The men who refused to run

REMEMBER that nice young man who sold you the double glazing and told you the super-efficient door would keep the coldest weather at bay? Do you recall him mentioning that in a heatwave the same door would warp, buckle and jam? No, me neither.

RESPECT to the Muslim men who fought back when a van crashed into a crowd near Finsbury Park Mosque this week. They had no idea whether their attacker was armed or whether the vehicle was a bomb. They just grabbed him, thumped him, detained him until the cops arrived and heeded their imam's pleas not to injure him. As I pointed out some days ago, terrorists are not superhuman. Facing a cohesive and determined group, they can be defeated. The official police advice to run, hide and report is sometimes no substitute for grab, wallop and pin down. Well done, all.

I’M not sure I buy that “sorrow-to-fury” line about the street demos in London. The sorrowful are quietly grieving. The furious were furious long before the Grenfell Tower fire and will be furious long after it is forgotten because they are the urban angry brigade and it is in their nature to rage. The forest of Socialist Worker placards gives them away. The hard Left is so convinced of the righteousness of its cause that it sees nothing wrong in hijacking a terrible tragedy to pursue its agenda.

FORGOTTEN? Of course Grenfell Tower will be forgotten; that is the nature of history. But first it will become a casual comment, in the same way that people complaining about a muddy path describe it as “like the Battle of the Somme.” Today’s unspeakable obscenity is tomorrow’s joke. I would be surprised if some “edgy” comedian is not already considering a Grenfell Tower line to spice up his or her jaded act and grab some free publicity. Taste is the first casualty.

IF I may mix my metaphors, Jeremy Corbyn is grandstanding on thin ice. If he is serious about ever leading this country (which frankly I doubt), he will need to do more than appear like a second messiah on the streets of Kensington, take the stage at Glastonbury or denounce the Government’s £5 million aid package as too small, before he’s even had time to study it. There is more to leadership than instant sound bites, knee-jerk negativity and photo-opportunities. The inconvenient truth is that councils in London and around this country face the impossible task of providing homes for a population which is rising at half a million a year - twice the average EU rate. Population growth is at the heart of every social issue of our age. And it doesn't even get a mention in Corbyn’s Labour Party manifesto.

THE only people I envied during our recent Devon holiday were those sixtysomething silver paddlers in a new generation of wide, unsinkable canoes. With no trailers, no slipways, no boatyard fees, no engines and no sails, they paddle blissfully around the coast, stopping wherever they fancy and sunbathing on beaches no-one else can reach. There is an old saying: The smaller your boat, the more you’ll use it. Case proved.