Peter Rhodes on arming teachers, the EU's powder keg and borrowing a battle from Blackadder

WHILE we Brits have been pretending to know the difference between 'a customs union' and 'the customs union', the European Union has been busy on the other side of the continent, cosying up to six nations which hope to join the Union by 2025. They are: Macedonia, Albania, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. This wild, unstable and religiously riven region used to be called the Powder Keg of Europe. As I have said right from the start of this Brexit business, it is not enough to look at where the UK is going. We should also be looking very carefully at where the European Union is going and ask, do we really want to go that way?

MORE whimsy in Endeavour (ITV). After last week's episode mentioned the Crossroads Motel, this week's made a passing reference to Mboto Gorge, one of the battle honours of the fictitious South Oxfordshire Light Infantry. As Blackadder fans will know, Mboto Gorge was the battle in which Captain Blackadder's troops, armed with rifles and machine guns, massacred a tribe of pygmies armed with fruit.

DIANE Abbott, a great believer in free movement of people, says her party will produce 'immigration policies that meet the test of being firmly located in Labour’s values'. This is good news. But then Ms Abbott has had plenty of time to reflect on less ethical migration policies. Back in the 1970s she famously spent a romantic holiday with her boyfriend Jeremy Corbyn in communist East Germany. Why they chose that particular hell-hole (sorry, 'workers' paradise') for a tryst is anyone's guess but she will have seen first-hand a regime where border controls were based on fences and landmines and where anyone trying to flee was shot to death. Freedom of movement, comrades? Only if you can outrun the guard dogs.

MASSACRES are always good for gun sales. After every atrocity in the States, local people buy guns to protect themselves. Following the Florida school shootings, there's an even bigger bonanza for the firearms industry. Donald Trump's government is considering issuing guns to selected school teachers. That's another one million guns to be purchased.

IF anyone thinks arming teachers is a good idea, let me relate the tale of an old soldier called Jim who did National Service in Cyprus and found himself caught up in a chase between military police and a wanted terrorist. An MP shoved a revolver into Jim's hands with the instructions: "If he comes out of that door, shoot him." Jim told me that within a few seconds he was so shaky, nauseous and sweaty-handed that he could barely hold the gun, let alone aim it. There is only one place where heroic loners kill the bad guy. The movies.

OUT for a brisk walk in the Beast from the East, I couldn't help noticing that not a single family group we encountered was using mobile phones. Instead, muffled against the Siberian blast, folk were chatting – just like families used to do. All the dazzling technology of tablets and smartphones is no use if you're wearing big thick mittens.