calls his family cat El Gato which is simply Spanish for the Cat. We have a similar nameless arrangement at Chateau Rhodes where the resident tabby who wandered in seven years ago may be addressed in the course of a day as Puss, Pusskin, The Prince, Killer, Poppet, Chick, Button, Sweetie, Fuzzy Face, Sausage and Mate but is usually known as The Cat. It seems to suit him.
THANKS for your many memories of the days when the NHS prescribed alcohol. A nurse in the 1960s recalls: "I was amazed to find on the evening drug round people with heart and circulation problems were prescribed whisky. It certainly made for very happy patients." A TB patient in 1960 writes: "My prescribed treatment was bed rest, antibiotics and a bottle of Guinness daily." A lad involved in a road accident: "As part of my treatment I received two bottles of Guinness. Lovely!" A young mum: "When I gave birth to my youngest daughter in 1974, all breastfeeding mothers, including me, were given Mackeson every day to boost our milk supply. It certainly worked." A teenage patient: "In August 1959 I was in hospital for an operation. All the men in the ward had a bottle of beer but not me because I was only 16." If your letters and emails are any guide, the practice of giving patients alcohol lasted at least until the 1980s.
WHEN Islamic State fighters try to defend their crimes, there is plenty of outraged justification about the evil West meddling in the Islamic world or the sheer bliss of beheading the wrong sort of Muslims. But as far as I can recall, not a single AK-47-toting jihadi has ever claimed he went off to Syria because his mum couldn't speak English. There are many good reasons for encouraging Muslim women to speak English, as David Cameron proposed this week. But to suggest that a mother's language issues may somehow turn her kids into Jihadi Johns or Janets is bunkum. In the TV comedy series Friends, Joey's Italian grandmother has lived half her life in New York and still cannot speak a word of English. That does not make her an enemy of the state.
AFTER the massive coverage following the deaths of Mr Lemmy from Motorhead and Mr Bowie from Mars, you might think the media has exhausted their ability to go over the top. Not a bit of it. According to Radio 4 news at 11pm on Monday, the most important global event of the day, and the lead story for the BBC's premier news outlet, was the death of Glenn Frey of the Eagles.
YESTERDAY'S report into why the opinion polls got the General Election result so wrong is that pollsters, using phones and the internet, contacted too many Labour voters and not enough Tory voters. Another explanation is that, when asked how they will vote, Labour supporters answer "Labour" while Tory supporters answer: "I haven't really made my mind up yet, dear." Strange but true.
