Express & Star

Nothing changes: Peter Rhodes on politics old and new, transgender dramas and Dad's Army at sea

A HISTORIAN on the radio was stressing the importance of "good analytical journalism." During 2018 I will enter my 50th year in newspapers and, for what it's worth, I have always suspected that "good analytical journalism" actually means "stuff I agree with."

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Mark Stanley as James in Love, Lies & Records

MY Christmas presents included The Fateful Year, Mark Bostridge's fine book on 1914 in the lead-up to the First World War. He tells us that the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, could not be trusted alone with young women and denounced his mistress's Jewish admirer in racist terms. At the same time Parliament was thinking of excluding Ulster from the Irish Home Rule bill, but only for a limited time. So that's inappropriate behaviour towards women, anti-semitism in high places and a row over a transition period. My, how times have changed.

A WOMAN arrived at a London hospital for her cervical smear, having requested a female nurse. She was approached by a person with stubble and a deep voice - "clearly a man" - who announced: "My gender is not male. I'm a transsexual." The patient refused the treatment and the hospital has apologised. Frankly, I'm surprised the patient wasn't asked to apologise to the nurse.

THE above incident has been reported as part of the debate about proposed refroms which would allow people to change their gender legally without a doctor's diagnosis. It is also worth watching the excellent BBC drama Love, Lies & Records, set in a registrar's office. One of the staff, a strapping six-foot father of two, changes from James to Jamie (Mark Stanley). He starts wearing skirts and a padded bra. The other staff are wonderfully enlightened, welcoming their new transgender colleague and even offering hints with make-up. And just when you're thinking Auntie Beeb is getting terribly preachy and politically-correct, James's wife turns up. She is not thrilled. She is not PC. She is confused, humiliated, furious. How the hell, she asks in disgust, are her two sons supposed to relate to their father "with him looking like that"? This scene made the point that one man's transgendering dream can become a family's worst nightmare. It was a brave piece of broadcasting, at odds with right-on progressive opinion but reeking of the truth.

IF you wanted to smuggle people into Britain, you'd be mad to do it via Dover or Southampton. It's safer by far to steal ashore by night in a small boat at some sleepy little marina. The Government has announced a pilot project of unpaid, part-time volunteers to keep watch on some east coast ports. It has been denounced by a few pundits as "Dad's Army," but this job seems to require no more than a suspicious nature and a good pair of eyes. Let's give it a chance.

EUPHEMISMS for our time. The Resolution Foundation says today's hard-up millennial generation will inherit billions of pounds' worth of property as the older babyboomer generation "progress through old age." Or to put it less delicately, when we pop our clogs.