Peter Rhodes on a vanishing bar, a talking snack and a PM on the Tube
As Joni Mitchell famously put it: “Don't it always seem to go / That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone?” Nestle has axed the Caramac bar. A nation mourns.
The day after tomorrow the Supreme Court will rule whether Britain's plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda is lawful. If I were a betting man I might risk a small punt on Their Supreme Magnificences voting it down. As I put it some time ago: “Something must be done about the Channel people-smuggling trade. But if sending migrants to Rwanda is the answer, I'm Ramsey MacDonald.”
An online video denounces three estates in Walsall as some of the roughest in Britain. One viewer suggests local councillors should “take a walk around, like Joe Public, and experience the real world.”
Can't argue with that. However, warming to his theme of public consultation, the viewer goes on: “At least Winston Churchill had it in him to just jump on the Tube and ask around.” Or did he? The image of Churchill (Gary Oldman) chatting with Tube passengers to gauge public opinion on the war comes from the 2017 movie Darkest Hour. It is a wonderfully stirring sequence but, like so much movie history, is made up.
Some people thought marching for a Gaza ceasefire on Armistice Day was not offensive but appropriate. What, they asked, could be more fitting than to call for a new armistice on the day we remember the 1918 Armistice which ended the First World War? Yet there's a world of difference. Germany signed the 1918 Armistice only after it had been well and truly beaten on the battlefield and millions of Germans were starving as a result of the Allied naval blockade. German soldiers were worried sick about their folk back home, unlike the Hamas terrorists who really don't give a damn about Palestinians, except as human shields.
While the world is in a state of high anxiety over Artificial Intelligence, I must report another great leap forward in neural interfacing, namely the Ginster cheese and onion pasty. The wrapper declares rather disturbingly: “I am ready to eat cold but I'm even better if you warm me up.” A savoury snack has developed self-awareness. Remarkable.
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