Peter Rhodes: The sky has not fallen

TWENTY years ago, at the height of the BSE scare, the United States stopped importing British beef and lamb, in order to protect its people from mad-cow disease. It was announced this week that imports will resume next January. Here's the question. Over the past 20 years spent avoiding British meat, have the Americans become less mad or more mad?

HORRIBLE Hillary. Terrible Trump. How can it be that the popular vote to select Democrat and Republican US presidential candidates has produced two of the most unpopular people in the entire country?

AND why, oh why, if she is capable of the clear thinking and brilliant oratory we saw at the Democrat convention, did the lawyer, mother and First Lady Michelle Obama not stand for president? Next time, maybe?

I AM not sure, in the great scheme of things, whether you can judge much in the first month after a referendum. Things may yet go belly-up. But so far the sky has not fallen in, the FTSE index is doing well, the pound has stabilised at a lower level and this week brought news of investment in Britain in everything from medical research to fast food and housebuilding. There is talk of free-trade agreements with Canada, Australia, China and India, and even warnings of a sudden spike in immigration as EU citizens rush to the honeypot and powerhouse that Brexit Britain may become. As I suggested on the morning after the referendum, we are making the transition from Little Europeans to Great Britons whose imagination and creativity is limitless and whose horizons extend far beyond the borders of the European Union.

THOSE Remainers who waved banners and wept in the streets at Britain leaving the stifling bureaucracy of the EU now look old-fashioned, insular and timorous. And I bet if we ran the referendum again tomorrow, the majority to leave would be even bigger. Not because we are dimwits or racists but because we see a brighter dawn and have rediscovered our courage.

A SYRIAN refugee family resettled on the Scottish island of Bute are deeply unhappy, claiming the place is full of old people who go there to die. I wonder if they die of the cooking? Bute is forever stuck in my mind as the place where, many years ago, I had the worst meal of my life. It was in a cafe in Rothesay and was advertised on the menu as "mince". I assumed it would be served in a tasty, spicy sauce. Not a chance. It was a sloppy dollop of grey minced beef, boiled to extinction in salty water and served with a scowl. I would never make light of the war in Syria but faced with that sort of cuisine, who wouldn't pine for the bistros of Damascus?

MY recent piece about a banjo-playing Scout leader entertaining the queues at Dover reminds one reader of Mark Twain's observation: "A gentleman is someone who knows how to play the banjo and doesn't."

THE reader spoils the effect by going on to rubbish the only musical instrument I have ever mastered. It's the unkind old joke about one musician asking his colleague what is the best pitch for a ukulele and getting the answer: "Into the nearest skip." Shame on you, sir.