Peter Rhodes on yet another Brexit crisis, how liberal policies make us less liberal and the green, brown grass of home

LAST week I took umbrage at the tone of TV Licensing's online reminder: "You've just days left to renew your TV Licence." Looking back through my emails, I see that in 2015, 2016 and 2017, the reminder was worded: "You've 14 days left to renew your TV Licence." The old form of words was informative and helpful; the new version has an urgent and bullying tone.

SO I have asked TV Licensing to tell us why the words were changed and who made the decision. They've just days left to answer....

HAVE you noticed a weekly pattern about Brexit? Every week seems to begin with megaphone headlines about Theresa May facing her worst challenge yet. Yet every week ends with May making some compromises but edging the process gently forward. And then comes that astonishing, but little reported, remark by EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier that a Brexit deal is "80 per cent agreed." If all is shambles and catastrophe, how did we get this far?

MEANWHILE, this week kicks off with the usual warnings that if we leave the EU without an agreement, airliners will fall out of the sky, the queue for Dover will begin at Oxford and our firstborn children will be sold into slavery. Maybe so. And if you attempt to cross a river without using a bridge, you may get your feet wet. Let us move on.

YES, I know I should join in the chorus of shock at those aerial photos showing drought-stricken Britain looking yellow and brown instead of green. But remember, about eight per cent of us males are colour blind. We believe that yellow is a sort of light brown and brown is just another word for green. Everything looks fine to us.

I SUGGESTED the Trump blimp, showing Donald Trump as a crying baby, might provoke gunfire when it is flown in the States. A lady in Shrewsbury writes: "The blimp is not 'dangerous,' it is a balloon - a bit of a laugh." In other words, those Americans should react to it exactly as she and her English friends do. Sadly, that's not how the world works; it is full of people with different cultures and different values. You may think setting fire to the Stars and Stripes in Shrewsbury is a huge joke but in Montana they probably wouldn't get it.

WE usually think of London as a hotbed of right-on liberal values where anything goes. Apparently not. A survey by British Social Attitudes reveals that, when it comes to views on pre-marital sex and homosexuality, the capital has conservative values which are "largely driven by religious factors." See what's happening? Multiculturalism, as championed for years by liberal politicians, has created some communities with not-so-liberal values which, ironically, are probably closer to traditional British working-class values. Some policies just can't help biting you on the bum. I dare say Sadiq Khan will sort it all out.