Peter Rhodes: The F-word again

A FAILURE for all seasons. Until this week, our broadband service tended to crash out in heavy rain, wind or thunder. This week we discovered it doesn't like a heatwave either. Wrong sort of sun.

IF Pippa Middleton really is wearing a £200,000 engagement ring in public, as this week's photos suggest, then she must be a very silly fiancee indeed.

BARELY a year after the inquest into the deaths of three recruits during training on Brecon Beacons, another young soldier has collapsed and died. This time, it was on the hottest day of the year so far, with intensely warm and humid air drifting north from Europe. This extraordinary day had been forecast for some time and yet, even after the "gross failures" condemned in last year's inquest, the gruelling selection went ahead. The dead man, Corporal Joshua Hoole, was not a rookie but an experienced soldier whose health, presumably, had been monitored for years. He should not have died. Once again, a family grieves and the nation demands an explanation. It had better be good.

IN the wake of a travel-firm collapse a few days ago I wrote: "In the months to come watch out for Brexit being brandished to explain or excuse everything from incompetence to hurricanes and pure bad luck." Sure enough, Labour MP Chris Bryant says "ludicrous Brexit lies" were to blame for destabilising Turkey before the failed coup.

INCIDENTALLY, what sort of government can produce a list of 50,000 "enemies" and arrange for them to be imprisoned, detained or sacked in less than three days? Don't you get the impression that Turkey's post-coup crackdown was planned at least as well as the plot itself?

BRITAIN'S best-known atheist Richard Dawkins and his wife, the former Doctor Who star Lalla Ward, have announced they have "separated entirely amicably." The couple insist they are still good friends, will continue working together and are sharing their house in Oxford. So what's the difference between that and being married?

THE F-word raises its furry head. Andrea Leadsom said during her campaign for the Tory leadership: "I would absolutely commit to holding a vote to repeal the (fox) hunting ban. It has not proven to be in the interests of animal welfare whatsoever." Now, the Brexit zealot is Secretary of State for the Environment, a job described by some Whitehall wags as "explaining to the farmers why they won't be getting their EU subsidies." Will she be tempted to lift the hunting ban to placate the landowning classes? Not if she has half a brain. There is no sensible reason why the pursuit of a small creature should arouse such ferocious political passions. It just does. Banning the hunt won Tony Blair thousands of votes in his 1997 landslide. Lifting the ban would cost Theresa May's government thousands more while satisfying only a few people who were Tory voters anyway.

A THINK tank, the Resolution Foundation, reports that today's under-35s, the so-called millennials, may become the first generation to earn less than their parents. They typically earned £8,000 less during their 20s than their predecessors. On the other hand, if the millennials were suddenly given £8,000 they'd only waste it on iPhones, vaping and silly damn Pokemon Go. It is much better for us older folk to have the loot. We use it so wisely. Another chocolate Magnum, my dear?