Shropshire Star

Peter Rhodes on homes fit for heroes, getting even with scammers and what now for Remainers?

How long to carry on the struggle?

Published
Albert Steptoe (Wilfrid Brambell)

THIS must be a tricky time for diehard Remainers. What do they do now that the 27 EU nations have voted for the Brexit deal? The EU is frankly fed up with the UK and wants to get on with its European Project. Its star-spangled loyalists in Britain have become an embarrassment. So here's the dilemma. If you support the EU and the EU says "Go!" how long do you carry on the struggle to stay?

IT is 100 years since the then prime minister Lloyd George told a crowd in Wolverhampton: "What is our task? To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in." Lloyd George's dream is often quoted as "homes fit for heroes." One of the most poignant comments on it came in the 1980s in Only Fools and Horses (BBC) when Grandad (Lennard Pearce ) bitterly recalled seeing the war-wounded returning home from the Great War: "They promised us homes fit for heroes," he said, "they gave us heroes fit for homes."

IT is a great quote but I'm not entirely sure Grandad Trotter was the first to use it. I seem to recall the "heroes fit for homes" line being uttered by Albert Steptoe (Wilfrid Brambell) in a 1960s episode of Steptoe & Son.

ONE for the pub quiz. What do Grandad Trotter and Albert Steptoe's son Harold have in common? They are both named after the greatest military hero of the age, Earl Kitchener of Khartoum. It's Edward Kitchener Trotter and Harold Albert Kitchener Steptoe. I'll get my cardigan...

ACCORDING to a new study, there is no evidence that 20mph zones improve road safety. And why should they? Couldn't these zones actually make things worse? Common sense tells us that in town and city centres, with their lethal,jam-packed cocktail of pedestrians, cyclists and other vehicles, your eyes should be firmly fixed on the road ahead. Twenty miles an hour is 30 feet per second which means if you take your eyes off the road for just three seconds to consult your speedometer, you've covered 90 feet. And the more you check your speed, ironically the more dangerous you become.

ONE of the bright young things organising the Extinction Rebellion road blocks in London declares: "If anybody needs to get past, we’ll let them through." So how, exactly, do they decide whose journey is essential? And how do they extract those people from the tangled depths of the traffic jam they've just created? These pampered idiots are playing poker with other people's lives. Undeterred, the spokesman says of his comrades: "These are all people that are willing to be arrested." Let us hope they find themselves arrested only for blocking the road and not for manslaughter.

THOSE bothersome scammers claiming to be from "Windows Technical Support" (there is no such organisation) have taken to ringing me at about the same time every day. Which means I can confidently answer the phone by saying: "Good morning, this is Windows Technical Support." Much confusion.