Peter Rhodes on sinking flagships, rising prices and how things were always better in the good old, bad old days
“We had such a sense of community in the 1980s,” Scottish author Douglas Stuart told listeners to Radio 4. 'Twas ever thus. When I started in journalism in the 1960s, old folk talked fondly of the Depression-hit 1930s. “Yes, we were poor,” they would recall, “but we all pulled together.”
There is a tendency to look back on another era, usually about 40 years before, and endow it with all sorts of warm, cosy qualities that it probably never possessed. What people are really saying is that being 30 is better than being 70.
Tips for online groceries. 1) Never rely on the photographs of the goods. I spotted a good-quality red wine on a supermarket shopping site. Nice claret, excellent price. In fact it was about half the usual price. Turned out to be a half-bottle.
Inflation is a scary and soul-destroying thing but it can be tackled. According to the latest figures, the amount of food wasted in British households every year would fill 38 million wheelie bins or eight Wembley Stadiums. Don't complain about the price of food if you're binning stuff you should be eating.
Some cynics believe that every time a law is framed, the law-drafters deliberately leave something out, thus providing gainful employment for other lawyers. Consider Rule 149 of the Highway Code which, as the House of Lords discovered a few days ago, forbids drivers from using mobile phones, but does not specifically include cyclists or users of e-bikes. Clearly, the rules must be updated. More debate, more drafting, more fees for the lawyers. Trebles all round.
Meanwhile, paying for goods in shops is becoming a voluntary thing. If you'd like to pay £100 for those trainers, by all means do. But if you simply shoplift them and get caught, the worst you can expect is a £70 fixed-penalty ticket sent to your home. The process is anonymous, you don't get a criminal record, so it's no wonder that up to 300,000 shoplifting offences go unpunished every year. According to former police chiefs quoted in the Daily Telegraph, “shoplifting has been effectively decriminalised.” The good news? The crime figures look better.
Useful word in Ukrainian for when your missile crews, in a Belgrano sort of moment, wreck President Putin's flagship. “Zrozumiv!” translates as “Gotcha!”
