Peter Rhodes: Jimmy Savile and the Wild West

WAKE up. There is a tidal wave of outrage heading our way. It would have burst already but for the fact that most Brits don't heed government announcements until it hits them personally. If you're a man born before April 6, 1951 you will qualify this year for the state pension of £115.95 a week. If you were born on or after April 6, 1951, you qualify for the new flat-rate pension of around £155.65. The exact figures are complicated and different dates apply for women. But the bottom line is that, although Bob and Bill were in the same school class all those years ago, Bob will get £2,000 a year more than Bill, just for being born a few hours later. I predict a lot of unhappy Bills.

THE report into Jimmy Savile's sex-rampage through the BBC concludes that the Corporation had a culture of deference towards "untouchable stars." But there's more to it than that. From today's perspective it is hard to imagine the Britain of the 1970s and 1980s. This country was like the Wild West. There was, quite literally, blood on the streets. The IRA were detonating bombs on a daily basis. Football hooliganism involving thousands of fans was a regular event. Savage inner-city riots lasted for days. Mass industrial action, including the miners' strike, brought public order to the brink of collapse. On top of that, police had to cope with more than 6,000 road deaths a year, three times today's figure. Policing was a rough, bloody and sometimes slapdash business. If anyone at the BBC had gone to the police, complaining that a famous disc jockey was groping teenage girls, where do you think that would have figured in the constabulary's priorities? It is almost impossible to impose today's values and sensitivities on such a period. All we can do, with the huge luxury of hindsight, is try to stop it happening again.

I GOT my car-tax reminder the other day, put it on the mantelpiece and promptly forgot it. Being reasonably well organised, I remembered it in time to meet the deadline. But now that UK vehicles no longer have tax discs, the nagging, daily reminder in the windscreen is no more. I begin to understand why up to 10,000 untaxed vehicles are being clamped each month, compared to 5,000 in the days of the disc. We are taxing people for being unorganised.

HOW many people do you know who died over the past 12 months? Each year about 500,000 people die in the UK, so it's hardly surprising that most of us know a few of them. According to a parliamentary inquiry into transphobia and discrimination, the UK has more than 600,000 transgender people. If that were true, all of us would know lots of them. So how many transgender people do you know? No-one denies that being trapped in the wrong body is one of life's worst nightmares. But it serves no purpose to present what is a rare condition as some sort of national epidemic.

JEREMY Corbyn is right to call for talks with Argentina over the Falklands, which is another war simply waiting to happen. The 2013 referendum among the islanders produced an overwhelming vote to remain a UK Overseas Territory. Maybe we asked the wrong question. How about: "Here's a million quid and 500 acres in the Orkneys. Interested?"

AND if you think that would be tinkering with democracy, what sort of democracy is it that gives 1,600 voters 8,000 miles away the right to dictate the defence policy of 60 million Brits?