Champion League: Peter Rhodes on the return to Royston Vasey, time travel to the Seventies and the perils of bird poo
"DON'T tell me that the 1970s were grimmer than now," rages one youthful contributor to an online discussion about how terrible things are today. There are two issues here. The first is that so many kids seem to know nothing about anything. The second is that, sadly, we have no way of transporting them back to the good old days to see how bad they were. Oh, for a time machine to revisit an age when people had to queue to use a phone box and every consumer item, from cassette recorders to washing machines, cost the earth. If the 1970s were that great, we'd all have kept our Austin Maxis.
WONDERFUL to see the resurrection of The League of Gentlemen on BBC2. The challenge for TV critics remains the same as ever. Try writing a review without using the word "dark".
DURING a debate in the House of Lords it was claimed that some lords were struggling on their £300-a-day allowance and might be out of pocket after paying hotel bills. Here's the perfect solution: stay away. The House of Lords is stuffed full of 850 peers. No-one will notice if one or two go missing. It's a fair bet that the ones worst affected are those with a taste for high living or who are not very good at accounting. They are precisely the ones who should be kept well away from law-making. Take the day off, m' lud. Better still, take the year off.
RESIDENTS of an upmarket estate in Bristol have been denounced as cruel for putting anti-bird spikes in trees to protect their cars from droppings. My sympathies are entirely with the humans. Modern car paints are water-based and bird poo, which is caustic and abrasive, can "burn" and stain the surface, causing permanent damage. Flutter off, you little vandals.
BATH and North East Somerset Council spent nearly £1 million creating 13 safety zones with the speed limit reduced from 30mph to 20mph - only to discover that the number of deaths and injuries increased. Officials claim road users have become "less diligent." I can believe that. A school on my daily commute was sited in a 40mph zone. The council reduced it to 30mph and the road immediately became more dangerous. When the traffic was doing 40mph, the kids queued to use the pelican crossings. When the speed was lowered, they started dashing across the road. Common sense suggests slow traffic should be safer traffic. The snag is, human nature is not always common sensical.
WHICH probably explains the furore over so-called "water cremation" as proposed at a crem in Rowley Regis in the West Midlands. In scientific terms, it may seem fine to dissolve the human body in a strong solution, grind the hard bits into a powder to be given to the relatives in an urn and dispose of the rest of the liquid in the drains. Human nature, however, may not yet be ready for the prospect of Aunt Maggie going down the plughole.
