Shropshire Star

Peter Rhodes on the 'Made in Britain' revival, dam beavers and a very expensive drought

Why buy stuff from China when we can make it here?

Published
Made in Britain

THIS week saw the introduction of a pair of beavers to a stream in the Forest of Dean. Or as it will shortly be known, the Lake of Dean.

I PRESS the computer key and TV Licensing replies: "Thank you. Your TV licence application was successful." Depends how you define successful. I am poorer by £150.50 yet I seem to watch less BBC than ever before. This week I have been mostly watching Netflix.

SPELLCHECK. Netflix = Reflux.

IN the debate over whether the insult "gammon" is racist, a reader insists the term has "zero racist comment." Which is exactly what they used to say about golliwogs, the N-word and the Black & White Minstrels. Don't you just hate being on the wrong side of history?

TALKING of which, today I metaphorically link arms with Comrade Jez on the long march to the sunlit uplands of Brexit. Jeremy Corbyn is a long-standing enemy of the EU for exactly the same reason as his political enemies Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg. They do not believe Britain can be properly governed, or reach its full potential, as a one-28th part shareholder in a superstate which is strangled by red tape and ruled by people who think Luxembourg is a real country. This week Mr Corbyn urged the nation to seize one of the first advantages of Brexit - the weak pound - to kick-start our manufacturing industry. Why buy stuff from China when we can make it here?

WELL, it sounds perfect. Unless you are old enough to remember the time when almost every item you bought was marked "Made in Britain"which may have given us a brief glow of pride but cost us a fortune.

IN the drought of 1976, for example, being young and foolish, we followed the Government's advice to soak the garden using water from the washing machine. What no-one told us was that the appliance's water pump depended on a certain level of water pressure. Attaching the machine to a garden hose increased the pressure, demolished the pump and wrecked the "Made in Britain" washing machine. The replacement, also made in Britain, cost us £130 or to put it another way, two weeks' wages. Consumers have grown accustomed to consumer goods being made in China and sold here for a fraction of what, in real terms, they used to cost. So own up, citizens. How much are you prepared to pay to subsidise Comrade Jez's Number One All-British Washing Machine Factory?

THE BBC's religious slot Thought for the Day, is reserved for approved religions, despite lobbying by atheists, humanists, pagans and druids. One item this week was a common-sense discourse on the costs of funerals by a Church of England vicar. Unless I dozed off, there was not a religious line in it. The piece could have been delivered just as well by an agnostic, rain-dancer or Jedi knight. The idea that only God-botherers have opinions worth listening to is a form of discrimination. Unworthy, Auntie.