Peter Rhodes: The war America tried to forget
RESEARCH at Nottingham University suggests the winter-flu jab is more effective if you're in a happy frame of mind when you get it. This may reinforce your belief in the awesome power of the mind over body. On the other hand, you may take the view that a vaccine whose efficacy depends on how happy you feel must be a pretty feeble sort of vaccine.
OH, Jeremy Corbyn. What is this eagerness to nationalise gas, water, electricity and the railways when the real scoundrel, the biggest, nastiest example of the unacceptable face of capitalism, grows fatter by the day? It comprises dozens of companies selling virtually identical products, ripping us off with yearly price hikes way in excess of inflation, treating loyal customers like suckers and luring us on with massive advertising campaigns which we, naturally, pay for. I refer, of course, to the British insurance industry. The sooner it is nationalised and run by the people for the people, the better. You can understand the wicked Tories regarding the industry as untouchable but surely Labour has a view?
THE Vietnam War (BBC4) is a masterful 10-part series on a conflict unlike any other. It was so vivid, so violent and so endlessly filmed that it became part of our culture throughout the 1960s. Every evening's news brought more frightful images as we became familiar with places like Da Nang and Khe Sanh. And then, quite suddenly in 1975, it was all over and no-one, least of all the Americans, wanted to talk about it. Gone, finished. Vietnam became the let-it-be-forgotten war.
IN 1992 I was on a press trip to Saigon. For us older hacks it was a city that, thanks to all the TV coverage, we half-knew. See? Here's the US embassy and over there's the presidential palace where NVA tanks smashed down the gates in the closing minutes of the war. But for the younger journalists it was just a holiday destination, a warm, friendly place with cheap taxis and great food. Re-visiting the war is long overdue, if only because it gives us a sharp lesson in how the best of intentions can lead you to fight the wrong enemy and drop blazing napalm on children in the name of democracy.
ONE of the best film cameramen of that war was Panorama's Erik Durschmied who once gave me a useful tip for staying alive in a war zone. He had no time for prayers or lucky mascots but put his faith in getting the maximum density between yourself and the bullets. As he told me: "Luck is a thick brick wall. There's nothing else. If you live or die depends on which side of the wall you are."
I HAVE tiny, lingering doubts about the claim that Britain is in for a series of major storms between now and Christmas. The forecasting companies may well be proved right. However, they are apparently using data from as far back as 1940 to predict what may be coming. Looking for patterns in the weather? Why do I keep thinking of roulette wheels?