Tormented by travellers

DESPITE all the warnings and a £100 fine plus six points, you still see drivers using mobile phones – even while driving convertibles. But for sheer brass neck, can anyone rival the farmer's lad I spotted turning his tractor and trailer into a lane? He was driving one-handed with no hand signal, no number plate and no lights. While texting.

A DAILY Telegraph reader declares: “I am an old man now and witnessed many changes to our country .Never have I experienced the mess and mayhem that we find ourselves in at this present time.” Really? So you don't remember the Second World War? Or Suez? Or the Cold War? Or the 30-year IRA campaign? The trouble with some old people is that they don't accept that our chances of living a long, healthy life untroubled by crime, famine, pestilence or war are better now than at any time in human history. The idea that everything was better 40 years ago is a delusion that has haunted humanity for at least 20 centuries.

RESIDENTS who prevented a traveller convoy occupying a green outside their homes in north Wales claim the cops did little to support them. One woman declared: “The police called us inciteful for coming out together.” Strange term to use. Maybe the officer in question actually said “insightful,” meaning perceptive or wise.

ANYWAY, residents who try to stop travellers setting up camp wherever they choose clearly have no future if Comrade Jez takes over. The 2017 Labour Party manifesto pledges to “protect the right to lead a nomadic way of life.” How odd that a manifesto headlined “For the many, not the few” might allow a few lawless travellers to terrorise the many. As they do, time after time.

I ADMIT I'm puzzled by the sorry tale of the Essex pensioner on the cruise ship Norwegian Jewel. His luggage was allegedly lost by British Airways - “leaving him stuck with the same clothes for three weeks,” according to one tabloid which described how he had to borrow clothes from other passengers and “rush to local markets and buy underwear.” Hang on. I've never seen a cruise ship without shops. Sure enough, according to its website, Norwegian Jewel boasts The Galleria department store selling “jewellery, clothes, souvenirs, toys, snacks and accessories.” Why didn't the clothes-less passenger simply visit the clothes shop? It is a mystery.

MY holiday reading in Devon was Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger's excellent history book, The Year 1000. It tells us that after a punch-up with customs officials in the Italian city of Pavia, English merchants signed the first example of a commercial treaty in our history. Under it, the merchants could trade in the city free of tolls and transaction taxes, provided they paid a collective levy every three years. That was more than 1,200 years ago. And if our Anglo-Saxon forbears could do a deal with our European neighbours back then, don't tell us we can't do the same today.

LACEY and Danziger's book also reveals how quickly technology changes. It was written to mark the millennium in 2000 (or 2001, for you pedants) and makes a passing reference to “a modern Filofax.” Whatever happened to them?