Peter Rhodes on a statue for Thatcher, a happy country and the end of snowballs in England

According to the Met Office, snowy winters in England could become a thing of the past by 2030, owing to climate change. Mind you, any claim beginning with “According to the Met Office” should be treated with a degree of caution.

Last Sunday, for example, was predicted to be dry for some days in advance. It turned out wet. If the Met Office can't predict rain until it's almost upon us, how much faith should we invest in its predictions for 10 or 20 years from now?

So let's use a different yardstick. As one of the dwindling, medieval band of households still relying on solid fuel, the annual ritual of filling our boiler with expensive anthracite and lighting it is an event worth recording. From my diaries I can report that I lit the boiler on October 23 in 2018, on November 5 in 2019 and on November 30 this year. This suggests either autumn is getting milder or I'm getting meaner.

Is there a news producer working for any network in Britain who is capable of reporting a story about Covid vaccination without showing viewers a close-up of the needle going into somebody's arm? We all know what an injection is, thanks, and we'd probably pay more attention to the TV report if we were not hiding behind the sofa.

The Valhalla Murders (BBC4) is set in what even the Beeb admits is the “desolate darkness” of Iceland. It seems to get pitch-black at about lunchtime, the streets are paved with slush, the people struggle through drifts of grey-black snow and in such a grim, grisly place it's hardly any wonder that mass murder and mutilation is such a popular pastime. Now the surprise. According to repeated surveys in real life, the Icelanders are among the happiest people in the world. How? Why?

Britain, of course comes much lower down the list of happy nations but that's the legacy of Thatcherism, innit? There is talk of erecting a statue of the Iron Lady in her native Grantham and thousands of folk have promised to turn up for an “egg throwing competition” on the day of the unveiling. Why is she so hated? Because, as any prospective egg-chucker will tell you, until 1979 when Thatcher became prime minister, everyone was kind and thoughtful and self-sacrificing and we all helped each other. After 1979, thanks to Thatcherism, we all started being mean, selfish and nasty.

I was around then and I don't entirely remember it that way, but who can argue with the power of folk history? I was no great fan of Thatcher but it always seemed to me that rabid anti-Thatcherism was spread by misogynistic old blokes whose lives hadn't turned out as they'd hoped and whose real problem was not with a woman prime minister but with any female in authority. You can generally spot it in the way they spit out the words “that bloody woman.”