Peter Rhodes on a very sick Britain, a sinking tale and a program that gives you pants
The story about Prince George not being required to do military service has, in the way of so many silly-season yarns, gone rather quiet.
But it does occur to me, in these days of equal rights, that if George were required to do a spell in khaki, wouldn't Princess Charlotte be, too?
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According to the latest research, the number of Brits living with major illnesses such as dementia, diabetes, cancer, depression and kidney disease will rise from 6.5 million to nine million by 2040.
The implications for the NHS have been described as “catastrophic”. So how do we square these depressing figures with the rose-tinted forecasts we get almost every week from jubilant boffins that cures for some of the above diseases are just around the corner? Premature congratulation?
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According to one account from the wildfires in Rhodes, the chaos resembled the sinking of the Titanic, “with orders for women and children to be saved first ignored while people fought one another to save their own luggage”. Well what else would we expect?
When Titanic went down in 1912, it was an age when concepts such as chivalry, duty and self-sacrifice were understood and accepted. Maybe that's why, of all the groups on Titanic, the heaviest losses were among the crew.
Today, nothing matters except the cult of the individual. If RMS Titanic sank this week, most of the survivors would not be women and children but agile young males, storming the lifeboats and pausing only to raid the minibars.
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I've just started reading Undoctored, by the medic Adam Kay who gave us the book and TV series, This is Going to Hurt. It's a gripping, graphic and grisly sequel, illuminated with little yarns, including the perils of using a computer program which removes Americanisms such as “pants”, replacing them with the English “trousers”. Very clever. Until it insists on describing a group of people as “particitrousers”.
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In the pursuit of road safety and to help the aged and unfit, the time allowed for crossing the road at traffic lights is to be extended from 6.1 to 7.3 seconds. Well, that's one solution. Another would be to issue traffic wardens with cattle prods.
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