Peter Rhodes: Is 60 the new 40?

WLADIMIR Klitschko,hard at work training for a rematch against the heavyweight champion Tyson Fury, is 40. He declares nonchalantly: "Age is just a number." Indeed it is. And getting knocked out is just ten numbers.

THIS modern trend for kidding ourselves that we never age is a sweet delusion. A friend of mine put it like this: "Sixty is the new 40. It's just that nobody tells your bladder."

"RACISM itself is the uniquely destructive form of reaction that characterises the 20th century – the holocaust is an indelible reminder of that – and any party which panders to it in any form, whether it be anti-semitism, anti-black or anti-Irish, is doomed." Ken Livingstone from Livingstone's Labour, published in 1989.

WHEN you hear about the NHS being in crisis, consider this. In 2004-05 hospitals in England admitted 40,741 people for conditions associated with their obesity. Ten years later, in 2014-15, there were 440,248 obesity-related admissions – more than ten times as many. The NHS has the ability to tackle and defeat some of the deadliest and most complex conditions known to medicine. How tragic, how pointless that it is being suffocated under the weight of patients with a condition that can be cured with more willpower and fewer pies.

AT the edge of a field in Warwickshire, not far from Cubbinton church where Jane Austen's brother James was once vicar, stands a pear tree reckoned to be 250 years old. The Cubbington Veteran Pear Tree as it is known, towers over a dappled copse carpeted with wood anemones and bluebell. It is said to be the second biggest wild pear tree in the land. It was voted England's Tree of the Year in the 2015 competition organised by the Woodland Trust. We visited it on May Day and in the full white blossom of a late spring, it was as big as a mature oak tree and simply magnificent. Unfortunately it stands in the path of HS2. It will be felled to make way for a screaming behemoth which will cost you and me £70 billion and get people from London to Birmingham 20 minutes faster than at present. I do not know a single person who wants HS2 but I know plenty who love trees and ancient meadows and pretty villages and all the other stuff being ripped down and swept away in the name of progress. Enjoy the views while ye may.

TALKING of progress, I invited readers to look ahead 100 years and guess how today's mainstream social attitudes would change by the year 2116. One reader forecasts that growing Muslim influence will transform our "immoral and debauched" society. Among other changes he suggests: "You won't see drunken women being sick in the street on Saturday nights." Another part of our British culture lost forever.

MORAL high-ground trivia. Name one difference between the official residence of our monarch and that of the President of the United States. Give up? All was revealed in The White House (PBS America channel). While Buckingham Palace was built by builders, the White House was built by slaves.

OPEN up the BT home page and there's a sales slogan inviting us to: "Discover why BT broadband is getting better." I wonder how many millions of users thought: "Because it can't possibly get any worse."