Peter Rhodes on ear removal, swarms of drones and the countdown to Brexit - or is it?
AS any public-relations expert will tell you, the secret of a great press release is a clear, snappy introduction to grab the reader's attention. This arrived from the University of Kent: "Brexit as much due to resistance to supranationalism as immigration." Er, quite.
BUT as another week ticks away, we can surely look forward to the sunlit uplands of a post-Brexit age when words like "backstop" are no more than vague memories, such as "millennium bug" or "acid rain" (whatever happened to that?).
A WORD of caution, however, to my coterie of old geezers who follow the online version of this column and are crowing with confidence that a second referendum is dead and buried. I'm not sure the coffin lid has even been ordered. This could yet end with Tony Blair punching the air.
ILLEGAL abortion is a running theme in Call The Midwife (BBC1). It makes grisly viewing. One of the midwives seethed that she'd like to get her hands on the "dirty" person who did such things. The age-old image of the gin-soaked abortionist working in filthy conditions is firmly fixed in our race-memory. But that wasn't the whole picture. Some women providing abortions in the 1960s, when this drama is set, had medical training - and some were midwives. It is rarely discussed but a couple of years ago one of the last surviving US doctors who admitted performing abortions before they were legal recalled: "One thing that’s always misrepresented is that all the people providing illegal abortions were back-alley - this is not true. They were midwives and nurses who did what they could with their limited training (and) equipment, but the complication rate was high." In the bad old days, sometimes there was more than one reason to call a midwife.
DEFENCE Secretary Gavin Williamson unveils plans for squadrons of armed drones to "swarm" over our enemies and overwhelm their defences. Looks good on paper. However, all it takes to defeat one swarm of drones is a much bigger swarm. I bet before the ink was dry on Mr Williamson's contract, the Kremlin was ordering super-swarms. Time to get our boffins working on the ultimate anti-super-swarm weapon. Bring on the super-swarm hyper-swatter, if they can find anybody who can pronounce it.
AND while we're on the subject, how many drones would it take to swamp the defences of Britain's two shiny new 70,000-ton aircraft carriers, conceived and designed in a pre-drone age? Ten? Twenty? Or is it considered unpatriotic to ask such questions?
THE curious case of the Wolverhampton body-modification artist who went a tad too far when he removed a nipple from one customer, an ear from another and split a third customer's tongue, ended this week with the Appeal Court judges noting that the ear removal had been "done quite well." Pardon . . ?
