Peter Rhodes on payback for America, dancing with chainsaws and the Peter Pan guide to fertility
So it's all about the money, is it? We all thought the US was giving Ukraine 500 billion dollars to fight the Russians simply because it was The Right Thing. Now, Washington is demanding Ukraine's precious minerals as payback.
This stirs a very old British suspicion that while the Americans tend to be late in joining wars, they are usually early in sending the bill. As a Home Guard squaddie in Dad's Army (BBC) put it: “The only thing the Yanks ever charged was ten per cent interest on the money they lent us.”
And yet salvation comes in many forms. If Ukraine becomes an enormous rare-metals quarry for America, that will presumably mean American personnel, machinery and finance on Ukrainian soil. And that in turn may make Russia think twice about invading again. This theory presupposes, of course, the Trump project is the result of much deep thinking by great brains. And how do we square that with Elon Musk tangoing with his chainsaw?
Live on telly the BBC brought us the handover of Israeli hostages. The wonderful thing about live broadcasting, as the Beeb frequently tells us, is that it brings us instant images and commentary from one of the greatest broadcasting organisations in the world. And yet when one of those hostages kissed two of his Hamas guards, there was not a word of reaction or commentary. Unbelievable.
The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics tell us that the average number of children born to a woman in England and Wales over her lifetime dropped to 1.44 in 2023, the lowest level since records began in 1938. Sky News reports that one reason is the unwillingness of people to bring babies into a world facing climate catastrophe. Ruby Warrington, author of Women Without Kids, says: “The message that Generation Z are growing up with is 'the world is f***ed'."
I find myself reminded of Peter Pan's mate Tinkerbell who warns that every time someone stops believing in fairies, a fairy dies. In real life, can it be that when someone says the world is f***ed, a baby is cancelled?
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