Peter Rhodes: Try kissing leeches?

WHATEVER else you do tomorrow, vote. If only because 73 years ago this week British troops were slogging inland from the D-Day beaches in Normandy to liberate the continent of Europe from the scourge of Nazism and ensure that we could all vote.

AND don't retreat into the mind-set of “my vote doesn't count because this is a rock-solid Tory / Labour constituency.” These days, the popular vote for the whole UK is taken seriously. If the total votes cast for the runner-up is greater than those for the winner, it undermines the winner's mandate. In a very real way, every vote counts. Even yours.

WHILE I don't do election forecasts, I would not be surprised if this General Election, like the EU referendum, reinforces the huge and growing gulf between London and the rest of Britain. It is not so much a capital as a city state.

AFTER yesterday's item on sunglasses which are not recommended for driving, presumably because of their dodgy optical quality, I am reminded of my brother's old Mini back in the 1960s. It rolled off the production line with a windscreen so badly made that oncoming vehicles would vanish into a sort of black hole, smack in the centre of the driver's field of vision. Ah, the golden age of British car making.

DURING this week's reports on the latest terrorist atrocity, BBC News ran a “timeline of terror,” logging four incidents. They were the March 22 Westminster Bridge slaughter, the Manchester Arena suicide bombing of May 22, and Saturday night's attack on London Bridge. The fourth incident on the Beeb's “timeline of terror” was the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox on June 16 last year. What on earth has the targeted killing of a politician by a lone psychopath got in common with the other outrages? The simple answer is nothing. This was Auntie Beeb in full politically-correct preaching mode, trying to assure us that not all terror is Islamic terror. Ah, but it is, Auntie. In a perfect world, terrorism would be an equal-opportunities employer. In the real world of 2017, the jihadists have a virtual monopoly. The only terrorism that scares people today is the sort aimed at ordinary folk by wild-eyed loonies who think they're doing God's work.

A READER reminds me of the words of the French philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-62) who observed: “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” Nothing changes.

NO surprise in the news that the recovery position, a fixture in first-aid manuals for many years, is no longer being recommended. Researchers in Spain claim the position makes it harder for first-aiders to detect that someone has breathing difficulties. 'Twas ever thus. The history of medicine is a history of techniques being taught as holy writ for years and then being suddenly overturned. Medicinal bleeding has passed into history and no-one now advocates reviving drowned people by surrounding them with hot bricks or curing migraines with leeches applied to the temples, or covering burns with flour. Even the kiss of life, a cornerstone of first aid for decades, is now avoided. Kissing leeches may be worth a try.