Peter Rhodes: Foggy-morning madness

I WROTE last week about laminating, having discovered that a laminator, made in China, can be bought for £10. A reader writes: "I work as a teacher in China. Guess what piece of equipment it's absolutely impossible to obtain over here. That's right, a laminator."

MEANWHILE at the car-boot sale, a lady was asking £10 for the sort of stoneware crockery we had as a wedding present all those years ago. Back in the 1970s, all the old fogies had bone china but we kids drank from thick, clunky, trendy stoneware mugs. After a while you realised the old fogies knew best. Stoneware soaks up heat. It may look great but you'll never get a hot cup of tea. It was so cool – literally.

THE revelation of which BBC stars are earning more than £150,000 a year brings the Corporation into line with Civil Service rules on pay disclosure. At the same time it is revealed that non-payment of the TV licence may become one of the offences (others are speeding and fly tipping) for which pleas may be entered and fines paid online. Here's proof, if ever you doubted it, that the BBC is not just another broadcasting organisation. It is the state broadcaster and its massive workforce is no more than an extension of the Civil Service. And if you rely entirely on the BBC for news coverage, you will hear what the state wants you to hear.

ON a foggy morning I spotted two drivers using mobile phones. I bet it was no coincidence that neither vehicle was showing any lights. When people are stupid, they tend to be stupid in all directions.

GOOD luck to Fleet Street with its latest co-ordinated campaign for stiffer sentences for drivers who kill through careless, reckless or dangerous driving. There can no worse nightmare than seeing the smirking oaf who killed your nearest and dearest walking free from court with some hopeless "community service" order. When a driver kills another road user while drunk, texting, using a mobile phone, without insurance or through some other pre-meditated act, the prison sentence should be automatic and long.

AND yet, under pressure from bereaved families and road-safety charities, there is a danger of assuming that if someone dies in a road accident, someone else must always be to blame. The relatively new charge of causing death by careless driving seems to be used with abandon, even when there is little evidence of carelessness. We have seen prosecutions brought when the deceased was, if not to blame, then simply in the wrong place, and sometimes drunk. There is such a thing as a blameless accident and the Crown Prosecution Service should acknowledge it. At present, the system is in danger of treating serious crimes as accidents and accidents as serious crimes.

OUR changing language. I am probably a bit slow on picking up on "virtue signalling," the term describing those who post messages on the internet chiefly to show off what wonderful, well-adjusted and prejudice-free characters they are. Unlike most modern buzzwords, this one can be traced to one person, James Bartholomew, who used it in The Spectator on April 2015. I would have spotted "virtue signalling" earlier but I am so busy with my charity work.