Peter Rhodes: Shifting the blame

MYSTERIES of our time. A reader, fresh from watching a TV programme about the wealth gap between generations, is bemused. He writes: "I was born in 1951, passed the 11-plus to a state grammar school and had a grant to go to university." He wonders why today's Government, with all its multi-billion income from North Sea oil, cannot do the same for the young.

THE answer, I suspect is that every millennium throws up a few blessed generations. If you were born in the last decade of the 19th century, the trenches of The Somme and Passchendaele beckoned. But if your time began in 1950s Britain, your streets were paved with gold. Fortune favours the lucky.

IF you find yourself curiously elated by President Obama's olive-branch trip to Cuba this week, it may be because it's the only good news happening anywhere. Weep for Brussels, hope for Havana.

CLAYTON Williams, aged 19, has been jailed for 20 years for killing Pc Dave Phillips during a high speed chase, just three weeks after coming out of jail on licence. This is what his lawyer told the court: "Mr Williams comes from a deprived area of Merseyside and . . . had a lack of education and a lack of opportunity. Lessons need to be learnt by Government that communities and young people, who are abandoned by the State, who lack opportunity and direction will sometimes turn to crime." So in this version, Williams is the victim, Pc Phillips was part of the system that oppressed him and the real villains were the politicians. What a wonderful exercise in shifting the blame. Paid for, of course, by you and me.

MEANWHILE, we pass a dismal landmark. It is now estimated that the number of refugees in this troubled world has soared past 60 million and is greater than the entire population of the United Kingdom.

EDDIE Izzard, after his 27 marathons in 27 days, says we should all exercise by adopting the "natural lope" of the African bushman. What he doesn't mention is that the life expectancy of the average bushman is about 45. It may be terribly unfair but the truth is that we in the West, instead of loping around, can slob on the sofa for five hours a night, pigging out on chips and lager, and still live to 70.

STILL on health, I return, gel-bellied, relieved and reassuringly normal, from the abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) screening session I mentioned some weeks ago. Alarm bells start to ring if your aorta measured during an ultrasound scan (hence the gel) is more than three centimetres wide. Mine is 2.3cm, which is fine. The person in charge was a big, hearty bloke with the manner of an Army sergeant who called me Sir throughout. It was a nice change from the usual NHS first-name nonsense.

SCREENING for deadly conditions is the unsung jewel in the crown of the NHS. Last year, in the space of 48 hours thanks to routine screening, I was told I was not dying from bowel or skin cancer, and now I am not dying from aneurysm either. I remarked to the bloke in charge on the warm, and entirely undeserved, glow of virtue you get from producing normal readings at health screenings. He said: "Mind your halo on the way out, Sir."

I AM aware, in the above item, that jewels cannot actually be sung, but you know what I mean.