Peter Rhodes on scrapping shops, tugging forelocks and witnessing A-bomb blasts

I can't see the first proposal making much difference to the housing crisis. A quick mooch around towns and cities suggests that most family homes have already been massively extended upwards, backwards or, in the case of London's much-basemented millionaire belt, downwards.

But turning failed shops into houses and flats is another matter. There's a growing demand in these motorist-persecuting times to live in the middle of towns, within walking distance of schools and work. And if, say, ten or 20 per cent of unused shops became living accommodation, those new families would provide local customers for the shops that remained. Save shops by scrapping shops. Ah, the irony.

British people list green issues as one of their most important considerations in elections. Except that is, when it actually comes to voting. It is one thing to boast of your green values when answering an opinion poll. It is quite another to vote for a policy, such as London's ULEZ (Ultra Low Emission Zone) which will cost you £12.50 every time you leave your house.

It would, of course, be cynical and unprincipled for any politician to ditch or delay carbon-zero measures in order to buy votes. Being hugely cynical, I'm expecting an announcement any day.

The new movie Oppenheimer, tracing the development of the atomic bomb, reminds me of the old soldiers I met who were shipped off to the Outback of Australia and the southern oceans in the 1950s to witness the tests of the first British atom and hydrogen bombs.

The memory that lived with many of them was clasping their hands over their eyes as protection from the flash and seeing the bones of their fingers, as if in an X-ray. A glimpse of hell.