Peter Rhodes on TV gold, too many guns and choosing a penalty you can afford
A friend has recovered from two thoroughly unpleasant weeks with Covid-19. It bears repeating that, while we may have forgotten Covid, Covid has not forgotten us.
It’s pointless to dwell on the Nashville school massacre because, by the time this appears a week after the tragedy, something worse may have overtaken it. Mass shootings, defined as an incident with four or more victims, are now a daily event in the States.
The outstanding feature at Nashville was the body-camera footage of a pair of cops rushing towards danger. Were they simply supremely brave or did they find themselves in some sort of alternative reality, slipping into role like actors in a drama? For the more you look at the body-camera footage from Nashville, the more it looks like a video game.
The American solution to such horrors is to arm more people until every teacher and caretaker has an assault rifle. America already has more guns than people. If even more guns is the answer, can anybody remember the question?
The Guardian, that fearless espouser of left-wing causes, commissioned an investigation into long-held claims that it was founded on the profits of slavery. Shock, horror – the tales turn out to be true and the Guardian announces a 10-year, £10 million fund for “restorative justice.” So having found itself guilty, the Guardian now chooses its own punishment.
And what a bargain it has had for that £10 million over the past two centuries. Think of all those lefty leader columns, all that opinion-shaping, all that political power. How many votes were swung and elections won by Guardian readers unaware that their beloved paper was born on the backs of Africans abducted from their homes, shipped across the Atlantic and treated worse than farm animals? I wonder how many incurable Guardian loyalists are today mulling over the slavery connection and whispering: “Well, it was a very long time ago . . .”
After my praise for the BBC series Little Dorrit, one reader suggests (and I share his view) that Bleak House, screened in 2005, was the best period drama the BBC ever made.
Another reader, more concerned with political correctness, says Dickens’ character should be Vertically Challenged Dorrit. Noted.
