Mark Andrews: A brazen political U-turn, football's selective neutrality, and Gary Lineker's position on bedbugs
Paris has been blighted by an plague of bedbugs just months before it hosts the 2024 Olympics. And there is speculation that the blood-sucking monsters are already in London, having surreptitiously hitched a lift on the Eurostar. So much for taking back control of our borders. It can only be a matter of time before Gary Lineker is demanding safe and legal routes for the critters.
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Talk about a change of heart. In 2015, Scottish Nationalist Dr Lisa Cameron was elected to represent East Kilbride, a traditional Labour stronghold, on a platform of stopping the sale of council houses and breaking up the United Kingdom. It later emerged she had a lucrative second income renting out ex-council houses.
Now, after eight years fighting for Scottish independence, she now pledges to work for 'all nations of the UK' as a member of the Conservative and Unionist Party.
It would be easier to sympathise with Dr Cameron if her defection had been based on a matter of conscience. But it seems the main reason for the ideological scales falling from her eyes was that the SNP leadership were pretty beastly to her, and Rishi Sunak was much kinder.
Now I don't doubt there are some pretty toxic characters in the SNP. Its raison d'etre is to sow division, its former leader said 'I detest Tories', much of its recent hierarchy are currently on bail, and the recent leadership election made the Jeremy Kyle show seem an oasis of serenity.
But to turn your back on almost everything you said at election time because you don't get on with your colleagues seems a little self-serving. I suppose we should be grateful she didn't change her name to David.
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Barring a Lisa Cameronesque about-turn by the Football Association, England's game against Australia will by now have gone ahead without the arch at Wembley being illuminated in solidarity with the people of Israel.
The FA didn't want to take sides. But if you won't take sides over the barbaric slaughter of children and babies, what cause will you make a stand for?
In recent times Wembley arch has been illuminated red for Turkey, blue and yellow for Ukraine and blue for the NHS. The football authorities seem to dedicate months to everything from rainbow shoelaces to dandruff awareness, so it's a bit rich to suddenly start claiming impartiality.
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Reader David Coppage praises the choice of Mozart's Jupiter Symphony as background music at Wolverhampton bus station. He suggests Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, John Adams' Short Ride in a Fast Machine and Johann Strauss II's Perpetuum Mobile as other entries for the play list.
Maybe the neighbouring railway station could play Train Train, by American rock band Blackfoot. It comes from an album called Strikes.
