Peter Rhodes: Time to trigger Hartlepool

OUR changing language. A reader reports a football pundit supporting a referee's yellow-card warning with: "Yes, that foul was yellowable."

TV news subtitles continue to amuse. A reader reports seeing a reference to the Government commencing Brexit by triggering "Hartlepool 50." Another subtitle said of the late Leonard Cohen that "his music and parrot tree will live forever."

INCIDENTALLY, if you are under 40, just ignore all the guff from wrinklies about Cohen being one of the most influential musicians of his age. He was a dirge-maker, droning in the background while we Children of the Sixties got on with enjoying popular music. Cohen may have appealed to depressives and precious luvvies but he never scored higher than sixth in the music-influence stakes, after Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich.

I MENTIONED the new Beeb drama, Close to the Enemy. Like so many offerings, it suffers from SCS, Speeding-Credits Syndrome. The names of the cast and crew at the end of the programme fly by too fast to read. It happens all the time. SCS is bad enough if your name is something short and snappy like Jack Smith. But what if you were christened Gabriella Zanna Vanessa Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe? That's the full name of Gabriella Wilde, the heart-breaking Caroline Penvenen in Poldark. Sensibly shortened.

YOU may be puzzled by the derisory term "populism," as applied to the Trump and Brexit results. A Daily Telegraph reader explains perfectly. "Populism = widespread opinions I don't agree with. Popular = widespread opinions I do agree with."

HAVE you heard the Lib-Dem leader Tim Farron banging on about how it is "only logical" to hold a second EU referendum after the terms for leaving are announced? During the 40 years we have been in the EU, watching it steadily turn from a common market of six nations into a damn great superstate of 28 while watching its unelected commissioners gradually take over the powers of our own Parliament, I do not recall the Lib-Dems ever calling for any sort of vote. They are democrats in much the way that Genghis Khan was a liberal. For Farron it is "only logical" to hold a second referendum because he lost the first one.

THE report into the ill-fated Operation Midland shows how many lives were destroyed by sex-abuse allegations made by a single witness known as "Nick." Over a year ago I asked: "At any stage in this big and ruinously expensive inquiry, has 'Nick' ever been invited to take a lie-detector test? If not, why not?" His identity is still unknown, although he is now being investigated for perverting the course of justice. If he is ever named, I confidently predict that many people who know him will be amazed the cops were ever taken in. That barm-pot? Surely not.

A READER tells me the Americans voting for Trump have rushed over a cliff like lemmings. Fact: lemmings do not rush headlong over cliffs. It's just folklore.

MORE small-mammal news. Scientists in Switzerland warn that some red squirrels have leprosy and should not be touched. On the other hand, if you slip a leprous squirrel half a denarius, he might tell you his life story. But only if you're a Monty Python fan.