'We should take Donald Trump literally and seriously' - Toby Neal warns

There may have been some truth in it during his first term of office. But this time round we have to take him both literally and seriously.

He's a man on a mission, spared by God to Make America Great Again. Either that, or those who think he is running a reality television presidency have got it right.

There is some evidence for that. "This is going to be great television," he said at the end of his horror show with Zelensky at the White House.

Depends what you think makes great television. The worldwide viewers' verdict is that it was appalling, shocking, disgraceful.

If we are grimly grasping for positives, the Trump rollercoaster is forcing some concentration of minds and has underlined the position of Britain as a leading international influencer, "despite Brexit."

It is forcing Europe to step up to the plate, as people say these days.

Sir Keir Starmer is channelling his inner Winston Churchill and the House of Commons has united behind him and his offer to send British peacekeeping troops to Ukraine.

Sir Keir has shown that Britain is ready to take the lead in standing up to bullies. Well, some bullies anyway.

Having begun with one cliche, here's another, and it's not comforting. Whenever the House of Commons agrees on something, it is always wrong.

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My late dad would have been very pleased to hear that a Bridgnorth firm has placed orders for a new generation of airships. He always said airships should come back. 

He was brought up in Bedford, and the huge airship sheds at Cardington were (and still are) on the doorstep. 

A childhood memory was watching the R101 circle Bedford in farewell before its fateful last flight. The R101 sent out a Morse message to the ground. He asked his dad what it said. "All's well," was the reply, although my dad always wondered if he had made it up.

Hours later the R101 crashed in France. Britain lost interest in airships.

America had a monopoly on helium in the 1920s and 1930s, which meant everybody else had to use hydrogen, which lifts better and is much cheaper. And blows up.

America's giant airships were so big that they actually carried aircraft. Yes, really. And being filled with inert helium, they were perfectly safe, right? Decidedly not.

When the USS Akron crashed in a thunderstorm in 1933 the death toll of 73 was the greatest loss of life in any airship crash. Sister ship USS Macon was brought down by a storm in 1935, with two fatalities.

The airships ordered by the Bridgnorth firm are the Z1, made by an American company, and are hybrids, which I take it means they gain lift both from the helium gas and their aerodynamic shape.

I do have a worry, and it is nothing to do with the technological challenges. My fear is that for folk in remote and lawless regions of the world the sight of a vast airship flying overhead will leave them with the irresistible temptation to take a pot shot at it.

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Even when it was first built, I thought it odd that the M54 didn't have a connection with the M6 north.

In their wisdom the road planners made the decision based on traffic surveys which showed that the vast majority of the eastbound traffic on the M54 would be taking the M6 south. The people of Shareshill and Featherstone have suffered as a result of that myopia ever since.

There has been talk of at last building a northern link.

This is a lesson for the building of Britain's infrastructure projects. Do things on the cheap, and it costs more.

It's also a lesson for life. A bit of planning and foresight, and doing things properly in the first place, saves a lot of money and trouble in the longer run.

Don't be surprised if, 30 or so years from now, they start talking again about the urgent need to build an HS2 extension to Leeds.