Shropshire Star

Peter Rhodes on old-style dustmen, a missing musician and six words for Boris

Read today's column from Peter Rhodes.

Published
Back to the future

LOVING the BBC Proms? A reader tells me he particularly enjoyed the Bermudan Symphony Orchestra but couldn't help noticing the man with the triangle was missing.

JOHN McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, says rubbish collections, currently outsourced to private firms, should be provided by local councils using their own employees. He says this would end the scandals of councils being "carved up" by contractors. In other words, he would turn the clock back to the days of council binmen and municipal dustcarts. Seriously, has anybody thought this through?

THERE is little historical record of the old refuse-collection system. However, from one 1960 source I gather that corporation rubbish-disposal operatives were required to wear a dustman's hat and something called cor-blimey trousers, and to live in a council flat. Relations with local residents were not always cordial. Operatives were sometimes accused of "looking a proper nana" in their large hobnail boots. If a resident did not leave a Christmas gratuity, the operatives would deposit rubbish on the doorstep. In one case when a resident complained to the council about this practice, the dustman "went round there and punched him up the throat." Do we really want a return to those days, Mr McDonnell?

I HAVE been repeatedly taken to task for scaremongering about HS2 by referring to it as the "£100 billion HS2". This is based on the time-honoured calculation of taking the official estimate for any major public project and doubling it. Now, according to the latest estimates, the £56 billion official figure may be exceeded by £30 billion which makes the new official forecast £86 billion. So my £100 billion estimate is now only £14 billion higher than the official figures - and I'm sure they'll catch up before too long. I dare say the £200 billion HS2 will be arriving shortly.

NO sooner has my piece appeared, suggesting that Extinction Rebellion's (XR) demos and road blocks were "tyranny dressed up as compassion," than we heard of a Bristol man, stuck in an XR traffic jam in the city, who was unable to get to hospital to be with his dying father. An XR activist was reduced to tears by his story on local radio but insisted she and her mates were "doing the right thing." Their arrogance is unbelievable. It's as irresponsible as tossing a brick over a wall into a school playground and killing a child and then explaining that, because you wrote "XR" on the brick, it's all right because you're "doing the right thing."

GOLF has a language all of its own. With hindsight, we should have been more grown-up and not sniggered at the news from The Open where, I grieve to report, one competitor accumulated a quadruple bogey.

JUST half-a-dozen words on the prospect of Boris Johnson as our new Prime Minister. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear.