Peter Rhodes on missing relatives, telling the time and MPs - how much are they worth?

IS anyone surprised, in this digital age, that kids can no longer tell the time using a traditional analogue clock face? Teachers at a conference in London were told that children relied on mobiles rather than wristwatches. And yet is that the full story? How many kids could master the clock face perfectly well if only their parents bothered to teach them? It would be fascinating to see how many kids who can't tell the time can't tie their shoelaces either.

BEING born without a trace of the football gene, I tend to steer well clear of the subject. But my eye was caught by an interview in which the Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp declared: "I have this helping syndrome. I really care about people and I feel responsible for pretty much everything." Maybe this is normal in his native Germany but somehow I can't imagine an English manager coming out with that sort of self-analysis. It is rare to hear the Brits singing their own praises which is why such incidents stick in the mind. I recall a lady some time ago who informed me: "As you know, Peter, I am a very spiritual person," and went on to tell me she'd just spent several thousand pounds buying a cherished number plate for her car.

THE more we learn, the more it seems the Windrush scandal was a failing not only of ministers and civil servants but of ordinary Members of Parliament. The only justification for having 650 hugely expensive MPs is that they are supposed to be the eyes and ears of Parliament, embedded in their constituencies and on the look-out for grass-roots unhappiness and injustice. So where were they? The Windrush saga was brewing for years. If only a few MPs had found out what was happening, discussed it with their colleagues and realised this was a national scandal brewing, who knows how much stress and loss might have been avoided? MPs are paid a basic £76,000. On this showing, how many were worth a penny?

WOLVERHAMPTON Councillor Phil Bateman warns us to lock our car doors after some scally opened his rear door at traffic lights. This sounds like an attempted robbery, but you never know. Some years ago, driving through London at night and hopelessly lost in torrential rain, I pulled in to the kerb to consult the map. The door was yanked open and a huge, drenched Rastafarian was suddenly beside me in the passenger seat. He said: "Thank God you stopped for me, man. I'm soaking here." Apparently he'd been thumbing a lift. I drove him home. He was good company.

THE firm Ancestry DNA estimates that the average Briton has 17,000 living relatives. Impressed? Don't be. In the small print we discover that most members of our lost tribes are second, third and all the way to eighth cousins. In other words, not really relatives at all.