Shropshire Star

Peter Rhodes on the arithmetic of Brexit, the case for cutting the Lords and the importance of dying healthily

Far too many

Published
Far too many

NEATLY put. A reader explains the mind-set which makes some experts advise not feeding bread to ducks, even if the birds are clearly hungry. He defines it as "the importance of starving to death healthily."

I WOULD like to think that an unqualified imposter working in the NHS as an A&E doctor, cancer specialist or brain surgeon would be rumbled in a matter of weeks, if not days. So how is it that a woman with no qualifications was allowed to work as a psychiatrist in the NHS for 22 years without being detected? Were there no complaints from her patients? Did her colleagues not smell a rat? Or does this little scandal tell us more about the nature of psychiatry than anything else?

ANYWAY, if you fancy a change of career with minimal risk of being rumbled, I can report that, at the time of writing, Amazon has one remaining copy of A Bluffer's Guide to Psychology.

WHEN turkeys start voting for Christmas, you know the game is up. The Commons committee responsible for constitutional affairs - made up of MPs who might reasonably look forward to a pampered retirement in ermine - says the bloated House of Lords with more than 800 members, should axe 200 of them. The rest of us will ask, why stop at 600 peers? The place is far too big and far too undemocratic. The Lib-Dems, with a pitiful 12 MPs in the Commons, have somehow amassed 98 members of the House of Lords. If that's a modern Western democracy, I'm the Mikado.

THE road to Brexit is paved with a surfeit of "if onlys." If only the talks had been led by a true-blue, hard-line Brexiteer then, by jingo, we could have slapped those Euro-geeks into shape and got a fine deal. Or if only Jeremy Corbyn were in charge with his dazzling powers of negotiation, all would be well. And, ah, if only our national media were looking in the right direction. Fleet Street, TV and radio have spent endless hours trying to calculate how many Tory MPs would call for a vote of no confidence in Theresa May. But another great equation in the arithmatic of Brexit is being entirely overlooked. It is this: how many Labour MPs with no great loyalty to Jeremy Corbyn, and representing constituencies that voted Leave, are prepared to vote for Theresa May's deal? My guess is, more than you think.

IN the endless pursuit of a perfect society, London Ambulance Service has told its call operators to avoid using "gender specific" terms, including Sir, Madam, Mr and Mrs. I have no idea what they will replace them with but, as one who spent half his working life calling strangers on the phone, I sympathise. From time to time, the phone is answered by a man with a high voice or a woman with a low voice which can lead to all sorts of confusion on the lines of: "Good morning, madam, may I speak to your husband?" "I am my husband."