Express & Star

Peter Rhodes on naming lorries, rhyming with the seasons and why quick arrests tell a grim story

Read today's column from Peter Rhodes.

Published
Thirty degrees the norm?

EDDIE Stobart traditionally gives its lorries women's names. But for how much longer? The haulage firm has politely but firmly turned down a request to name a truck after 18-year-old Connor Sparrowhawk who died tragically in 2013 and was a "huge fan" of the company. In these gender-fluid times, how long before the activists turn their fury on Eddie? I feel a campaign coming on.

I INVITED you to send in poems to replace the old one: "Five, Ten and Twenty-one / Winter, Spring and Summer sun." which was supposed to familiarise us with centigrade temperatures but has hardly kept pace with climate change. I particularly enjoyed the following lines from a reader in Jersey:

"In wintertime we used to freeze, But now it’s eight or ten degrees. Spring and autumn days are plenty On which the mercury tops twenty. Thirty’s now the norm in summer; Less than twenty-five’s a bummer."

I STUCK with This Time With Alan Partridge (BBC1) in the hope of it getting better. The irony is that, in 30 minutes of this admittedly clever cringe-comedy, the only thing to make us laugh out loud was the unfortunate member of the studio audience who, as Partridge forced his way into the aisle, fell off the end of the seating, arms flailing. If it's chuckles you're after, nothing ever beats slapstick.

THE most terrifying aspect of the epidemic of knife attacks is how quickly the suspects are rounded up. In theory, this should reassure us. It might even make us proud of the brilliant forensic and detective work of our police forces. Think again.

WHAT these quick arrests really tell us is that there is rarely any mystery about who the killer is. In gang wars, the gang members know each other. They live in the same neighbourhoods and go to the same schools. The killers often make little attempt to escape. They seem to accept arrest and prison as an inevitable part of life. The entire process of deterrence, detection and detention created by middle-class law-makers, which seems so logical to politicians and their focus groups, counts for absolutely nothing if the kids they are dealing with simply do not fear it. And any new system which tried to reintroduce fear of consequences would be immediately challenged by the human-rights brigade. The soft laws created by well-intentioned liberals have led directly to today's procession of teenage bodies to the morgue. It is a discredited system and inner-city kids are dying for something better.

THERE was a whiff of boy-toy excitement about this week's report of a new micro-drone deployed by the British Army which, we are breathlessly assured, will be capable of "flying undetected inside buildings" to observe the enemy. On closer inspection this device is as big as a blackbird, weighs nearly half a pound and would be instantly spotted the moment it flew through the door. Let's hope the enemy doesn't have squash rackets.

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