Shropshire Star

Peter Rhodes on blubbing Aussies, uncertain scientists and why Alan Sugar's tweet caused so much offence

Why weeping Australians trump unfunny Italians.

Published
Lord Sugar - joker?

THANK goodness that's over. We can switch the telly on for the first time in days without seeing some sobbing Aussie confessing his sins.

SOME of us are old enough to remember when a bank holiday meant a circus on the telly. I never quite understood the connection between the Resurrection and six unfunny Italian clowns in an exploding car. The weeping cricketers are far more amusing.

THE lachrymose Aussies are useful, too, for foreigners struggling with the insane prepositions of the English language. Question: Is the Australian cricketer crying because he was caught? Answer: No, he is crying because he was caught out.

WHO knows what April will bring for Theresa May? At some stage she can expect the report of the panel of experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, investigating the Salisbury nerve-agent incident. It may be that they will agree 100 per cent that this nerve agent could only have come from a Russian laboratory and that something in its molecular make-up links it with absolute certainty to the Kremlin, and thus to President Putin. But scientists are rarely 100 per cent sure about anything. What if their agreed level of certainty is only 80 per cent, or 60 per cent? If that happens, we can expect the support from our European allies to wobble. And then what? April 2018 could be the month that makes or breaks our Prime Minister.

UNTIL Alan Sugar re-tweeted that infamously concocted image of Jeremy Corbyn sharing a car with Adolf Hitler, I'd never guessed that Sugar had anything resembling a sense of humour. Why did the computer-faked image cause such offence? It's not because it suggests that Corbyn, a lifelong anti-racist, has anything in common with Hitler. It's because it pokes fun at Corbyn's much trotted-out excuse - "I was not aware of that." It doesn't imply he's a Nazi but it does imply that he's stupid. And that really hurts.

MATHS corner. I needed a length of chain and, with the general vagueness we Brits have about metric, ordered one made from 3mm stainless steel. When it arrived, it was as weedy as a necklace. So I ordered the 8mm version instead. Now, here's one for you engineers. The maximum safe load of a chain made from 3mm steel is 40kgs. So what is the maximum safe load of a chain made from 8mm steel? Take your time....

THE latest house to go on sale at Sandbanks, the so-called Britain's Palm Beach in Poole Harbour, will set you back £8.75 million. Like all the other Sandbanks mansions, it stands on a low beach at risk from rising sea levels. So are you reassured or simply surprised that so many enormously wealthy folk either don't believe in global warming or can afford to ignore it?

THE maximum load for an 8mm chain? It's 3,000 kilograms. I can't even begin to explain the maths. But I bet somebody out there can...